Vance Packard and the Ultra Rich

Presently I'm reading Vance Packard's The Status Seekers, which published in 1959 as a follow-up to his 1957 book The Hidden Persuaders. Status Seekers is out of print and I gather it had less impact than Persuaders(which was reissued recently), or at least is not remembered as having had as much impact. There's no question Seekers is dated in some respects, such as his numerous references to the prices of things circa 1959, and to a "diploma elite" who were seemingly guaranteed better outcomes in their lives by virtue of having attended college.

If anything, its datedness is instructive as to how much the underpinnings of the US economy and the zeitgeist are so different today. At any rate, datedness in some trivial particulars doesn't disqualify a text as therefore having little or no value. It's a little like objecting to a film from years ago because you don't like the hairstyle of the protagonist.

This is from Chapter 2, "An Upsetting Era:"

This brings us to the second big economic change affecting class: the graduated federal income tax. Some have described it as the great leveler. The federal-government income taxes began rising in the thirties to fight the Depression, and soared even more steeply in the forties to finance World War II. They still remain near wartime levels. As a result, it has become virtually impossible for a man to become a multi-millionaire by salary alone. He needs to have capital gains, only one quarter of which he loses in taxes, or to be an oilman and get a "depreciation allowance." Still, in 1958, I was able to find, without too much difficulty, several dozen Americans who have established fortunes of at least $10,000,000 in the twenty years since income taxes have become so high.[4]

Despite the laments about high taxes, the number of American families with a net worth of a half-million dollars has doubled since 1945. Most of the very rich manage, one way or another, to hold onto the bulk of their new incomes each year. Meanwhile, corporate lawyers have applied their ingenuity to find non-taxable benefits for key executives. These range from deferred payments in the form of high incomes for declining years and free medical checkups at mountain spas, to hidden hunting lodges, corporate yachts, payment of country-club dues (according to the survey, three quarters of all companies sampled did this), and lush expense accounts. One sales manager declined a $10,000 raise and took instead a $10,000 expense account which, it was specified, he didn't have to account for.

(Packard's footnote refers to "How to Make a Fortune-- New Style" from Ladies' Home Journal, January 1959. No author is cited. He also cites a lot of academic sociologists throughout the book, so he wasn't just citing popular articles, although the citations are a bit sparse for my taste.)

In the 1989 interview above with Harold Channer, Packard talks about Ultra-Rich: How Much is Too Much? which had just been published a couple of months earlier, and which turned out to be his last book. In Ultra Rich he suggests an absolute limit of 25 million dollars on inheritable fortunes, which he argues would motivate the wealthy to be more mindful of creating civic legacies and take an interest in making plans to disperse their fortunes down to that limit before they died.

For my part I think an absolute limit like that is unrealistic and promotes corruption, much as Prohibition promoted an underground alcohol economy in the 1920s. I think Huey Long also argued for an absolute limit on wealth back in the 1930s.

But I appreciate Packard's intent as well as his noting that Reagan's tax policies were promoting inequality, which, if memory serves, not so many people fretted about in 1989. To put it in perspective, remember that Bush Senior had been inaugurated president that January, the same month that Ultra-Rich was published. My impression at the time was that many people regarded the Reagan era as being an aberration, and felt we were likely to go back to the New Deal Lite policies of Nixon, Ford and Carter, especially after George Bush Sr. had memorably described Reagan's ideas as "voodoo economics" in 1980. And of course most of us didn't know to call him Senior then.

Pat Boone vs Tony Bennett

above: Tony Bennett and Howard Stern, via Youtube and The Atlantic(!)

and below: "Singer Pat Boone insists Obama born in Kenya"
By Laura Donovan - The Daily Caller





From Wikipedia's entry on the Twilight Zone:

Throughout the 1950s, Rod Serling had established himself as one of the hottest names in television, equally famous for his success in writing televised drama as he was for criticizing the medium's limitations. His most vocal complaints concerned the censorship frequently practiced by sponsors and networks. "I was not permitted to have my senators discuss any current or pressing problem," he said of his 1957 production The Arena, intended to be an involving look into contemporary politics. "To talk of tariff was to align oneself with the Republicans; to talk of labor was to suggest control by the Democrats. To say a single thing germane to the current political scene was absolutely prohibited."

Well, that was then. Naturally we have no idea what GWB said to Tony Bennett, but the idea that he would have deliberately told him he was wrong about invading Iraq, knowing Bennett's political disposition, seems pretty plausible. It is reminiscent of the feeding of seamy scuttlebutt to J. H. Hatfield, what with his checkered past and money problems, that he would write Fortunate Son so it could be subsequently yanked and discredited, as opposed to allowing lingering questions to linger. It probably helps that Bennett's 80 plus, although he sounds pretty lucid to me.

...

18 August 1988: Silver and Gold

via "iconic"; BBC discussion of the above.

update below



Overheard elsewhere:

Tony Loudermilk: In 1971 I believe that Russia USSR had an enormous amount of silver overhanging the market. Perhaps after the indictments came down and Hunt was locked down from trading they were persuaded by Smiley's People to dump some of it onto the market???

2 hours ago ·
Lord McCracken:
Might very well be. The unstated secret of the precious metals market is that AT ANY TIME they want, the world's major economies can crash them simply by dropping a couple of percents (even 1% with gold) of their own holdings onto them. (In the case of gold, the private market (the place where they get to price of gold from) only has 1% of the world's gold. The rest is held by governments. If those government were to decide to drop even 1% of their holdings into that market, it would DOUBLE the amount of gold there, and the market would IMMEDIATELY crash.)



Are any of these things true? How would I know? Still, it makes sense to be a bit skeptical of people flogging the collapse meme, especially when they also collect ad revenue for their web site from people selling silver and gold, or they themselves are touting a newsletter, or what have you.

All I know is, if Gorn had me cornered I'd fight back. Not because I think I'm as cool as Captain Kirk, I'm not, but because I don't think I could outrun Gorn after years of eating so much yummy processed food. Besides, America is where I keep all my stuff, and I don't trust that smooth talking Picard.

update: A kindly anonymous commenter shares this Wiki link regarding the world's gold reserves, wherein it states that governments hold approximately 18% of the world's gold.

Where's your warrant, flatfoot?

Jack Crow, KFO, this one's for you: "Make Mine Freedom", from 1948.

I found this fascinating. Yes, they gloss over a lot. Ironically some of the things that "-ism" brought to these characters like the union busting, is here today, and not because the commies took over.

Also, they'd probably have to leave the bit out about protection against cruel punishment today.(Or maybe not, the power of projection and compartmentalization being what it is.)

Happy 103rd LBJ

image courtesy the LBJ library.



Today is LBJ's 103rd birthday. He was responsible for the Great Society programs, the war on poverty, and the escalation of the Vietnam war. Of course Kennedy started it ... but you already know that. LBJ was born in Stonewall, Texas in 1908.

Remembrance of Investigations Passed Over

"Eric Holder May Investigate Bush for Torture"

May. May.

Uploaded by The Young Turks on Jul 13, 2009


And, below,
Michael Ratner: Obama broke law not prosecuting Bush & Cheney

Uploaded by The Real News on Aug 7, 2011



Meanwhile, in Europe:

Guardian UK, 4 August 2011, "Police raid Milan offices of Moody's and Standard & Poor's"

Chief prosecutor of Trani conducts investigation into whether the two rating agencies abide by regulations

"You know, this used to be a helluva good country"

Excerpt from Easy Rider[video link]

Yes, Easy Rider is dated. And the idea that long hair represents rebellion seems quaint, because most or all of the signifiers of rebellion and discontent from the 1960s have been co-opted for marketing purposes, to sell perfume or cars or mutual funds, etc.

Ian Welsh, "What the Debt Limit Crisis Should Have Taught You", July 31


Arthur Silber, "Tell Me Again: Who's the Stupid/Weak/Incompetent One?" August 1st


Zachary Karabell, Time: "The U.S. is not drowning in debt", July 15th

1973 vs. 2011

Did you know the White House has a Youtube channel? Well, they do.
(via Firedoglake)
"The President speaks to a bi-partisan group of college students March 8th 2011"



And, from a White House press conference, November 17, 1973

Dead Horse blog post number 555. In which your host taxes the patience of the kindly and long-suffering audience, persisting in his juvenile and irrelevant comparisons between one Barack Obama and Richard Nixon.

Ayn Rand and Mike Wallace 25 Feb 1959

This Mike Wallace interview with Ayn Rand is from 1959, with Rand sounding like Reagan before Reagan did. This interview is from February of that year, when Grover Norquist was 2 ½ years old, no doubt splashing around in his mother's bathtub and dreaming of browbeating politicians and world conquest.[27 min]

At around 15:15 Rand says that "this country was not founded by robber barons, but [by] independent men who succeeded on sheer ability." Well, that, and they stole the Indian's land, and in some cases, stole Africans to have cheap labor to toil on the land for them. Otherwise, sure.

Also, at around 7:50, she refers to a hypothetical selfless husband(i.e., the kind she despised) and says he'd say to his wife, "I am so unselfish that I am nailing you only for your own good." Later I realized she meant marrying not nailing, and I had misheard her.

More recently:

Ayn Rand vs Jesus

via
CNN, "Jesus or Ayn Rand - can conservatives claim both?"

Eric Sapp, AVN’s executive director, said the Republican Party cannot portray itself as a defender of Christian values and then defend the worldview of "the patron saint of selfishness" who scorned religion and compassion.

FYI, AVN stands for the American Values Network.

And, this AVN video below:


Ayn Rand & GOP vs. Jesus

th' good, th' bad, n' th' ugly

via hulu.com; they say this will be available through 12.31. Why this? Because politics is depressing me even more than normal right now, and I'd rather look at Eli Wallach's mug any day over, say, Joe Lieberman's or Ben Nelson's.