Daniel Henninger: The Grapes of Wrath Democrats
[Daniel Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page.]
...Franklin Roosevelt in his speech to the 1936 Democratic Convention attacked what he called "economic royalists." Nearly 75 years later, Barack Obama, everyone around him in the White House and the kind of Democrats who migrate to Washington seem stuck in some sort of Ma Joad idea of the American economy.
But they've gone FDR and John Steinbeck one better. In the world of the Grapes of Wrath Democrats now gagging over Barack Obama's "sell-out" to the rich, the new economic royalists aren't limited to "the Ishmael or Insull." Now it's any single person or married couple in America with a pre-tax income at $200,000 or $250,000.
Will the nation's new economic royalists step forward, rope in hand, to produce enough economic activity to help Mr. Obama to a second term of retribution? Maybe not. According to the National Association of Manufacturers, some 70% of manufacturing concerns in the U.S. have owners whose business is taxed at the individual rate (S corporations and the like). These are the people expected to commit capital to new hires and equipment....
Read entire article at WSJ
...Franklin Roosevelt in his speech to the 1936 Democratic Convention attacked what he called "economic royalists." Nearly 75 years later, Barack Obama, everyone around him in the White House and the kind of Democrats who migrate to Washington seem stuck in some sort of Ma Joad idea of the American economy.
But they've gone FDR and John Steinbeck one better. In the world of the Grapes of Wrath Democrats now gagging over Barack Obama's "sell-out" to the rich, the new economic royalists aren't limited to "the Ishmael or Insull." Now it's any single person or married couple in America with a pre-tax income at $200,000 or $250,000.
Will the nation's new economic royalists step forward, rope in hand, to produce enough economic activity to help Mr. Obama to a second term of retribution? Maybe not. According to the National Association of Manufacturers, some 70% of manufacturing concerns in the U.S. have owners whose business is taxed at the individual rate (S corporations and the like). These are the people expected to commit capital to new hires and equipment....