How to Cover the One Percent | Hacker News Reader

How to Cover the One Percent

nybooks.com

52 pointsxoher21 comments

I'm ambivalent about this article. While I agree that the hidden power of mega-philanthropists is unsettling, the hidden players of our "public" government are orders of magnitude more powerful.

Frankly, differentiating between the "public" and "private" when discussing the ills of the %1 is pointless [1]. People at this level of society move in and out of the top levels of corporations and government all the time. They socialize together, intermarry, and share family bonds. Only together have big business and big government created this massive feedback loop that promotes inequality and loss of freedom for the common man.

It pains me to see my "right" and "left" leaning friends blame one side of the coin while completing ignoring the damage wrought by the flip side.

1. To be clear, the top 0.01% is what the article is really referring to, since the top %1 includes people like successful everyday doctors and lawyers. Perhaps a small cadre of powerful bureaucrats at this income level could be reasonably included in the top tier group the article refers to, but for the most part, these are people who are wealthy and influential in their local communities, but decidedly not actors at the level the article describes.

Most doctors don't qualify into the top 1%.

Make 422,000$ / per year in the US? Your in the 99% ;)

Which is why I used the term "successful" ... lawyer or doctor. But perhaps I should have added, "specialist doctor".

But regardless of whether a successful doctor is in the top 1% or the top 1.2% is beside the point I am making. All these people are at a different tier of society than the societal elite this article describes. The only chance a doctor has of making it to that tier of society is too become a successful entrepreneur or politician. Practicing as a successful doctor isn't enough (even though practicing medicine may be far more useful to society).

>It pains me to see my "right" and "left" leaning friends blame one side of the coin while completing ignoring the damage wrought by the flip side.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and many others explicitly warned about this.

>The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty. Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

-George Washington, Farewell Address

It's the age old strategy of divide et impera. It couldn't work if the masses weren't arguing futilely among themselves:

>Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we've got to stay together. We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.

-MLK, I've Been to the Mountaintop. Last speech given the night before assassination.

I consider myself a skeptic. To me JFK was killed by a lone gunman, we went to the moon, and 911 wasn't a inside job. Then I read I've Been to the Mountaintop and wonder if there wasn't some involvement, at some level, from the US government (or those who control it) in MLK's death. It is already proven they attempted to discredit him, did they simply take that one step further?

Then I look at stuff like black lives matter. More white people were killed by police last year than black people. What did all the people murdered by police have in common? They were male, and they were poor. Are we sure this is a white/black problem and not a rich/poor one? Framing it in the black/white context seems to keep the for profit prisons humming along happily.

Indeed. After winning the right to vote in 1965, King greatly redefined his scope of action targeting economic justice for the poor in general, regardless of skin color.

>I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about "Where do we go from here?" that we must honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. (Yes) There are forty million poor people here, and one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. (Yes) And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. (Yes) But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. (All right) It means that questions must be raised. And you see, my friends, when you deal with this you begin to ask the question, "Who owns the oil?" (Yes) You begin to ask the question, "Who owns the iron ore?" (Yes) You begin to ask the question, "Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that's two-thirds water?" (All right) These are words that must be said. (All right)

>Now, don't think you have me in a bind today. I'm not talking about communism. What I'm talking about is far beyond communism. (Yeah) My inspiration didn't come from Karl Marx (Speak); my inspiration didn't come from Engels; my inspiration didn't come from Trotsky; my inspiration didn't come from Lenin. Yes, I read Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital a long time ago (Well), and I saw that maybe Marx didn't follow Hegel enough. (All right) He took his dialectics, but he left out his idealism and his spiritualism. And he went over to a German philosopher by the name of Feuerbach, and took his materialism and made it into a system that he called "dialectical materialism." (Speak) I have to reject that.

>What I'm saying to you this morning is communism forgets that life is individual. (Yes) Capitalism forgets that life is social. (Yes, Go ahead) And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis. (Speak) [applause] It is found in a higher synthesis (Come on) that combines the truths of both. (Yes) Now, when I say questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. (All right) These are the triple evils that are interrelated.

-Where do we go from here? MLK, 1967[1]

You can see plainly why the establishment labeled him as one of the greatest threats to national security.

[1] http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentse...

There's a kernel of truth here, but you have to be careful about comparing _numbers_ of white/black people killed/jailed. You need to look at the per-capita (percentage) killed or jailed. There are way more "white" people so of course there are more of them killed/jailed/whatever! But when you look at the percentage then you see the injustice. "The country is about 63 percent white and 12 percent black... death rate due to legal intervention was more than three times higher for blacks than for whites in the period from 1988 to 1997."

Source: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/aug/21/...

I understand that but black people have statically lower incomes and that might be a reason that they are over represented. What you never see is police killing women or the wealthy of any color.

"Ten years ago, for example, Google had a one-person lobbying shop in Washington; today, it has more than one hundred lobbyists working out of an office roughly the size of the White House. " ... to the tune of $16.8 Million dollars.

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00002200...

I really like this article. It's a well-researched call to action for journalists to do real investigative work.

Top 1% is (based on http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-rank/) >$400k / year income. The billionaires this article talks about are in much, much higher brackets - maybe something like top %0.01

* P.S. based on another source [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/get-there/wp/2015/01/26/...], it's state-dependent and the highest I see is $678k in CT

1% in journalism = the elite wealthy controlling banks, businesses and bureaucrats.

Summary: The wealthy are using non-profits, charities, and foundations to push political agendas at the expense of taxpayers who are footing the bill because these institutions are also tax write-offs.

The article focuses on these organizations pushing advocacy, but I would also add that many "non-profit" organizations are actually incredibly profit-focused. An early introduction to this for me was growing up next to the Christian Broadcasting Network, a charitable organization that was raking in millions of dollars selling alternative medicines, opening five-star restaurants, hosting luxurious retreats, while also raking in donations from the poor people who would tune into the show seeking god's grace [1].

I see the same thing with Mega Churches, which are springing up like fast food franchises all over the DC-Metro region. These enormous buildings are raking in profits every Sunday while giving nothing back in taxes to pay for the roads, utilities, and emergency services the community provides for them. Taxpayers are losing $71 billion a year in revenues because of these for-profit franchises [2].

It isn't just religious institutions either. I've stopped giving blood to the American Red Cross in favor of donating it directly to my local hospital so they don't have to pay the overhead that comes with Red Cross blood [3]. The DC-Metro area is packed with "non-profits" that are really for-profit companies that pay out their profits directly to CEOs and board members while sending lobbyists to the National Mall to buy expensive lunches for our Representatives.

The article notes that the alternative is the European system of not providing tax-breaks for these organizations--which results in much fewer organizations. It's hard for me to accept that when I think of all the organizations I perceive as doing good in America, but maybe they aren't really doing good and are simply enjoying the good sentiments that come with the words "charity" and "non-profit?"

[1] http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20070327/NEWS/70327037...

[2] http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/how-to-make-71...

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/07/business/all-about-blood-b...

> The article notes that the alternative is the European system of not providing tax-breaks for these organizations--which results in much fewer organizations. It's hard for me to accept that when I think of all the organizations I perceive as doing good in America, but maybe they aren't really doing good and are simply enjoying the good sentiments that come with the words "charity" and "non-profit?"

You've got to ask how much of those sectors' income is going to organizations that are doing good, and how much is not. And remember that taxes are used for the public good, so the bar to be tax exempt should not be merely "is this organization doing good?" but rather "is this organization doing more good per dollar than is done with general taxation?"

Is the government "doing good?" There is some good, but there is a case that non-profits such as the Red Cross, churches, food banks, are more accountable and do more good.

To me non-profits do far more good per dollar than the government does through general taxation. The biggest reason why is that non-profits have a much more defined scope and mission.

I find it very difficult to believe that the Red Cross does more good than Medicare and Medicaid, or that food banks do more good than Food Stamps.

You're comparing an organization with a budget of about $3 billion to one with a budget of over $1 TRILLION. It's a nonsensical comparison.

Well they are good at different activities. Charities are good at things that can be done on a small, decentralized scale, like giving away food. Regulating massive industries, correcting the issues in our healthcare system, setting up a program of cash transfers, on the other hand, are all things that often require the scale of the government.

> Is the government "doing good?" There is some good, but there is a case that non-profits such as the Red Cross, churches, food banks, are more accountable and do more good.

I'd say they're less accountable. There's no democratic oversight, FOIA doesn't apply to them, journalists have less incentive to go digging for dirt. They have to keep the donations coming, but that's as much a question of PR as of how much good they're actually doing.

I've no doubt there are effective NGOs and wasteful parts of government, but I suspect a large proportion of NGOs (not those on your list perhaps, but the money-weighted average) are less effective.

> There is some good, but there is a case that non-profits such as the Red Cross, churches, food banks, are more accountable and do more good.

There isn't any such case, if approached realistically. Government agencies spend trillions of dollars each year on helping the poor, the old, and the disabled in various ways. They do so in ways that are fantastically accountable (compared to the private sector), including but not limited to the fact that basically any document about anything written by anyone working at these agencies can be requested by a member of the public and the government must give them a copy. The executives working at government agencies are paid frugally, their books are audited regularly, and they are subject to dismissal for even minor transgressions.

Total charitable giving in the U.S. is an order of magnitude lower (even assuming that every cent was spent on something good, which is far from the truth), their accountability consists of (at most) a mandatory report every year and nothing else (often not even that), and their executives are now hitting 7-figure salaries.

It's not even close.

1) Non-Profit just means that profits can't go directly to shareholders / founders / investors (except in the form of a salary, which is a giant loophole). Essentially the profits must be re-invested in the company. They can be just as profit-seeking as a for-profit company and do so legally. They can grow just as rapidly.

2) I am pretty sure it is illegal for a non-profit (at least 501c3) to lobby the government. If they are lobbying then they are not the traditional non-profit. There is a different category of "non-profit" that allows lobbying, but the rules are different. I don't think donations are tax deductable to a lobbying-type non-profit and I think they have to pay some taxes.

Of course I am not a lawyer or accountant and it has been a few years since I was involved with a non-profit. If someone more knowledgeable about this can fix my misconceptions I would be grateful.

This all just boils down to the general question of how you feel about the relationship between taxation and personal freedom, and the trade off between them.

Do you value the ability to personally decide where your money can do the most good, or would you rather delegate that responsibility to a powerful centralized authority?

Of course, many people (including some commenting here, apparently), are willing to cede important decisions about how to spend money to the government, because they are more afraid of their fellow citizens making poor decisions about how to spend or give away their money.

(Personally, it also reminds me that, despite the idiocy of the current Republican party, I still identify as "conservative" or maybe libertarian. I have personal beliefs and reasons for how I chose to give away my money, which I know are not necessarily shared by the majority. So I'm a bit taken aback at how cavalierly some are willing to cede those priorities to a central government.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com