Wanted: Billionaire To Swap Places With Me

I’m not a millionaire (this will come as a surprise to no one), so I’m not about to raise a  fist clenched on a pitchfork to demand that the über wealthy of our country pay more taxes. This doesn’t mean that I disagree with President Obama’s Buffett idea — the  thinking that millionaires should pay at least the same tax rate as the rest of Americans.  I agree with the principal, but I have a principal of my own that I can’t ignore. I try my best not to judge people.

I can’t demand something of someone unless I’ve had a chance to understand their position — you know, walk a bit in their shoes. So I’m looking for a millionaire who’ll trade places with me for about a decade or so (I’m meticulous that way) in order for me to be fully able to see this Buffett idea from their point of view. Short of that, I’ll have to sort things out from my lowly middle class perch.

First things first. Conservatives have an annoying obsession with Orwellian language twists – peacekeeping missiles; anchor babies. The latest twists have to do with re-framing what we call and how we treat the people with the most money. We used to call them “rich.” The label worked for those of us who weren’t wealthy, and those who were wealthy thought of themselves on the same plane as chocolate. It was a cliche-ish win-win.

But then the economy sprang a big leak.  The past few years have been all about plugging the leak and bailing water from the boat. It’s been slow going, but, some say, at least we didn’t sink. Most everyone agrees that the best way to kick-start the economy and  make room for job growth is by pumping money into the system; either by cutting taxes or raising taxes – and that’s the present impasse.

Conservatives, who want to cut taxes for the rich, have gone back to their word-games.

The rich are now “job-creators,” and any plan to make those “job-creators” pay the same tax rate as everyone else is “class warfare.” Here’s what’s missing from that idea: according to the U.S. Census from 2002 to 2007 Latinos had a 43.7% increase in business ownership.

These Hispanic-owned firms accounted for 8.3 percent of all nonfarm businesses in the United States.

These aren’t millionaires, but they are job creators.

In fact, when the economy went almost belly-up and the ripples put millions of Americans out of work and sent the rich into money-hoarding mode, Latinos were tightening their belts, risking what they had, and kept opening businesses.

It’s no secret that this economic disaster was brought on by people with enough money to spare who thought they could game the system with contrived investments in order to make more money, faster. They did that on the backs of working class Americans who (through their own fault, I must admit) didn’t know any better. No one called that “class abuse.”

But now that there’s an idea to get the most wealthy among us to pay their share, it’s called class warfare? I think the 12% unemployed in the Latino community would have a slightly different take on that definition.

It’s a matter of perspective.

From my point of view Latino entrepreneurs are among the real job creators. And if there is class warfare, it isn’t against the rich, it’s against the working folk and the unemployed. And I’m sticking to those definitions, until a millionaire (or billionaire, I certainly would not discriminate) swaps places with me.