Rediscovering George Orwell

Since when did we get all indignant over the discomfort of a handful of magnates and tycoons? Obama is now being pilloried as a socialist bent on the destruction of capitalism, and everyone’s got their tea-bags out – and, for what? Well, Obama wants to allow the Bush tax cuts to lapse which will raise the top marginal tax rate of the richest Americans to 39.6% -- about 10 percentage points less than what they paid under most of the Reagan administration, and lots less than what they paid under Nixon or Eisenhower. (Remember those idyllic days of the 50’s when we still had our moral center, gay meant happy and carefree and only white people were ever seen on television and in the movies? And we taxed the richest Americans at a top marginal tax rate of 91%? Sigh.) Meanwhile, the tax rates for the rest of us under Obama’s proposals will be modestly reduced.

So, I’m left still scratching my head: why exactly are people grabbing their torches and pitchforks?

There was a time when people were less sympathetic to the plight of the filthy rich. I recently read a book review (A Fine Rage: George Orwell's revolutions by James Wood) of two newly published collections of essays of George Orwell -- Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays and All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays -- which have been compiled and introduced by author George Packer. You remember Orwell from reading Animal Farm in high school. Apparently, Orwell wrote some slam-bang essays as well, which you didn’t read.

Despite having been hijacked by the Right over the years – he was virulently anti-communist and he really didn’t like pacifists, either – Orwell passionately railed against the privileged ruling classes and hoped that the British class system was on the way to extinction. In the midst of the Second World War he wrote: "This war, unless we are defeated, will wipe out most of the existing class privileges. There are every day fewer people who wish them to continue."

Orwell wanted above all to see Hitler defeated and saw class differences as a hindrance to the war effort. He believed that great disparities in wealth fanned the flames of discontent among ordinary people and sapped them of patriotic resolve. "The lady in the Rolls-Royce car is more damaging to morale than a fleet of Goering's bombing planes."

Plus, he had a generally low opinion of the rich. He called England, "a family with the wrong members in control." He observed that, "Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there."

Orwell, of course, had no problem with taxing the rich; the very idea filled him with a sort of sadistic glee. In discussing the hardships of British workers during the war, Orwell had this to say:

The working class will have to suffer terrible things. And they will suffer them, almost indefinitely, provided that they know what they are fighting for. They are not cowards. . . . But they will want some kind of proof that a better life is ahead for themselves and their children. The one sure earnest of that is that when they are taxed and overworked they shall see that the rich are being hit even harder. And if the rich squeal audibly, so much the better. [I added the italics]

Today, income inequality is more pronounced than ever. In real dollars, the American GDP has tripled since 1960. But only the wealthiest have seen any of this increase. In the last two decades alone, the income level of the upper 1% of families has almost tripled but, otherwise, only the income levels of the top 20% of families have significantly increased. Today, the top 20% receive over half the country's income and their share is growing. Wages for the rest of the country have remained stagnant.

The imbalance in wealth is far more dramatic than the imbalance of incomes. The top 1% of the population has more than a third of the country's wealth and the top 5% own almost 60%.

On top of all this, who got us into this economic mess but a bunch of over-indulged investment bankers and mortgage brokers? Where is Orwell when we need him?