Laura Flanders: Charity or Philanthro-Feudalism?

[marmar]

Published on Wednesday, August 11, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Charity or Philanthro-Feudalism?

by Laura Flanders


Twenty nine million unemployed or looking for work, that's the latest estimate, and you'd think it'd concentrate the mind in Washington. Twenty-nine million, or over 16 percent of us, need jobs and services and help to stay afloat, to pay mortgages and grocery bills and - sigh - private health insurers.

With an election coming up, the pundit-class are brow-beating politicians to look away. The panic in their voice is all about -- you got it -- deficits. And while they're famously unworried about the condition of the unemployed, they won't tolerate any talk of new taxes to solve that problem. The unemployed get lazy when you give them extended benefits; the rich give back, they say. Except they don't, or they haven't. As we've commented before. This so called recovery's been accompanied by tremendous hoarding by super affluent.

Paul Krugman wrote this week, "In effect, a large part of our political class is showing its priorities: given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation's foundations to crumble - literally...- they're choosing the latter."

And just when you might begin think ill of billionaires, headlines trumpet 40 of them are taking a pledge from Warren Buffett to give half their wealth to charity. The Oracle of Omaha's getting plaudits from the investor-invested media, but his timing couldn't be more deadly.

What's the message of Buffett's "greatest givers" plan? Massive wealth's alright, as long as those who have it share some. Some even have a word for it: philanthro-capitalism. But it's a face-saver, not a state-saver. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/11-7