The Truth About the One Percenters

Walter Williams, a Philadelphia born Ph.D economist, called attention to some interesting facts about Occupy Wall Street in his latest editorial.

Forbes magazine's "Celebrity 100” list for 2010 lists the top 100 celebrity wage earners. At the top, Oprah Winfrey earned $290 million and the average salary of the top 10 celebrity earners comes to just over $100 million. In contrast, the Wall Street Journal's "Survey of CEO Compensation” (November 2010) informs us that Gregory Maffei, CEO of Liberty Media, was the highest paid CEO at $87 million and that the average salary of the top 10 CEOs comes to $43 million. I would say that $100 million compared to $43 million is quite a contrast.

Who then are the real top wage earners, the so-called One Percenters, the real elite of the elite? Why have we heard no uproar about the outrageous salaries of our Hollywood elites? Williams thinks it has to do with who is doing the demonizing of the so-called rich. His answer is that the demonizing is being led by our politicians and leftists helped along by the media. The response of the sheeple … er, people, is usually to believe what they have been told; I mean, if it was on TV or in the news, it must be true, right? Mr. Obama is a prime player in this game of class warfare, of pitting Americans against one another. Last year during his Midwest tour, Mr. Obama was reported as saying, “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.” Funny, I never heard of his refusal of Ms. Winfrey’s support because she was too “filthy and stinking rich.” In fact, one of the replies posted to my blog ("Tax the Rich to Feed the Poor") on this Patch site suggested that it should be illegal for the highest paid person in any business to make 100 times more than the lowest paid employee. That means that Ms. Winfrey’s lowest paid employee should be earning $2.9 million for, say, applying Ms. Winfrey’s makeup. Where is the uproar over Ms. Winfrey’s salary? Where is the vitriol towards her for acting so unfairly as to make $290 million in one year? When and where is the Occupy Hollywood movement convening?

Where then is the outrage from our politicians and media over the outrageous salaries that are being paid in Hollywood? Williams explains that our politicians gain power by demonizing those whose power they wish to usurp. That’s the path to gaining power for these politicians. From French history we find that Maximillien Robespierre promoted hatred of the aristocracy of his day and that was the key to his gaining more dictatorial power than the aristocracy ever possessed. Unfortunately for Robespierre, after presiding over the French Revolution and sending countless souls to the guillotine, he didn’t know when to stop and ended up losing his own head to the blade. That’s what can happen. Those politicians that seek to relate to the Occupy Wall Street movement, as if they weren’t the very ones who were responsible for allowing so much abuse, should take care; it’s tough to control a chaotic mob once it begins stampeding. Not that I believe it will ever come to that, just sayin’.

So, it appears that it’s not about you having a cow and me not having a cow thereby spurring me on to figure out how I can get a cow, rather it ends up being a promotion of jealousy, fear, and hatred to such a degree that I feel the only answer is to kill your cow. The politics of jealousy and class warfare seem to be working in the demonization of the U.S.’s CEOs and possibly providing a path for our government to eventually attempt to micromanage our country’s businesses like it tries to control everything else. Is that really what we want?

As if all this wasn’t enough, Mr. Obama is attempting to channel the Occupations into a political plus. He told ABC News that "his vision for the economic system is best suited to resolve the protesters’ concerns." That’s funny; if he had all the answers, what has he been doing for the past two and a half years while all this angst has been building to a head? Mr. Obama attempts to relate to the Occupiers but nowhere are we informed by the media or otherwise that Obama’s top economic advisors (Geithner, Summers, Bernanke) were right in the mix of the 2008 financial collapse and walked away with their fortunes intact and now serve at the pleasure of the President directing our economy right into the abyss by running up trillions of dollars of additional debt.

Along with Walter Williams, and apparently Herman Cain, as well, I suggest that the Occupy Wall Street gang is misguided and should pack up and move to Washington under the banner of “Occupy Congress.”