Trickle up economics---A new theory

Great Debates
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Some random thoughts and questions.

  1. Why was the gold standard dispensed with? Since Nixon we have been forced to base our economy on voodoo rather than shiny things.
  2. Why can’t we, with so much to offer brain and technology and resource wise have the highest standard of culture, health and life in the world? I have seen the way Norway is, and people there are happy, educated, healthy, fed, and they give to others.
  3. Why can’t I have the choice to go to a university without the burden (ever larger) of student loans? Do you know that New York State can charge 20% of my payment for fees? I’ll never pay that loan off. Which (I’m rambling) is fine with me. When I die I don’t owe them anything.
  4. Why aren’t more of our financial resources put into education and mentoring on all levels? (life long learning)
  5. And finally…Where’s my stuff?
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Truer words were never spoken, arl! And therein lies the problem, IMHO, with much (all?) of what you argue here. Everything has to be one way or the other. To decide if we should embark on any sort of “redistribution” in our society (and I use the word in quotes because it is a rather ill-defined concept, as noted in my last post), we look at the extreme in which we make all wealth equal. Boy, that looks pretty shitty for the economy, doesn’t it? So, clearly, we must go in the direction of furthering the divide between the poor and the wealthy!

Or we look at whether Bill Gates or a janitor has had a bigger effect on the economy and once we conclude its Bill Gates it clearly follows that he needs to keep more of his income that is (by my rough estimate) about 500,000 times that of the janitor.

And if one commits the heresy of proposing that maybe we should give most of the tax cut to the janitors of the nation rather than the Bill Gates of the nation, that is “practiced fascism”? Clearly, if we do anything to disturb the natural equilibrium of the free market (well, besides, say providing corporate law and mechanisms to enforce it, various services such as police and schools which are inevitably of much better quality if you are wealthy, and so on, but let’s not let ourselves get bogged down in details here!), we are tinkering with the Divine Providence of The Almighty Market God himself.

Others have already pointed out that it just confuses the issue when one tries to factor in the effects of the total size of the tax cut at the same time as the distributional aspects of it. The purpose of my discussion was to ask, for a tax cut of a given size, how it should be distributed. The question of how much of a tax cut there should be or whether there should be one at all (i.e., whether there are alternate uses of the money from which we could derive greater benefit) is an interesting one and has been touched on a bit, although it’s not the primary topic of this thread.

As for the historical record on tax cuts and the economy: (1) It again doesn’t deal with the distributional aspects or even what sorts of taxes are cut (income, capital gains, …) (2) The historical record that you present is biased toward the conclusion you want to reach, as has been pointed out already. (3) Establishing this sort of cause-and-effect based on correlation is dicey at best. I could probably show you something like that the weather is better in Cleveland when Republicans control Congress than when the Democrats do!

One measure I like to consider when trying to figure out how effective supply side theory is this: Compare what the proponents thought it would do, in terms of their budget estimates during the Reagan years, to what it actually did! The White House revenue predictions during the Reagan years were incredibly rosier than the reality, so much so that they became a sort of joke, and of course, left us with the joke of a huge debt because the deficit balooned instead of decreasing. [By contrast, by the way, the revenue predictions during much of the Clinton years kept having to be revised upward…E.g., Clinton and Congress had a big fight about balancing a budget based on numbers that were way too pessimistic, as the budget ended up pretty much balancing itself due to higher-than-projected revenues!]

By the way, of the arguments given here for the opposing point-of-view, I find Tretiak’s to be the closest to compelling. It is certainly true that sufficiently decreasing the rewards for hard work would tend to lessen such activity. But, the question is how much for a given decrease in the incentives and how that gets balanced against other factors that people have cited here of why tax cuts to the poor and middle class actually help the economy more. (Not to mention the fact that the incentive from lowering marginal tax rates could be greater on the poor than on the rich.) Evidence, particularly from other developed countries, suggests that we have a ways to go before this becomes a major concern. Nonetheless, I am all for the rather unpopular notion of using tax cuts to create incentives for doing certain things when the incentive created by the marketplace is insufficient or perverse because of externalities and other problems.

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Note to non-Canadians: Conrad Black is a very wealthy Canadian businessman…Made his money mainly through newspaper publishing, I believe. (Just thought I should translate this because we Americans are kept pretty much in the dark about life above the 49th parallel…I don’t think I had ever heard of Conrad Black before I lived in Canada.)

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*Originally posted by ihrkelings *

  1. Why was the gold standard dispensed with? Since Nixon we have been forced to base our economy on voodoo rather than shiny things.

The Gold Standard has its own problems. Most people tout it as a more “honest” system of money, which it is, but that doesn’t necessarily make it the best system. Even during a gold standard the government must control the gold supply, so it isn’t invincible. :wink:

  1. Why can’t we, with so much to offer brain and technology and resource wise have the highest standard of culture, health and life in the world? I have seen the way Norway is, and people there are happy, educated, healthy, fed, and they give to others.

I don’t know. There is clearly enough wealth in America to expropriate. Why not do it? After all, it seems only physical slavery, not mental, was outlawed. When we can use other’s talent and ingenuity for our gain without adjusted compensetory measures, why shouldn’t we?

  1. Why can’t I have the choice to go to a university without the burden (ever larger) of student loans?

Because goods and services cost money. This is compensation for other people’s efforts. Why get an education if it isn’t going to improve your station in life?

  1. Why aren’t more of our financial resources put into education and mentoring on all levels? (life long learning)

We (U.S.) have a HUGE expenditure on education. Life-long learning? Are there concerns that if the government doesn’t coddle its citizens they can’t do anything productive?

  1. And finally…Where’s my stuff?
    Check the projects. And the supermarket. And foriegn nations. How much help is too much?
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:smiley: Et tu, jshore?
Everything is one way or the other. Can people have private property? Yes/no. Can people do what they want with this property? Yes/no.
You can’t “sorta” do what you want with your money. You can’t “maybe” own things.

I have taken a beating due to these equivocations and broad line-drawings. I am happy to do so.

When we decide as a society to tax unevenly, what have we done? We have decided, as an unwritten rule, that some people are more equal than others. We have decided that some people can’t use their ability to its fulest extent without impediments (impediments that effect everyone). This isn’t even “seperate but equal.” It is “seperate but unequal.”

You want to control the economy? Do it right: all men are created equal and are equal under the law. Except the wealthy. Except the rich. You can receive a speedy trial like everyone else, but when it comes to your wallet its open season.

When I say something like, “We are promoting fascism” people find it ignorant and shockingly naive.

Fascism: A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

What is missing from this? The dictator is missing; we’ve got a representative democracy. Stringent socioeconomic controls? Only in “special” markets like farming, radio, the stock market… just the “important” stuff. Suppression of opposition? This is missing and present simultaneously through controls and endorsed monopolies and absent in anti-monopolistic laws and unregulated markets. Terror and censorship? No, our Congress “asks” people to do things that aren’t legal or illegal before they need to “take action.” We’re very polite about it. Nationalism? We don’t need to when the labor unions do it for us. Racism? As a national policy?—well, you got me there.

So, are we fascist? Not by this definition, quite. We;ve got a mix of freedom and control, freedom and censorship, etc etc etc.

This is when we look at our nation as a whole. When we target specific issues we find much more clear ideologies. When we discuss taxing the rich to aide the poor, we find a Robin Hood mentality… the mention is that the poor need it, but the mentality is that the poor deserve it, and the ideology is that the rich don’t deserve it.

:shrug:

~A peek into the mind of arl, who sees enemies everywhere :wink:

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arl, so I suppose to sum it all up, “Extremism in the defense of libertarianism is no vice”? :wink:

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Or, in other words, AuH[sub]2[/sub]O. :slight_smile:

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Is this really relevant? Sure, incentives play a factor, but not a big one. Nobody in their right mind would choose to stay poor just because of the taxes they pay. 40% of 100,000 is still much better than 70% of 30,000 (just pulling numbers out of the air). Perhaps you’re underestimating the “being poor sucks compared to being rich” principle.

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irl:

…depending on how you define private property.

No, not yes/no. Rather it is “No, never in the history of the world.”

In medieval England, land came attached to a set of mutual (and in practice ill-defined) obligations between lord, serf and king. In colonial America, land tenure took the form of “free and common socage”, but the user of the land was obliged to pay “quit rents” to the donor (ie the king): those quit rents gradually evolved into something known as “property taxes”. (They were called “quit rents” because originally (in England) they made the landowner “quit and free” of other obligations, such as military service and the like).

To tell you the truth, my textbook is becoming a little vague beyond that, although it does allude to practices that later became zoning laws. Still, I seriously doubt whether there was ever a time that you could, say, open up a brothel or do whatever you want with your property, regardless of what your neighbors thought.

Later on, the extension of public health services, water mains and the like would create more complicated burdens for property owners. Oh well.

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Afterthought: Has anyone in this thread yet mentioned that the vast majority of what lower-income people/families buy (brand-name products) would go right back to large corporations (the rich) in only one or two steps? Has anyone refuted this yet?

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puddlegum: C’mon. Listen to what you’re saying: Wilson increases taxes in 1917 and that causes a recession 3-4 years later.

I’d say that the sharp slowdown in federal spending following the first World War probably played some sort of role in the 1920-21 downturn.

Now on to 1933. Fact: Roosevelt increases taxes. Fact: Economic recovery (albeit slow) starts immediately thereafter.

Conclusion: Well, frankly I believe that tax cuts can stimulate the economy provided that the economy has excess capacity (as it certainly did in 1933). If, OTOH, all prductive capital is fully utilized, such stimulus will tend to be inflationary.

Oh, and spending increases stimulate the economy as well. In fact, I’d say that the higher federal spending subsequent to March 1933 had a lot to do with the country’s subsequent growth. Why wasn’t the recovery more energetic? See my previous explanation in this thread.
What’s interesting is that most of the tax cut advocates in this thread are making essentially Keynesian arguments. The sorts of long-run arguments -that tax cuts improve the incentive to work longer hours- are not being made. But that’s ok, such arguments, while plausible, lack a strong empirical foundation. (There was a defendable argument for cutting the top rates in 1981, but that’s another issue.)

Just so we know what we’re talking about here

If you cut the bottom tax rate, say from 15 to 10% as W. proposes -and that’s all you do- the rich would still get a tax cut.

Current tax tables provide a tax of 15% for “line 39 income” (single) under about $26,000 (this ignores the standard deduction, the earned income tax credit and anything else I’ve forgotten about.) Cut the rate to 10% and those earning above $26000 -all of them- get a cut of about $1300.

Now a lefty might argue that the working class deserves that $1300 but that the upper middle class and Bill Gates do not. That might be an interesting debate.

But that’s not what’s being argued. The issue is how much * more* we should give the higher tax brackets.

To W, it’s not enough to give those earning $288,000 and up an extra 1300 bucks. They apparently deserve more. So in addition to the $1300, W wants to cut the tax on income earned beyond that point from about 40% to 35%, IIRC. For every $100,000 you make beyond that, get an extra $5000.

Anticipated response: the rich pay more. Quick answer: the rich benefit more, since they have more property to protect. (Although here the arguments necessarily boil down to rhetoric.)

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Glad that you put the word “law” in quotes. Let me quibble with word “undeniable”.

You may have come across the phrase, “Backwards bending labor supply curve”. It states that after a certain point higher after-tax wages lead to a reduction of labor hours worked.

Why would this be? Increasing wages has 2 effects. First it makes work more valuable. That makes you want to work more.

Second, it makes the recipient richer. Richer folks consume more. And one of the things that they consume is …leisure. That effect makes them tend to want to work less. If this latter effect dominates (and for some people it does) a tax cut will cause them to work less, not more.

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Haven’t we done the same thing by allowing huge wealth inequalities to exist? I’m not naive enough to think I am “equal” to a billionaire, at least not in our society. To state the painfully obvious, money is power, and the extent to which you are willing to tolerate growing inequalities is the extent to which you are willing to concentrate real power in the hands of a smaller and smaller percentage of the population.

**

What about the impediments facing poor people, merely because they are poor? Why not support social programs that remove some of these impediments? Inferior health care, education, police protection…all can be viewed as impediments facing the poor (and as economic impediments as well).

**

This is absurd. Comparing the treatment of the rich with the experiences of blacks in the segregated South is morally indefensible. Pop question: which group would you rather belong to?

But, following your logic, I could make the same argument about an exclusive country club. If I can’t aford the membership fee, isn’t the club “separate but unequal”? But hey, that’s life, and I have no interest in country clubs anyway. Life isn’t entirely fair, as you mentioned in an earlier post. So you’ve answered your own question of why the rich have to pay higher taxes than the rest of us.

Interesting thread. (I’ve often wondered the same thing about “trickle up” vs. “trickle down” economics, jshore)

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Trickle-up: a shorter step?
Wealth is not created by profits. Wealth is created through investment via the banking system. Giving Joe Schmoe a nice tax break to let him save 1000 bucks a year isn’t going to increase the wealth of much, if at all. He will go to the local store and buy some stuff, he may pay off his car quicker, whatever. The mini-mart doesn’t have the huge profits from Joe Schmoe or the other 2000 people in that area. Consider that Joe and his ilk spend 100 at that store out of that 1000, this leaves us with 200000 that this corner store made off the tax break.
If we consider someone who, as the estimates were given by others, makes the absurd 500000 times as much as that (amounting to a cool 11000000000) we find that giving him the corresponding tax rate would amount to this chump, who is clearly God (since money is so obviously power), now has an extra 500000000 a year.
[sup]This assumes the happy janitor makes about 22K a year, which isn’t that unreasonable, and pays about 1K in taxes, which might be a little high.[/sup]

It would be a remarkable feat to spend this much money on beer and chips. In fact, I would bet my life that that money just goes straight to the bank or other investments (which end up in banks in their round-about ways).

I think the point in excessively taxing the rich is the “But I want some of that too!!!” mentality. We’re not in feudal europe, guys…you can earn that money too. We’re not in a caste system. We’re not in “Brave New World.” Your life, honestly, is not set out for you at birth.

This is not absurd. The wealthy are sneered at, demonized, held responsible for all matters of evil from consumerism (?) to deforestation. Nevermind that we, the consumers, wanted this stuff and bought it. The wealthy are like lepers.
They are not socially segregated…at least, we don’t want them to be. We want them right there in our neighborhood so we can have their money. We want them in our contry so we can have their money. We want them in our businesses so we have a job.

No, this isn’t the same as the treatment of the blacks. At least the blacks knew where they stood.

Though this is a bit of a hijack…

Eh? All the power in the country is in the hands of congress. They regulate our personal lives, our public lives, and the money that is being concentrated in the hands of the few. They’ve got all the power in this country. If they weren’t rich themselves, or didn’t want the same things we do from the rich, this country would have slipped into socialism at the slightest provocation from the labor unions.

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Wilson raised taxes in 1917 but the first year they went into affect was 1918 and slowed the economy so that there was a depression in 1920. There is a lag between implementation of fiscal policy and its effect on the economy, which is why there is so much bad fiscal policy. Roosevelt raised taxes in 1933 and the US did not get out of the great depression until the start of WW2 in 1941 8 years later. There is a lag but it is not 8 years worth. Though my history was simplistic every fact in it is true. History is always biased to correct interpretation.
The deficits of the 80’s were due to spending increases, not tax cuts. If you look at total tax revenue it went up every year except one. This is exactly what was predicted by the supply-side model. The fact that the revenue projections of the 90’s have been so wrong is further evidence that the dynamic modeling of the supply-side projections are more accurate than the static modeling that is more commonly done by the government.

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ARL,

Fascism is not corporate hegemony? Who stops the monopolies? (Not fascists, I hope). Also, a minor quibble, but when the majority of citizens decide to upgrade our/their health and education on the backs of the ultra-wealthy who the majority feels have succeeded thanks to their purchases, then I think the majority is deciding that they can afford to expand the economy into services that cannot be fully capitalized in other ways (in other words, big money won’t bother). So, when society takes this next step, it is not fascism, it is full democracy. In countries that have the highest voter turnout, mostly European, most citizens can expect basic health coverage and discounted or free higher education. Is that fascism? Have so many cosmic laws been broken by the average citizen here as to nullify the gain? Where does this hurt anyone? (I’m asking rhetorically, I already know the answers).

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arl: I think the point in excessively [sic] taxing the rich is the “But I want some of that too!!!” mentality.

Fiddlesticks. Yes, some non-wealthy people, out of greed or envy, just want money to be taken away from anyone but themselves. However, some wealthy people are greedy too: “I want more and I don’t care if it means that you have to make do with less!!” is no more honorable and attractive a sentiment coming from a wealthy person than a poor one. Why should rich people’s preferences (“don’t tax me!”) automatically be assumed to be less greedy and selfish than poor people’s (“tax the rich!”)?

Face it, some people, in all economic brackets and in all political camps, want economic policy to be shaped around their own selfish short-sighted advantage, while some people, in all economic brackets and in all political camps, want economic policy to do what’s best for everybody in the long run. You achieve nothing by making sweeping generalizations about people’s motivations based on how wealthy they are. (And you certainly don’t successfully account for jshore’s opinions, since as he has pointed out, he himself falls into the category of the “wealthy” whose share of the proposed Bush tax cut he thinks should be smaller.)

We’re not in feudal europe, guys…you can earn that money too. We’re not in a caste system. We’re not in “Brave New World.” Your life, honestly, is not set out for you at birth.

Irrelevant phrasemongering. Nobody is complaining that we live in such a rigidly stratified social or economic system that it’s impossible for any non-wealthy person to become wealthy. What’s under discussion is the incontrovertible fact that government economic policies do influence the performance of the economy and the structure of society: they can make it easier or harder for certain economic and social phenomena to occur. What the OP asked was, given that the government is attempting to exercise its influence for certain stated aims by means of a tax cut, would it be more effective to bring that influence to bear via “trickle-down” or “trickle-up” mechanisms? No flag-waving Horatio Alger rhetoric about opportunity and self-reliance is required in order to discuss the merits of this question.

This is not absurd. The wealthy are sneered at, demonized, held responsible for all matters of evil from consumerism (?) to deforestation.

Sneered at? Demonized? Nonsense. Sure, there are some people who like to pick on the rich for no good reason, just as there are some people who like to pick on any class of people for no good reason. But there are also plenty of admirers, sycophants, and starry-eyed worshippers of the rich (naming no names, mind you) to make up for this unfair denigration.

The wealthy are like lepers. […] No, this isn’t the same as the treatment of the blacks. At least the blacks knew where they stood.

:rolleyes: And I’m sure that must have been a great comfort to black people who have been beaten, lynched, ostracized, denied jobs and housing and education, on account of their race:
“Yes, this is hard to bear, but look on the bright side: at least we’re not rich!”
“You said it! It may not be fun to be called ‘nigger’ and beaten with a pipe, but at least we know where we stand, thank goodness! I can’t help pitying those unfortunate rich people drinking champagne at fancy parties and getting adulatory magazine articles written about them and having politicians tailor legislation to their interests, and wondering in secret anguish all the while whether they’re really being sneered at and demonized by all the folks who pretend to be nice to them!”

You’re right, arl, “absurd” is not adequate to describe the sort of claims you’re making here. “Shamefully, pathetically, indefensibly illogical and inaccurate” is more like it.

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Because that’s not what I posited. It isn’t “Don’t tax me!” it is “Don’t tax me differently!” Remember equal treatment and all of that. When I consider what others posit as an economic policy, I consider that it should affect everyone equally. You know, like voting, court trials, rights, etc. Our tax system is based on being “fair” by taxing the wealthy excessively. Some find that this “progressive” structure makes sense because of the proportion of money people use versus what they earn. I find that to be distressing.

Everyone wants something from the rich folks, so long as they don’t have to do whatever it is the rich folk do to be rich. This is not equal treatment, this is not fair, this is robbery. I’m not expecting you to feel sorry for people that are wealthy, I’m expecting you to realize that they are people, they own property, and their personal and property rights should not be different from mine or yours.

In other words, let me ask this question to everyone: assume we are going to do this trickle-up economics. How much of a tax break would you like to transfer over from you to the wealthy? How much money of theirs do you feel you deserve? Who are the wealthy?

When would we be satisfied to leave them alone?

Here’s my answer: never. After housing comes education comes food comes transportation comes health care comes computers comes more education comes job placement comes better housing comes more food (I deserve to raise a family!) comes extended health care comes wage guarantees comes…
sigh

jshore, I’m taking up a “Pay ARL’s taxes!” fund since I’m gonna owe this year and I won’t have the money to pay it. Care to contribute? :wink: [sub]joke[/sub]

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Then maybe we should stop regulating so much of the economy. I guess you are more comfortable with forcing people to do things for you than I am.

This is nice. Perhaps we can consider a short story here. We have this young black man in racially segregated south. Charging him down, at a distance of fifty feet, are four angry white guys with assorted blunt instruments yelling all matter fo obscenities. Behind him a car pulls up quickly, stirring some dust, and the driver leans over and opens up the door. “Get in,” he tells him, “lets get you somewhere safe.”

The young black man jumps in the car.

During the car ride the driver explains his dismay at the way blacks are treated, its a damn shame, etc etc. the black man is pretty silent, still taken aback by the events but also because there is little to do but nod his head. The driver continues to espouse something we might hear out of the mouth of MLKJr, and our passenger leans back, now a bit more comfortable, and his thoughts turn to picturing a mode of existence independent of color prejudices.
“So I’ll tell ya’,” our driver says, pulling into a house’s driveway, “I hope you realize how much I hate to do this.” The Klansmen come walking up to the car. “You understand, don’t you? We’re got to do this. Ain’t no choice.”

Who was the worse enemy, kimstu?

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arl: I’m not expecting you to feel sorry for people that are wealthy, I’m expecting you to realize that they are people, they own property, and their personal and property rights should not be different from mine or yours.

Perfectly reasonable. However, where I think you’re making your big mistake is in assuming that equal personal and property rights automatically include the right to be taxed at equal rates. That’s a completely arbitrary decision. You could just as plausibly argue that equal property rights require taxing everybody the same absolute dollar amount, since it’s unfair to take more property away from one person than from another. Or you could argue that in order for everybody truly to have the same property rights, everybody has to have exactly the same amount of property, and redistribute everything so everybody is exactly as rich as everybody else—what I call the “$43,697 and a 1993 Yugo” solution (which I do not support, btw). There are lots of ways of interpreting “equal property rights”, and the flat-tax principle is just as arbitrary as the rest of them.

See, there is no simple standard of “fairness” when it comes to the way property is distributed in a society. People acquire their property in lots of different ways; money is not a reliable indicator of merit or worthiness. So when we ask the question “how shall we as a people, all with different amounts of property, contribute to support the common needs of the society?”, there isn’t any one simple answer that’s indisputably more fair than the others.

The “fairness standard” that progressive taxation uses is that of reducing (not eliminating!) inequity of burden: that is, you start with the consensus that it’s more burdensome not to have enough money for food or shelter than it is not to have enough money for large numbers of expensive luxury items. So you minimize the tax burden on the part of income (of everybody’s income, by the way) that is generally indispensable for food and shelter, i.e., the first several thousand dollars (or more, depending on how many individuals are being supported). Then you apply a slightly higher tax burden to the part of income that is generally less crucial to expenses for sheer survival, but still important for basic needs of clothing, transportation, etc. And so you go on, taxing equal chunks of everybody’s income at equal rates, but raising the burden on successively higher chunks as you get to the portions of income that are less burdensome to do without. The point is not to punitively tax rich people at a higher rate than anyone else: the point is to tax subsequent chunks of “extra” income at higher rates than the initial chunks which are more critical to basic human needs.

*In other words, let me ask this question to everyone: assume we are going to do this trickle-up economics. How much of a tax break [I presume you mean “tax burden”] would you like to transfer over from you to the wealthy? How much money of theirs do you feel you deserve? Who are the wealthy? When would we be satisfied to leave them alone? *

Pooh, that’s a whole bunch of different questions, all with different implications. Personally, I would be happy to keep my tax burden as it is, or even increase it, if we could also increase the burden on the topmost chunks of income and transfer the financial relief to those who have only the first one or two chunks of income. It has nothing to do with my feeling that I “deserve” anybody’s money: it’s impossible to tell how much money from what sources anybody really “deserves” anyway. What this thread is about is how to distribute tax burdens so that they best achieve the things that most people (even most wealthy people) agree we want: prosperity, good schools, low crime, education, etc. etc. etc.

Here’s my answer: never.

Have you noticed that US top tax rates have been slashed over the last several decades? Your doomsday predictions that once people start taxing progressively they will just continue until they tax all the wealthy people out of their wealth entirely seem to be completely disconnected from history.

*“Yes, this is hard to bear, but look on the bright side: at least we’re not rich!”
“You said it! It may not be fun to be called ‘nigger’ and beaten with a pipe, but at least we know where we stand, thank goodness!”

This is nice. Perhaps we can consider a short story here. We have this young black man in racially segregated south. […] Who was the worse enemy?*

arl, if you slow down a minute and just think about what you’re saying here, I’m sure you will recognize that you are attempting to compare racist lynch mobs with social prejudice against rich people. The question of whether it’s better to face an openly violent lynch mob than to encounter a hypocritical supporter and ally of the lynch mob is absolutely irrelevant to the question of whether rich people can truly be said to get a raw deal in our society, compared to those who face real oppression. Your attempts to draw parallels between the two just keep on getting more ridiculously incoherent. Give it up.