With numerous cities cracking down on Occupy Wall Street protests, and Republicans calling for the arrest and prosecution of protesters, now seems the time to post the following cartoons. Republicans regularly denounce calls for progressive, graduated taxes by income (i.e., higher tax rates for higher income earners) as “Class Warfare”. In truth, it is the Republican ideology of transferring wealth to the most wealthy, which is the true Class Warfare. The cry for fairness coming from the majority, is merely Class Defense.

Even if shifting more wealth to the richest 1% individuals were to create (a few) jobs, the fact is that the G.O.P. has shoved us far beyond the balancing point in the Law of Diminishing Returns (an economic principle, for God’s Sake)! I.e., at the current balance, giving greater and greater shares of wealth to the most Wealthy, results in only very tiny gains in the overall economy. By investing in the Rich, rather than investing in the Country or the People, Republican policy chokes off the spending power of the majority — who are the true “Job Creators”.

Click on the above & below cartoons, to enlarge them.

The three cartoons in this post, are all the work of New Yorker comic artist Syd Hoff, working under the pseudonym “A. Redfield“. They come from the 1935 collection, The Ruling Clawss, reprinting work by Hoff/”Redfield” which had originally appeared in The Daily Worker. We’ll be seeing more excerpts from The Ruling Clawss (and other political cartoon books) throughout 2012.

To find prior episodes of this series,click on Wall Street Frauds Make Wonderful Cartoons. And, to find earlier posts concerning financial reforms in general, click here.

Doug Wheeler

financial reform