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?"
Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare.
"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."
That was 2006. We're now almost 20 years past, and I think it's safe to say the world has lost. Regressive oligarchs don't just own countries anymore; they now jockey for global power with each other. They extract resources and "value" without putting anything back.
I don't say this to promote the idea that there's nothing that can be done or no hope for relief, but we "poors" need to accept that our institutions have failed us. Instead, people across the globe are looking to authoritarians to take the reigns in a vain hope that the very people who put them in peril can save them.
The next battle's lines have been drawn. The real question is: what are we going to do about it? Because it's no longer a question of survival under capitalism or oligarchy. It's a question of survival, period.
