Billionaires Say They Are "Victims" - They Are NOT!

Did you get a 25% raise this year? If you make minimum wage, that would be a raise of $3770. If you make about the median wage in this country, that would be in the neighborhood of about $15,000.

I doubt any in the middle or working classes got a 25% raise in 2019. In fact, I'll bet that most American workers didn't even get the $3770 raise to give a minimum wage earner that 25%.

Most Americans, especially the bottom 90%, are just struggling to keep up with inflation. A 25% raise would be a dream come true, but it's really a dream with no chance of coming true with the Republicans in power.

But the super-rich, the people who didn't need to make more than they already do, got a 25% raise in 2019. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the richest 500 people now have $5.9 trillion -- an increase in 2019 of $1.2 trillion (or about 25%).

Inspire of the richest Americans doing exceptionally well (not just the top 500, but the top 1%), they will tell you that they are the "victims" in our economy. And they whine that Democratic efforts to make them pay their fair share in taxes is an example of that victimhood.

Here's part of how Helaine Olen describes this billionaire victimhood in The Washington Post:

The Great Recession was supposed to embarrass the wealthy into slinking away embarrassed, grateful they didn’t land in jail or worse. “There’s an angry mob with pitchforks assembling, and they want to see some heads on pikes,” Fortune opined in 2009. But as the stock and real estate markets recovered, so did the self-regard of the most moneyed among us. Shame? That was so Dow 7,550. It’s now over 28,000. . . .

Elite gatherings such as the Milken Institute’s Global Conference and the annual World Economic Forum in Davos have become all but encounter sessions for misunderstood multimillionaires and billionaires to agree with each other in the face of calls that they pay their fair share. There’s private equity mogul Leon Cooperman, who actually began to cry on CNBC when complaining about Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposed wealth tax on fortunes in excess of $50 million. “I don’t need Elizabeth Warren telling me that I’m a deadbeat and that billionaires are deadbeats,” he said.

The rich victims are all around us. Craig Hall, the real-estate tycoon owner of the now infamous ostentatious Northern California wine cave where Pete Buttigieg held a high-dollar fundraiser? He told the New York Timesabout the criticisms, “It’s just not fair.” Jacqueline Sackler, wife of a Purdue Pharma heir, the company in part responsible for the opioid epidemic that’s taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans? The Wall Street Journal got a hold of an email where she complained what she calls the “situation” is “destroying” the family’s reputation, and “dooms” her children.

And no one is more practiced at the art of billionaire self-pity than our president, Donald Trump. He’s the victim of a Democratic “witch hunt.” Impeachment? “More due process was accorded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials.” Yet he signed into law a tax plan so favorable to billionaires in general, and real-estate interests in particular, it might as well have been tailored precisely for him.

But according to Republicans, the obscene gains of the wealthy aren’t the problem. In 2012, GOP presidential nominee and multimillionaire Mitt Romney, speaking to a group of big-money donors, referred to 47 percent of Americans who didn’t pay federal taxes and needed government benefits to get by as “takers,” adding, they believe “they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name it.” (Entitled to food! Imagine that.)

The Trump administration, which boasts the wealthiest presidential Cabinet ever assembled, has spent almost three years attempting to make it harder for people to receive Medicaid, food assistance and even a free lunch at school. They are aided by self-appointed watchdogs, too, such as Minnesota retiree Rob Undersander, who outed himself as a millionaire so he could publicize the supposedly pressing issue of people who have six- and seven-figure net worth receiving food stamps because their income is below eligibility thresholds. (In fact, survey research shows such households account for about 3 percent of households receiving assistance via the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).

Meantime, of course, the wealthy make out. Studies show, not surprisingly, that their opinions carry much more weight with politicians than those of more ordinary voters. But the claim of victimization is one way they seek to protect themselves from some popular anger and the financial consequences they might otherwise face, ensuring their power, wealth and privilege remains intact while they can continue to promote their self-perceived unique virtue and smarts.