We Are the 100%
I see that the Service Employees' International Union is twittering:
Twitter / @SEIU:: #GOP blocks 3rd #jobs bill, show interests of top %1 more important than their own unemployed constituents: http://seiu.cc/rpHv8h
The situation is even worse than that. The Republicans are not just acting against the interests of the 99% and for the interests of the 1%. The Republicans are acting in the interests of nobody at all:
The 1% have an interest in full employment, high capacity utilization, and general prosperity just as the rest of us do.
It is true that the interests of the 1% differ from the interests of the rest of Americans in four particulars:
- The 1% have an enormous material interest in making the tax system less progressive.
- The 1% have a long-run material interest in hypnotizing Americans into believing that the current distribution of income and wealth is in some sense "deserved" or "just".
- The 1% have a short-run ideal interest in being reassured that they are in fact good people whose wealth and incomes are deserved and just.
- The 1% have a short-run material interest in not being reminded that it was the actions of many of them that played the key role in breaking the economy.
But the 1% have a strong material interest in the passage of the American Jobs Act. In acting to block it, the Republicans--and Senator Nelson--are betraying the interests of their contributors in the top 1% as much as they are betraying the interests of their constituents.
