The Gary Null Blog

Published on Tuesday, August 23, 2011 by In These Times

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/11855/third_world-level_inequality_in_us_now_impossible_to_deny/

by Roger Bybee

The CIA ranks the country 64th, behind Ivory Coast and Uganda—but Fox's banshees still scream 'class warfare' when Warren Buffet wants to tax the rich

For years, America’s super-rich and their allies in Congress and the media have tried to deny that a tiny elite was growing astronomically wealthy at the expense of the vast majority of Americans.

But the vast gaping canyon between the richest 1 percent and Corporate America, on the one hand, and the rest of us on the other, has become so large and well-documented that denial no longer works. The ideological combat gets especially intense when it turns to the relatively minimal taxes that corporations and the rich pay.

What defense can be offered when billionaire investor Warren Buffet admits that he pays a 15 percent capital-gains rate on most of his income, while everyone else in his office (including the secretary) pays a considerably higher rate?