Today\u2019s metaphor begins, as all good metaphors do, with the first verse of the theme song from The Jeffersons:<\/p>\n
Well, we\u2019re movin\u2019 on up
To the East Side
To a deluxe apartment in the sky
We\u2019re movin\u2019 on up
To the East Side
We finally got a piece of the pie<\/p><\/blockquote>\nYummy! A piece of the pie! Who wouldn\u2019t want a piece of the pie? (If it were a fruitcake, this metaphor wouldn\u2019t work.)<\/p>\n
The question facing the nation at the moment is how big everyone\u2019s slice is. Obama is positioning the government in the role of pie slicer, making sure that nobody\u2019s piece is any bigger than anyone else\u2019s. But he can only have direct influence over the American Pie, whether or not he drives his Chevy to the levee. The rest of the world often looks at the World Pie and complains that America has too big a piece.<\/p>\n
Nobody\u2019s paying any attention to the size of the pie.<\/p>\n
As I have lamented the coming collapse of charitable giving in this country on Facebook, many of my friends have made a number of comments that illustrate that, for them, they\u2019re far more concerned with the size of the pieces, not the pie itself. \u201cSince wealthy people wouldn’t be able to create wealth without the commons and infrastructure,\u201d writes Scott, \u201cit seems logical that they should contribute accordingly.\u201d Jen opines, \u201cThe economy’s soo better spread and lubricated that way really…oooh I’m turned on just thinking about it…yowzah!\u201d And Kim says, in response to my concern that those over $250,000 will no longer get a tax deduction for contributing to charity, \u201cWow, that would be great to be making more than $250,000.\u201d<\/p>\n
So Scott thinks the rich aren\u2019t paying enough for their pie. Jen thinks the pie\u2019s better when it\u2019s \u201cspread and lubricated\u201d in even amounts. And Kim, like so many of us, longs for a piece bigger than the one she currently has.<\/p>\n
Folks, to switch metaphors for a moment, this is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.<\/p>\n
The pie is shrinking. The American Pie, the World Pie, all of it \u2013 there\u2019s less pie to slice up, and the more we squabble over the size of the pieces we have left, the smaller the pie gets. In fact, a pie is a terrible metaphor for the world\u2019s wealth. It implies that the size of the economy is a static thing, finished and unchangeable, and that, like a pie, its overall status is unaffected by how it’s sliced.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\nThat’s nonsense.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe economy is a living being, like a person, thriving or dying according to her living conditions, and each slice into her is like surgery without anesthesia.<\/p>\n
People also confuse the Economy Pie with the Wealth Pie, which includes gobs of old money that is no longer subject to taxation. The Rockefellers and Kennedys of the world have all of their pieces locked up in refrigerated safety deposit boxes. It\u2019s just the Kims and the Weezie Jeffersons of the world, hoping to slice off a $250,000 piece, that are going to get sliced down if they make the attempt.<\/p>\n
Obama\u2019s not slicing the pie. He\u2019s drawing economic blood.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today\u2019smetaphor begins, as all good metaphors do, with the first verse of the theme song from The Jeffersons:
Well, we\u2019re movin\u2019 on up To the East Side To a deluxe apartment in the sky We\u2019re movin\u2019 on up To the East Side We finally got a piece of the pie<\/blockquote> Yummy! A piece of the ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}