The Wealthy's PR Problem

Faced with the prospect that the public is no longer going to put up with the excesses of the wealthy, the wealthy are now claiming to be the victims of the recent economic crisis.

The Wall Street Journal reports that a letter by the editor of Elite Traveler said the rich are being wrongly prosecuted and that they should ignore the attacks. The wealthy are facing the twin prospects of paying higher taxes and no longer being able to command excessive salaries. Apparently all the prospect of living slightly excessively compared to extremely excessively is too much for the wealthy to take.

While the spending of the wealthy does provide jobs for others, the problem that too few people consider is the impact the excesses of the wealthy had on the country over the past eight or so years. As the wealthy commanded a larger slice of the income pie it forced everyone else, who were getting a smaller slice of the pie, to compete for housing at escalated prices. As a result people overpaid for housing, setting in motion the housing bubble. Bankers made the situation worse by getting many of these people into loans they could not pay back, setting in motion the 2008 collapse.

The only true wealthy victims are those that voted for Al Gore in 2000. Those who voted for Bush have no one to blame but themselves, and of course the Supreme Court. By 2000 the U.S. was on the way to paying off the national debt, which could have set the stage for a true tax cut or at least the ability for the country to pay its bills without borrowing, allowing the wealthy to keep more of their income.

One has to imagine that a President Gore would not have pushed for a massive tax cut, forced into a war with a country that didn't attack us, or appoint Chris Cox as head of the SEC. Those three decisions have helped put the country into a very deep economic hole.

Today people question the amount of borrowing the country is doing but one has to wonder where those people were over the past eight years. Perhaps if people voted for a real tax cut in 2000 based on sound economic policies rather than a fuzzy math tax cut, or if they had voiced their displeasure before this year the wealthy might be better off today.