For media, 'class war' has wealthy victims

During an ABC Nightline interview on May 21, 2003, host Ted Koppel suggested that his guest was engaging in "class warfare" by arguing that the wealthy should pay increased taxes. While the exchange was not unusual"Koppel's use of the term "class war" to characterize bottom-up or populist economic rhetoric is the norm"what was unusual was that his guest was the second-richest man in the world, Warren Buffett. The interview is worth remembering primarily for Buffett's commonsense response: "Well, I'll tell you, if it's class warfare, my class is winning." The brief comment serves as one of the very few prominent admissions that the class war can go both ways: top-down as well as bottom-up. And the current degree of economic inequality in the United States backs up Buffett's claim. In his 2007 book Categorically Unequal, Princeton sociologist Douglas Massey showed that of all advanced industrial nations, the U.S. ranks highest in inequality of both income and wealth distribution. Massey explained (Media Matters, 8/27/07):