The Rich Are Mad as Hell, and Getting Away With It

“Anger is sweeping America,” Paul Krugman writes in the New York Times, and no, “I’m not talking about the Tea Partiers. I’m talking about the rich.” Although the recession has taken homes and jobs away from millions of poor Americans, “real political rage” is found chiefly among those “who are outraged, outraged, at the thought of paying modestly higher taxes.”

The anger of the rich is different today because it’s now both mainstream and acceptable, and it’s now “common to hear vehement denials that people making $400,000 or $500,000 a year are rich.” Seeing the rich “wallowing in self-pity and self-righteousness would be funny, except for one thing: They may well get their way,” thanks to their Washington connections. When politicians say we need to make sacrifices, “they mean ‘you.’ Sacrifice is for the little people.”
(More Paul Krugman stories.)