I suppose this Morning Joe mini-discussion is the closest thing we're going to get in terms of a discussion of class and taxes in America on cable TV, but you can see the obvious holes in it.
"Former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg hits (Elizabeth) Warren's plan and is comparing her plan to socialism," Scarborough said.
MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: We need a healthy economy. We should not be embarrassed about our system. If you want to look at a system that's non-capitalistic, take a look at what was the wealthiest country in the world, it is called Venezuela and people are now starving to death.
HOWARD SCHULTZ: When I see Elizabeth Warren come out with a ridiculous plan of taxing wealthy people of a surtax of 2% which because it makes a good headline or sends out a tweet when she knows that for a fact that it is not ever going to be passed. This is what's wrong. You can't just attack this things in a punitive way by punishing people.
(Well, boys, as even the Davos crowd now admits, it's not heavy taxation on the rich that caused Venezuela's crisis. It was allowing wealth to grow to such a lopsided and exploitative extreme that the poor revolted by electing a polarizing figure like Hugo Chávez. Maybe we could take a clue from all the HGTV shows about how the wealthy have so much money, they're now building indoor waterfalls and volcanoes? But I digress.)
"Warren responded to the criticism, tweeting, 'What's ridiculous is billionaires who think they can buy the presidency to keep the system rigged for themselves while opportunity slips away for everybody else. The top .1% who pay for my ultra millionaire tax, own about the same as 90% of America. It's time for a change."
"This sort of thing where he was going to level the playing field a little bit. I am not so sure that this is not going to be extremely popular in Wisconsin, in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Ohio and a lot of places across America," Joe Scarborough said.
"Certainly among the people who are deciding the Democratic presidential nominee is. If I were Elizabeth Warren, I would be sending thank you notes to Bloomberg right now and Howard Schultz right now," John Heilemann said.
"These are exactly -- those two guys, Howard Schultz, he understood his posture puts him out of step where the party is right now. Bloomberg has done a lot of good work on climate change and gun control, that gives him some standing to run as a Democrat. But his biggest vulnerability that he's a plutocrat, and to stand up in that way and talk about the proposal by Warren -- he's entitled to his view of tax rates. He's exacerbating his biggest vulnerability with most Democrats, who are going to be on the side that the super rich pay more."
