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Taxes or Spending Cuts? The World of Class Warfare

9/15/2011

6 Comments

 
PictureJon Stewart exposes the hypocrisy of criticism against the poor
Tags: capitalism, class, government/the state, inequality, media, political economy, austerity, 06 to 10 mins
Year: 2011
Length: 6:34
Access: YouTube


Summary:  In this clip from The Daily Show, John Stewart offers commentary on the proposal by President Obama to increase taxes on the top two percent of income earners in order to raise $700 billion over 10 years, a measure intended to help pay down the federal government's deficit. Revenue can be generated through tax increases just as readily as it can be generated through spending cuts on public services; yet the discussion has remained largely transfixed on spending cuts. As discussed in an earlier post, while taxing is a mechanism capable of compelling the richest Americans to contribute to paying down the national debt, cuts to public spending disproportionately affect people at the lower end of the income distribution, thus making the debate centrally about class politics. As Stewart shows with his inimitable wit, when conservative commentators finally take up the discussion of taxation, they tend to emphasize the need to increase taxes on the poor because, as one commentator put it, "they are absolutely on a free ride." Here Stewart points to published data in a Business Insider article, which shows that the bottom 50 percent of Americans own only 2.5 percent of the nation's wealth. This small sliver of wealth amounts to $1.45 trillion. Half of this amount is of course $700 billion, leading him to the laughable conclusion that the bottom 50% of Americans could only pay off the $700 billion by giving away half of everything they own. The clip works nicely as a way to demonstrate the way class politics are a central feature of the current wrangling about how to pay down the government budget deficit.

Submitted By: Lester Andrist

6 Comments
michael miller
9/15/2011 09:05:51 am

Great clip, Les. Should make for great class discussion starter. Could also lead to a variety of related ideas suggested in clip, such as is U.S poverty only "relative" as suggested by Foxniks, or real deprivation?

Reply
Lester Andrist link
9/17/2011 09:54:05 am

Thanks, Michael. We've been getting a lot of compliments on this clip, and it's definitely useful to get that feedback.

Reply
Manjistha Banerji
9/21/2011 09:12:11 am

At about 4.19 into the video clip, we are presented with statistics on ownership of consumer durables by those defined as poor by the US census. These statistics are used by the Fox News channel people to argue that the poor are not really "poor" because they own a series of consumer durables. Apart from a class discussion on poverty in the US in terms of relative versus real deprivation (as suggested by Michael), this video can also be used to highlight how statistics can be used to drive home almost any argument. So, while the Foxniks present us with data on ownership of assets among the poor, other relevant data such as health and educational deprivation among the poor is left out of the discussion. Therefore, accurate data by itself does not validate or invalidate an argument, instead students need to critically assess if they have been presented with enough data that would allow them to decide on the validity of an argument.

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Contrary Mary
9/27/2011 10:43:23 pm

I usually don't care for him, but I give everyone a fair chance, and this time he won out.

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