On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal published an astonishing letter from famed Venture Capitalist Tom Perkins, in which he compared the purported demonization of the 1% to Kristallnacht, the beginning of the Nazi Holocaust. About a hundred Jews were killed, and at least 30,000 were rounded up that night and sent to concentration camps, as the German authorities looked on. A year later, it was the authorities themselves that were doing the rounding up.
Perkins made an apology on Bloomberg for using Kristallnacht, but he reiterated his astonishing misunderstanding of the goals of the Occupy movement, and of the anarchists who tried to disrupt it in a few places. Occupy was a well intended but poorly strategized movement, which opened opportunities for nihilists like the vandals that broke the windows Perkins complained about (a few windows--not "all the windows" as he said. The main target seems to have been a Bentley dealership and most of its windows survived) and became an invitation for legions of homeless to join them. All of this confused the message. The Occupy protests in most places were completely peaceful and positive, and even in the few places that there was violence or vandalism, the vast majority of it was committed by the police. The Occupy demonstrators themselves were nearly all strongly opposed to it. The seated, huddling students in Davis who were sprayed in the eyes by a policeman had not been violent or threatening. The women in New York who were trapped and sprayed by police and brought the protests to national attention for the first time, a week after they'd begun, had not been either. 84 year old Dorli Rainey had not been either before she was sprayed. Nor had Iraq veteran Scott Olson, prior to his skull being fractured by a lead-filled bean bag round fired at him as he stood at a barrier with other uniformed vets, nor were the protesters who were fired upon while trying to take him to the hospital.
By and large, Occupy was not demonizing the 1%. They were supporting the 99%. The people being targeted for demonization are the people who stole the opportunities from the 99%. This is a tiny fraction of the 1% and they have mostly committed some crime, such as fraud, bribery, theft, or worse. The majority of the 99% has very little opportunity. The cost of college has doubled relative to wages. Millions have lost their jobs, their homes and more. For years now, there have been three or more times as many job seekers as jobs, and most of those jobs that are available are far worse than those that were lost in the crisis.
Rich people will always be a target. As Willie Sutton put it: that's where the money is. If you don't like it, you can stay below the radar, you can hire security, you can give your money away. Perkins and people like him are far more at risk from fraudsters and thieves than from anarchists and nihilists, although they are potentially a problem too. Unlike Kristallnacht, they are not at much risk from the anger of these people or Occupy spreading to government. Perkins is suggesting that his "class" is being demonized because of who they are. The Jews could not hide, could not change who they are and had no political or financial power to protect themselves. None of these things is true for Perkins.
But about one thing, Perkins is right--he, far more than most fabulously rich people, really has created jobs. But he is wrong that regulation and taxation are the problem. Regulation is about preventing things like the economic crisis that befell us 5 years ago and has left us with the employment crisis. Taxation funds this regulation and the safety net when it fails. Regulation needs to work better. Raising taxes on people like Perkins--and me--is not the same as Kristallnacht, and there's no credible case to be made that this is a step on a slippery slope. Nobody is suggesting raising taxes even to the rates that prevailed under Eisenhower, when the economy did so well. Taxes on investors like Perkins are still lower than they were even under Reagan and Clinton. Preventing scammers from stealing peoples homes and livelihoods is not the same thing as Kristallnacht. What the police did to the mostly peaceful Occupy movement is very much closer--but it too is a far cry from Kristallnacht.
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