I’m sorry, but if you really believe that a wealth hoarder having to forego that second yacht or mansion in order to pay a bit more in taxes is the same as a single, working mother having to decide on health care for her kids or rent… That’s pretty fucked up way of viewing the world. Those people are not victims if they have to pay more in taxes to help their fellow human beings. They are not, especially considering how those very same people get deep social benefits for putting in very little into the system that should work for all of us. People who have no political voice or very little social capital, and are having to make daily faustian bargains because of their lack of wealth in a society that prizes wealth over human life are indeed being victimized by that very same system.
I have to fully reject your false equivalency on it’s face. It’s like saying that under segregation, whites suffered just as much as African Americans, or Christian Germans under the nazis suffered just as much as the Jews, or that Communists within the party who stayed on the right side of Stalin suffered just as much as those who were targeted by Stalin. I think we recognize that those are all false equivalencies on its face. So too is saying that the people with the most, who have benefited the most from our economic system are being victimized as much as the working poor whose labor has been exploited on a regular basis if they are forced to pay more of their fair share in taxes. It is not the same at all.
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Also, this is kind of insulting. Please don’t assume that your views on these issues are somehow more profound or deeper than others. Many of us have thought deep and hard about the social systems in which we ALL live in, and just because maybe we’ve come to different conclusions doesn’t mean that we haven’t thought deep about them. I absolutely assure you that I have done so, since a very young age, having grown up in a working class family with very little privilege and no wealth. Just because you disagree with my view (informed by both my child and young adulthood, and by my 10 years of historical study) doesn’t mean I’m not thinking deep about these issues. If you think that YOU are the only one who has the answers to our social ills, then maybe it’s YOU who should think a bit more empathetically about the world.
