The notion that the poor always will be with us has been ingrained in our culture ever since the sermons of Moses were set down by the anonymous author of Deuteronomy.
The financial crisis of the present day raises a rather different issue, however: What should we do about the rich?
That the point is even open for discussion suggests that a sea change is taking place on the American political scene. For decades, the wealthy have been held up as people to be admired, victors in the Darwinian economic struggle by virtue of their personal ingenuity and hard work.
Americans consistently supported fiscal policies that undermined middle- and working-class interests partially because they saw themselves as rich-people-in-waiting: Given time, toil and the magic of compound interest, anyone could retire a millionaire.
That mind-set has all but been eradicated by the damage sustained by the average worker's nest egg, combined with the spectacle of bankers and financial engineers maintaining their lifestyles with multimillion-dollar bonuses while the submerged 99% struggle for oxygen.
(The price of admission to the top 1% income-earning club last year was roughly $400,000.) That may account for the near-total absence of public outcry over President Obama's proposal to raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans -- except of course from the wealthiest Americans.
One factor fueling the public fury over the AIG bonuses, so inescapably in the news this week, is the recognition that so many huge fortunes landed in the hands of the undeserving rich. Some of them added little value to the economy but merely moved money around in novel, excessively clever and ultimately destructive ways; others are corporate executives who were ridiculously overpaid whether they succeeded or failed at their jobs.
It won't be long now, moreover, before Americans again wise up to the role of dumb luck in building wealth. By my count, roughly one-quarter of the names on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans got there by inheritance (and by no means have all of them enhanced the family fortune with their own toil or brainpower). A few years ago, it was common to think of the rich as a special breed. We may soon come around to George Orwell's view that the only difference between rich and poor is income -- "The average millionaire," as he put it, "is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit."
