Paul Krugman makes a great point in a blog post today, The Myth of the Deserving Rich. But then he commits an error (which he does all the time) that drives me crazy. But first, let’s talk about the article generally.

His point is that just as we try to justify the poverty of the poor, we try to justify the wealth of the rich. Well, we don’t. But pretty much the entirety of the mainstream press and pretty much any politician with high aspirations. Of course, Krugman doesn’t go into it, but there is a big reason for this: social unrest. I think it is the biggest issue that society will have to face over the next couple hundred years if we manage to keep civilization going that long. If we all admit that our society is hopelessly unjust, how will we deal with this? We want to create a society that encourages people to do good things with their lives. But it isn’t a stupid person’s fault that he is stupid.

Krugman, of course, is more interested in the injustice and social waste of not providing real opportunity to the children of the poor. I’m interested in that too. But I think the problem is much deeper than that and eventually we need to solve it if we are going to make progress as a society. Personally, I believe in guaranteed incomes. But that discussion can wait for another day. What’s more, I’m sure there are other solutions that have not occurred to me.

On the other side of things—apologizing for the wealth of the rich—is at least as absurd. A canard I used to hear a lot is, “If the rich didn’t deserve their money, they would have lost it by now.” No. There are several reasons this is wrong. One is that the children of the rich get educated in how to manage money. Another is that the rich don’t really manage their own money; they pay experts to manage their money. And don’t forget: inheritance in the primary way people get rich. This Forbes article is a good example of what Krugman talks about in his article: using the well off but not rich to make the rich look better. (A half-million in wealth including your home is the definition of rich? Right!)

What Krugman keeps doing that bugs me, however, is saying that only the top 1% is upper class and that the 19% below them are the upper-middle class. Look, if the bottom 20% is the lower class, the middle 20% is the middle class, then the top 20% is the upper class. I admit, someone barely in that class is not rich at all. (My sister would fit into that category, although by the Forbes article, she would be rich just based upon her house.) I’ll even admit that the 19% are not rich. But they are by definition in the upper class.

The reason this bothers me is that it tilts the field against the lower class. By this way of thinking, the bottom 20% somehow balance the upper 1%. But that isn’t what’s really going on. People living on the streets might balance the 1%, but not the bottom 20% generally. They really are the contrast to the management class (and those few people who still have decent unions). I’m in no way against the upper class—I have family and friends in this class. Sadly, however, not one of them will admit to being in the upper class. And seeing reality is a prerequisite for improving it.

I know that I have sworn off MSNBC, but I got a tip that this morning there was real news coming on Up with Steve Kornacki. So I watched it. This is amazing. Really, you’ve got to see it. The description of this segment sums it up pretty well, “Top officials in Chris Christie’s administration appear to be linked to an effort to use Sandy relief funds to force the city of Hoboken to expedite a project that also happens to involve the law firm of the Port Authority chairman.” There were three blocks that The Rockefeller Group owned in Hoboken that the Christie administration really wanted to be rezoned in such a way as to make a development there very profitable. About most things, I’m pretty skeptical—even things I want to believe. But the more I hear about the widening Chris Christie scandal, the more it seems true.

This is just the first segment, but it lays out the whole narrative:

Update (18 January 2014 12:46 pm)

One thing that was very interesting in the discussion that followed on the show was how at least two people there were minimizing it. For example, Josh Barro noted, “People nationally will not obsess that long about a story about a traffic jam.” He was saying that as the outlook of the people in the Christie administration, but it’s clear that he more or less agrees with that view. What is fascinating is that these are exactly the kinds of things people said about Watergate, “Why are you guys obsessing over this little burglary?” That misses the main point. It’s a thread. And the more it is pulled on, the more the entire Christie administration seems to be unraveling. Like the story today: it is only big news in the context of the larger story that Christie’s administration seems to be every bit as big a bully as Christie himself. And bullies usually end up breaking the law at some point. They are people who don’t accept social norms so they aren’t real clear on how to act generally. People will not soon get tired of this story.

This is a slightly different take on income inequality than I normally propose. I say that the rich should want more equality because great inequality breads revolution. In this clip, Bill Maher makes a more immediate argument. If people are desperate enough, they will kidnap the rich. Of course, I suspect most rich people will look at that bit and say, “Well, I’ll just get one of those flaming cars.” Or, “I’ll hire a private army to surround me.” Sadly, one thing that history shows us is that the rich never learn. I’m not saying they are different than anyone else. Everyone thinks things will just continue to be the way they have been. And in fact, that’s a good way to predict the weather. You will be almost 50% accurate predicting that tomorrow will be just like today. But eventually, the clouds roll in. Eventually there is a hurricane. And the rich have far more to lose than the rest of us.

One of the first things that Obama did that angered me was to keep Robert Gates on as Defense Secretary. Of all the cabinet positions to put a Republican in, that is the worst. The Republicans have been (wrongly) hammering Democrats for being soft on the military for decades. So what was Obama saying other than, “I can’t find a Democrat as good for this job as this almost random (just happens to be the current office holder) Republican.” Now, I’m not an idiot. I know what Obama was trying to do; he was trying to “reach across the isle”; he was trying to show that he was open-minded. As I’ve pointed out, he was (and in many ways still is) a very naive politician.

But the thing is, I didn’t like Robert Gates under Bush and I didn’t like him under Obama. And now, he is out with a tell-all book about his time under those two presidents. I am not going to read Duty, of course. These kinds of books are always the most tired and useless things. Life is too short. But I have been really interested to hear what Gates had to say about Harry Reid because it is really unfair.

The biggest thing is that Harry Reid said that the surge in Iraq was a bad idea because the war was already lost. Gates thought this was treasonous. Well, this kind of thinking is exactly what I expect from a man like Gates. Yes, no one should ever be allowed to express a negative opinion about a war. But someone should be allowed to make a bunch of money writing a book that takes potshots at a sitting president and vice-president. I’ve got it: IOKIYAR.

The other thing is that Gates is mad at Reid because Reid asked him to put a study of “irritable bowel syndrome” into a military appropriations request. But this is how politics works. If Gates thinks that the Secretary of Defense is not a politician, then he is an idiot. In fact, anyone who claims that the top tier generals in the military are not politicians are totally ignorant of what they do.

Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal takes Gates to task, summing up the book, “Now he wants you to know he was offended, irritated, enraged, scandalized, ‘too old for this $%*&,’ and just plain itching to quit nearly every day he spent at the top.” But as he notes again and again, Gates didn’t step down. It isn’t like he needed the money; he’s valued at $5 million. As Stephens also notes, “Serving as secretary of defense, after all, isn’t really a duty; it’s an honor and a privilege.”

The only duty I see in Robert Gates is his duty to cash in even more on his government work.