Living In A Safe Zone In Class Warfare

In Northwest Arkansas, the 1 percent and everybody else get along at least as well as anywhere else in the country.

We all know where the Waltons come from.

Crystal Bridges museum just opened, thanks to them.

Many of us remember saying hello to the late Don Tyson at the local steakhouse or some other place, dressed better than he was with those overalls of his. Many of us worry regularly that Pat Walker’s going to get run over, sitting as close as she does to the court at the university’s basketball games.

If you don’t recognize those names, here’s all you need to know: Those folks are or were members in good standing of the 1 percent. Some of them are or were in the 1 percent of the 1 percent.

Think about that. Now remember this: John Boozman, a congressman from here at the time, walked into a buzzsaw when he voted for the fi nance sector bailout in 2008. I don’t think there’s a more controversial vote he has cast in his whole political career, and he’s a senator now. Even now, his successor as representative for the very Republican 3rd Congressional District won’t take all possibility of a tax increase some day completely off the table, although he’s hanging tough on insisting for serious spending cuts fi rst.

President Barack Obama’s message that the rich are going to have to do more will get traction this election year. Waggle your fi nger and say, “Tut-tut, that’s class warfare” all you want. Thisapproach is likely to work.

Obama didn’t get 40 percent of the vote in this state, and he won’t get it this year either. However, Democratic candidates who echo him will keep some ground. We aren’t exactly a hotbed of radical politics around here, you know. If such ideas can resonate here, they can resonate anywhere.

This “class warfare” stuff isn’t a simple richversus-poor thing. It’s been a long, long time since I read “The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy” by Barrington Moore Jr. I vividly remember, though, his point that no amount of suff ering by any single class will bring about a revolution.

Revolutions only occur when the interests of at least two different and distinct classes coincide, however briefly. Well, the current course of things seems to be making the interest of every class but one coincides. It’s not the rich versus everyone else. It’s the rich who made their money through provisions in the tax code and who kept their money through bailouts. It’s not the wealthy class. It’s the protected class.

How you make your money matters. It’s not the job creators people are mad at.

The 1 percent up herestill sells things to people who need it at a price they can aff ord. When Walmart shoppers buy something from Tyson, they’re buying food. Heck, even the fi nance sector in Arkansas gives people something for what they pay for. Stephens Inc., the Little Rock investment fi rm, famously didn’t go crazy during the wild run-up to the Panic of ’08. (Stephens has a fi nancial interest in Northwest Arkansas Newspapers.)

Warren Stephens,president of the Stephens firm, said in an interview with Malcolm Forbes after the ’08 crash that he “couldn’t sleep at night” if his company had been a fraction as leveraged as the crashing firms that got bailouts.

“We are under no illusion that anyone would ride to our rescue, so you cannot ever take a risk that could jeopardize the ability of the firm to survive,” he once told employees.

Nobody bailed out Walmart or Stephens Inc.

when the economy hit the canvas. Nobody had to. In fact, Walmart sales dramatically increased when the economy tanked.

Walmart could sell people what they needed at prices they could still aff ord.

All rich people are not the same, and they are certainly not viewed in the same way.

So here’s some free advice, national Republican Party: When Warren Buffet says it’s ridiculous his secretary pays proportionally more tax on his salary as he doeson his investments, goofy little “voluntary tax” stunts don’t help. That might make your base giggle, but the independent voter isn’t laughing.

We may be crazy around here by Democratic standards, but even we haven’t gone as whole-hog for the “leave the rich alone” attitude the GOP seems stuck with. The agenda there seems wholly set by campaign donors.

DOUG THOMPSON IS EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR.