(cross posted from PassionateAmerica.com)

One of the Democrats favorite issues, class warfare, rears it’s ugly little head in the (gasp) New York Times, In Class Warfare, Guess Which Class Is Winning. Hold on to your seats, the person spinning the class warfare issue like a bottle at a college frat party is none other than Ben Stein (Bueller…Bueller.) The Times has hit fools gold with so-called conservative Ben Stein interviewing their latest rich guilt apologist Warren Buffett. Buffett is on a public relations campaign to deflect some of the leftist hatred of richers, by pretending to feel their pain and agree with their asinine assertion that rich people just aren’t taxed enough (boo hoo.)

It turned out that Mr. Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. [i.e. poor people] Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?”…“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

God forbid your side wins a war. It is much nobler to loss so that the poor victims can feel like they are sticking it to the man. Don’t be fooled by Buffet’s feigning sympathy for the plight of the fictitiously overtaxed commoners. His real objective is to connect with the victim hood syndrome that runs rampant in the financially illiterate government educated segments of society.

I propose a simple solution for your overwhelming guilt Mr. Buffet. Give what you believe would be your far share to the government. Of course if Mr. Buffet was genuinely concerned with how unfair it is that he is allowed to keep his own money he would have proposed the option of writing a fat check to the IRS to alleviate his guilt. Expect no such check anytime soon from Mr. Buffett, his only objective with his statements is to foster the idea of hopelessness that is like a disease infecting our nation.

The Stein and Buffett pity party continues.

The third argument that kind, well-meaning people made in response to the idea of rolling back the tax cuts was this: “Don’t raise taxes. Cut spending.”

Stein doesn’t even attempt to explain why cutting spending is not a viable option, he just shoots it down with roughly the same logic we hear each day about why we need to loss the Iraq war: it is impossible to lower spending or the “We can’t win,” defeatists attitude.

The imperatives for spending are built into the system, and now, with entitlements expanding rapidly, increased spending is locked in. Medicare, Social Security, interest on the debt — all are growing like mad, and how they will ever be stopped or slowed is beyond imagining. Gross interest on Treasury debt is approaching $350 billion a year. And none of this counts major deferred maintenance for the military.

Of course the only solution is raise taxes on those evil undeserving richers. If rich guilt is such a burden to you gentlemen then I humbly sacrifice my position as one of the more virtuous underclassmen and offer to trade places with you so you can experience the unfairness of the higher fraction of taxes I pay as opposed to you. I await your response.

--by Wild Bill--