Oligarchy in America
Jane Mayer wrote in the New Yorker yesterday about Trump the oligarch.
Now, with the Times reporting that congressionally crafted loopholes for real-estate magnates could have enabled Trump to legally evade all income taxes for eighteen years, while earning as much as fifty million dollars a year, we have a perfect example of how oligarchic interests have made inroads in the United States. The question now is whether the American public favors this trend.
One definition of an oligarch, according to the Northwestern University political scientist Jeffrey A. Winters, the author of “Oligarchy,” is an individual with enough money to employ the protection of what he calls the “wealth defense industry.” Oligarchs worldwide face threats of different kinds, but in the U.S. the greatest threat is from redistribution—which is achieved by the state imposing progressive income taxes. So the “wealth defense industry” in America—sophisticated accountants, consultants, lawyers, lobbyists, and think-tank apologists—is uniquely focussed on carving out tax loopholes for its rich clients.
Result: the 1%.
The defense of tax avoidance by Trump and his surrogates may be a particularly hard sell in light of his relentless trash-talking of America’s roads, airports, schools, military, and other publicly financed projects. “Our country’s becoming a Third World country!” Trump reiterated at a rally in Manheim, Pennsylvania, on Saturday night. If so, voters might fairly say, as Hillary Clinton did at last week’s debate, “Maybe because you haven’t paid any federal income tax for a lot of years.”
During that debate, Trump’s best line of attack was to hit Clinton for having been involved in politics for thirty years while so many problems have festered. But the same point could be made about him. For decades, Trump has been part of the private sector that has used its wealth and power to carve out tax loopholes for its own self-interest. This may be acceptable in Russia, and other oligarchic parts of the world, but whether it’s O.K. in America, too, is now on the ballot next month.
Among other things.
Exactly. He’s the face behind the politician that people are complaining about rather than complaining about him and those like him.
It doesn’t help that so many of our elected leaders are millionaires themselves; these tax loopholes often carve out exemptions for them, too, so persuading them to vote against saving themselves money at the taxpayers expense may be difficult, if not impossible, for most of them.
Surely ‘plutocracy’ is a more accurate description of the power elites in most Western countries, Trump is a specific type of oligarch, a plutocrat. Of course the ‘wealth defense industry’ is flourishing, the more money an individual has the easier it becomes to defend it from the state. However the real societal dysfunction is the fact that people are able to accumulate such massive amounts of capital in the first place. Once the money’s in the bank, the average plutocrat can afford expensive accountants and lawyers to ‘defend’ it, by legitimate means.
Assuming the legal concepts aren’t different in the US—-the term ‘legally evade’ doesn’t make sense, a taxpayer either avoids taxes (legal) or evades taxes (illegal). Tax evasion is usually in the area of small businesses and self-employed individuals.
I disagree. Yes, Trump is a selfish asshole. One of many.
But Clinton is someone who has offered, by running for office, to shoulder the responsibility for protecting the people from the assholes, and the people have elected her, and paid her money, to do so.
Trump, and the other selfish assholes like him, have never pretended to be anything but out for themselves. They have never offered to take responsibility to protect us, and we have not expected them, or paid them, to do so. Yes, he and his ilk have tried to get the most for themselves as they possibly can, but they did not pass the laws with the loopholes. It is the politicians, whose job it is to balance the interests of all their constituents, who did so.
The same points cannot be made about Trump and Clinton. She offered to do a noble job, and did not do as well at it as we would have liked.[0] Trump never tried to do anything noble, he’s just a selfish greedy asshole.
[0] We could still be thankful she did not do worse – no doubt the lobbyists had even worse plans over the years that went unrealised. We will never see the wins that Clinton and other politicians actually made in this area.