Moderately wealthy v. the rich, part 2

Republicans again confront whether to choose the moderately wealthy or the rich, although none of the blog commentary that I've seen on the new bankruptcy bill focuses on this issue. For a good general post on the bill, see Kevin Drum's, although he doesn't hit on this issue either.

The new bill reduces bankruptcy protections, but only for those over the median income level. This seems to pit the Republican upper-class constituency against itself, but I don't think that's exactly the case. Instead it pitches bankrupts in the top half of median income against credit card company stockholders. Most of the "qualifying" bankrupts will be near the median income, so they'll just be moderately wealthy. I'll bet a shiny nickel that the most of the stocks will be owned by people a lot better off than the moderately wealthy bankrupts.

Even the moderately wealthy can't win against the wealthiest.

(The first wealthy v. the super rich battle concerned fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax v. making Bush's tax cut permanent. See here - scroll down to April 21 - for more.)



keywords: class warfare, AMT