I was in court this morning as a character witness for Myron, my hotheaded, redheaded, wealthy and brilliant cousin. I sat in the back of the court and read our local newspaper, The Centre Daily Times, while waiting for Myron’s case to come up. The CDT often, and I think accidently, puts two articles or opinions together that are made for each other. Today on their opinion page they had an editorial on the end of the American Dream, about young people unable to get decent jobs, and one on taxing the super-rich, by imposing a yearly 2% wealth tax on the 0.5 percent of Americans with assets of over 7.2 million dollars.
As it turns out, Myron was in court because of one of the super-rich, our cousin Alvin. Alvin likes to parade his great wealth and, by default, his great intelligence before us at our monthly cousin’s club. His son Stephan, the congressional candidate, is even worse. Myron likes to point out, and I think with some cause that Stephan’s claim to fame, before the congressional race, was his ability to pick both nostrils, cross-handed, simultaneously.
It started as a simple discussion about taxes. Myron feels that taxing the rich through income, capital gains, and percent of wealth is reasonable and more than reasonable now during an economic downturn. Alvin thinks that paying taxes is for saps like Myron. The reasonable part of the discussion was short-lived and consisted mostly of Alvin screaming “class warfare” and Myron trying to explain that avoiding “class warfare” was, if for no better reason, why the super-rich should pay taxes. It wasn’t long after that Alvin started screaming “dope.” Myron then ended the discussion with a fine left jab to the right side of Alvin’s mouth.
Later, in court, Myron was given a stiff fine. Fortunately, for both of them, Alvin could neither smile nor laugh without some pain and simply stormed off.
On the way home, an angry Myron would only say, “They like to scream class-warfare and have the masses imagine communists or militant socialists manning the barricades in Moscow or Paris.” “Class warfare is always initiated by the rich,” he said. “Things have to be awfully bad for people to man-the-figurative-barricades.” “If the super-rich can’t be fair,” he continued, “They should at least have the sense to see to their own self-interest.” “Dopes,” he concluded.
Myron recovers quickly. We hadn’t walked much more than a block when he asked, with great hope and a winning smile, “Corned-beef?”