Longtime So Cal resident Charles Carr is a nationally published journalist and playwright. His award-winning Southpaw column has appeared in college textbooks published by Macmillan, St. Martin's Press, Bedford, and others. Charles writes Southpaw for his hometown newspapers, The Times-Advocate and The Roadrunner.

Crass warfare

     We've all heard it since we were kids in school: Questioning the imbalance between the ultra-rich and regular folk is simply not done. It's downright undemocratic. It's the way commies talk. Americans do not engage in class warfare, pure and simple. Shush.

     So, if it's such a bad thing, why has the top 1% been methodically waging class warfare on the middle class, siphoning off their wages and productivity gains, for more than 50 years? For the record, I'm not talking about the altruistic wealthy; the ones who return all or most of the money that flowed to them from the errant American money spigot. They're the exceptions that prove the rule. The people I'm talking about might best be described in pathological terms.

     According to the Harvard Business Review, "Since the early 1970s, the hourly inflation-adjusted wages received by the typical worker have barely risen, growing only 0.2% per year. In other words, though the economy has been growing, the primary way most people benefit from that growth has almost completely stalled." And, according to CNN Money, "In 1970 the top 1% of Americans controlled about 15% of national wealth. In 2006 it was 30%. In 2020 the top 1% overtook the entire middle class in collective wealth."

     Thomas Piketty's landmark work, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," notes that if the U.S. currently had the same income distribution it had in 1979, each middle- and lower-income family would have, on average, over $12,000 per year in additional income. Bet you could think of some pretty good ways to spend an extra grand per month – money that is currently going directly to people who already have pockets so deep they're like black holes.

     It's gotten so bad, even the fat cats are starting to sweat, if only because their invasion of the American middle class has been such a catastrophic success, to borrow George W. Bush's 2004 description of the invasion of Iraq, it might bring down the entire house right on their own heads. Former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan said, "This is not the type of thing which a democratic society – a capitalist democratic society – can really accept without addressing." And Ray Dalio, chairman of the world's biggest hedge fund wrote, "The share of the nation's total income that goes to the top 10% of the population is at the highest point in over a century." In other words, "C'mon, guys. Just because they keep letting us do it to them doesn't mean it won't hurt even us in the end."

     But, even with all those warnings, the greedy rich will just keep on doing that thing they do. It's their nature, like the fable about the scorpion and the frog. Guess which one they are.

     So, what can we – the tiny 99% –  do to fight back, short of everyone carpooling down to Home Depot and buying pitchforks and tiki torches? We can do it like they did it, slowly, taking back one thing they've taken from the middle class at a time. Here's a riddle: What do you call improving benefits for gig workers; rebuilding unions; breaking up competition-blocking big tech and big energy; slashing usurious bank and credit card fees; and reining in real estate profiteering so that our kids can have the same chance at owning a home we did? Answer: A good start.

     Since the selfish see practically any tax as confiscatory anyway, let's go ahead and raise the top rate a few percent. They'll squeal – cue the histrionics – but will somehow manage to eke out a living. Two archipelago island mansions instead of three. Of course, what we really need is a foolproof minimum world rate covering every nook and cranny of the planet. No Seychelles, no Luxembourg, no Caymans. (sigh) I also dream the Beatles will someday get back together again.

     There is one thing Congress could do that would change everything, and I mean everything almost overnight: Pass a bill starting the ball rolling on a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics. Members could do it in the morning and still have time to head back to their taxpayer-provided offices to, according to termlimits.com, spend an average of 6-8 hours per day (ironically) raising money for their own reelection campaigns. As senator Tom Udall noted in Time magazine, "Unlimited spending concentrated in the hands of a few continues to spiral out of control, distorting the voices of everyday citizens and putting the foundation of our democracy at risk."

     To anyone still "shushing," let me ask you a one-word question: When? When the 1% controls 75%? 85%? 95%? Will the shushers still be shushing then? Not that the cheerleaders and apologists will be needed all that much longer. In the foreseeable future the crapulent rich will be able to operate with complete impunity, democracy be damned. That's where we're headed, and in a hurry.

     Finally, let's change our attitude about these Richie Riches. Stop idolizing them. See them as what they are: super-rich, not superheroes. I mean, who cares that the richest guy in the world last week has – so sad! – tumbled all the way to number three this week?

     Look, I've done well. Plenty of you are doing well. And many of you younger readers will do well. We're the embodiment of the American dream, not these insatiable, conscienceless takers. But fewer and fewer of us will have a shot at that dream if we don't wake up and, with one voice, finally do what we've always had the power to do all along: Tell them no.

     It's time for class warfare, only this time the other way around. We'll do it straight up – not like how they did it, dividing us against each other so that they could rake in dollars while we squabble over pennies. Legit all the way.

     But maybe keep a pitchfork in your online shopping cart just in case.