The Flying McCoys by Glenn McCoy and Gary McCoy for March 27, 2011

Looks like you need Boh Brothers.

They don’t look like they’re cutting back on the food budget though judging by their size.

Wisconsin senators?

Well there are priorities, Llewellenbruce.

The Koch brothers, our corporate masters.

Naw, this is clearly the corporate economy in action. Decimate your workforce, overload the remaining employees, and give yourself a 50 million dollar bonus for reducing your operational cost. Keeping the rich rich is the highest priority. And the bearer? “Better not hear you complaining. You’re lucky YOU still have a job!” (Of course, a literal “decimation” would only result of a 10% reduction in the ranks, not 75%; that’s what the word means.)

Knowing McCoy’s politics, he cannot have intended this cartoon to be anything other that a stand-alone gag. Because as a metaphor it’s so blatantly indicative of the exploitation of Labor by Capital that it would be right at home taped to Karl Marx’s refrigerator. To find any OTHER subtext in it is such a glaring misreading that it would have to be willful.

What Coyoty C.A. and fitzoid said.

vortex, maybe the left has Soros. The wingnuts have the Kochs, Mellon-Scaife, Forbes, the Coors family, the Bradleys, Murdoch, and a dozen more. Your propaganda masters have you pooping your pants at the mere whisper of “Soros” - how many more can you name?

runar, mention the name “Buffett”, who’s been vocal in his belief that the uber-rich should be paying far MORE taxes, and watch their motherboards fry.

But hey, Warren Buffett clearly knows nothing about how Capital is created, right? If he’s so smart, how come he ain’t rich? Oh, wait…

Grainbelt, it may be true that anyone can get rich, but it’s false that everyone can get rich. Wealth (as opposed to money) is largely a zero-sum commodity. Amassing it in the hands of a few (whomever they may be) results in (perhaps requires) withholding it from the many.

There’s plenty of middle ground between “Everybody gets the same, regardless” and “Take whatever you can grab”, and every method of doing that involves freeing up stockpiled Capital and some redistribution of wealth.

Stix, how many of those peope really earned their money and how many had it handed to them by inheritance (meaning they are freeloaders)? - The Koch Brothers are a good example. Buffett is a good example of a rich man with a conscience. Not only did he build his fortune on his own, he feels that his wealth entails a certain amount of responsibility to the rest of society, and he did not just bankroll his kids. He gave each of them a relatively modest (considering how much he does have) and told them that was all they’re getting and it was up to them to make something of themselves.

This guys about to break and they will be walking!

FishStix, if you can remove yourself from the grid and supply all your needs alone on your fishing boat, you are free to do so. Maybe you’ll find a streambed lined with gold, like Sutter, and you’ll have all the gold you can eat. But if you’re in a money economy, your own accumulation of wealth depends not only on having people to sell your wares to, but people who can AFFORD to buy your wares. We live in a society, not just an economy. You are a member of your community, you are a resident of your State (as much as it pains you), and you are a citizen of the United States of America. If any one of those collapses, you go down with it.

We pay taxes to support schools, whether or not we have children, because our communities, our States, and our nation are stronger and more secure with an educated populace than an uneducated one. We pay taxes for public health, to assist in the medical care for those who could not otherwise afford it, because our communities, our States, and our nation are stronger and more secure with a healthy population than an unhealthy one. We establish minimum wage laws so that those who work full-time can make a living wage. We provide unemployment benefits so that those who CANNOT find work don’t starve (or otherwise create additional strain on public health) (and until we have more living-wage jobs looking for workers than workers looking for living-wage jobs, I consider “those bums who don’t WANT to work” to be meaningless hot air). We have workplace safety regulations and consumer protection laws so that those who control production can’t make false economies which likewise damage the public interest. And, oh yes, we have environmental regulations so that, 100 years from now, people such as yourself have lakes and rivers in which to fish.

Yes, these are administrative costs, which in and of themselves create no wealth. But they’re vital to the public good, and the money for them must come from somebody. Who better than from those who have most profitted from having a sizable, stable, and relatively affluent Consumer Class? (These same aristocrats ALSO being those who least feel the pinch when times are bad; see the cartoon above.)

Oliver Wendell Holmes, that noted Red agitator, said “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.”

Henry Ford, another notorious commie, was criticized by his peers for paying his workers too much. His answer was “If my own employees can’t afford to buy my cars, how can I expect anybody else to?”

If you look back 100-120 years, you’ll see where unbridled free-market capitalism left this country; Robber Barons, “Company Stores”, child labor, no health benefits (no health, for that matter), no pensions, 80-hour work weeks, and slow starvation by the Plebian class while the Patricians got richer and richer (just about the only thing that could damage one millionaire was another millionaire who set out to ruin him; and, of course, there were no pesky Anti-Trust laws around to stop him).

Once again, here’s James Madison:

“We have heard of the impious doctrine in the Old World, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the New, in another shape that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political institutions of a different form? It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object.” Federalist Paper #45 [emphasis added]

If YOU want to live in a country where the government in no way interferes with the rights of the wealthy, there are likewise places YOU could go, but I think you’d dislike them even more than I would dislike Cuba (if you’d consider it a gain to California and the USA to pay my way to Sweden or Denmark, though, I’ll consider it).

If the cartoon at the top were three panels rather than just one, we might see this:

2: “I told my Senator that if I got a tax break, I could afford to hire more bearers”; and

3: “My profits are back up with the tax cuts. But since I’ve gotten along fine with just one bearer, why hire any new ones until this one breaks down?”

FishStix, it’s difficult to convey tone in a medium like this, but when I read your posts all I get is “Whine whine whine, the unions, whine whine whine, taxes, whine whine whine Kalifornistan, etc. etc…” I have no more desire to leave this country than you do (and I have NO desire to leave the state of California). I have about the same desire to change this country as you do, although the directions in which we would make those changes are opposed. The changes I hear YOU calling for I’m convinced are leading this nation backwards into plutocracy.

I’m doing all right, don’t worry about me. I was born a middle-class white American male, and I know that’s about the luckiest hand I could have been dealt. 90% of life’s “unfairness” works in my favor. All I’ve had to do in my life is avoid messing up too badly, and I’m good to go. I don’t apologize for any of this, but neither do I congratulate myself for it.

We have the wealth and resources in this country to relieve a lot of suffering by those who were not so lucky in the circumstances of their birth as me and (presumably) you. What we lack is the collective will to do so. A large part of the reason we’ve done as well, as a society, as we had in, say, the 1950’s, was the result of the limitations on unbridled capitalism and wealth consolidation by two Roosevelts, one a Republican (who busted the trusts and founded wilderness preservation) and one a Democrat (the whole New Deal package that the Conservatives are now trying to undo).

We WERE making great progress in this country, with a top tax rate of over 90% (not that anyone even PAID that much; you can lower the rates, if you close the loopholes). The strength of this country has always been its Middle Class. Under the current reactionary policies begun under Reagan, the Middle Class has been shrinking precipitously, and the losses have come primarily from people dropping below it rather than rising above it. Again, if the Middle Class is going to be rejuvenated (or even EXPANDED, ideally), the wealth has to be freed up from those at the top; THAT’S WHERE THE MONEY IS.

A package of progressive income tax combined with need-based government spending, even in an agressive form, is a far cry from Leninism, Castroism, Maoism, or even Marxism. It’s simply a recognition that individual well-being which arises from societal well-being is more desireable (and humane) than individual well-being at the expense of societal well-being, which is what unregulated Free-Market Capitalism leads to.

The guy down there should end up being hype strong lugging those guys around.