Warren's nominal boss, one Jesus of Nazareth, encountered this precise situation regarding progressive taxes.

Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.” Mark 12: 41 - 44

Clearly, Warren didn't see it that way. Fred Clark of Slacktivist (a big fan of the actual message of Jesus) verbally took Warren apart:

This was a slander against poor people that no one would ever pass along unless they really didn’t like poor people. It sounded mean because it was mean. It is the sort of lie that one rich man tells another rich man when there are no poor people within earshot. Neither of them believes it, but slurring the poor is, for them, a source of amusement. “The poor are freeloaders who have it so much easier than we do,” is a lie that rich people have been repeating to one another for thousands of years, and I don’t believe that Rick Warren is the first one actually dumb enough to really believe it.

See if you can understand it, because I just can’t. I have no idea why someone as wealthy and privileged as Rick Warren would resent those who are not at all wealthy or privileged, but it seems he does.

Clark is onto something here. When presidential candidate Rick "Goodhair" Perry used the same line recently, he at least was careful to specify income taxes. But then he did an interesting thing:

We’re dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don’t even pay any income tax. And you know the liberals out there are saying that we need to pay more.

The use of the word "injustice" is not accidental. The term social justice has traditionally meant working to ease the hardships of poverty. But Perry reverses the meaning and claims the victims of injustice here are the rich people forced to shell out an extra dollar because those impoverished meanies are selfishly hoarding what little they have left.

This kiss-up, kick-down attitude is popular on the right, not just with rich campaign donors but with a lot of middle-class and just-hanging-on people whose anger could do some good if focused on the robber barons' ever-increasing share. Instead it's targeted at the poorest people, who conveniently don't have lobbyists to defend them. I think it works because of a comforting bit of wishful thinking: that life is fair, and bad things don't happen to good people. Following that belief, those with money are by definition Worthy, and those without are Unworthy. It's tempting to believe - or at least want to believe - that if you work hard, if you're just Worthy enough, you'll get ahead.

Thus any aid to impoverished people can be given with a heavy dose of shaming, while corporate subsidies and rich people's tax writeoffs don't come with the same contempt. Wisconsin's Alberta Darling got re-elected after explaining that people who make $250,000/year aren't "wealthy." Meanwhile, the Heritage Foundation published a report on the undeserved luxury enjoyed by people living below the poverty line: almost all of them have fridges AND microwaves! (Or as Colbert put it: they can preserve AND heat food!)

Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman campaigned for Governor of California on the promise to slash welfare while cutting corporate taxes. It can't be that she thought it was good financial sense to take from those with nothing to give to the wealthiest; at some point we're left with no explanation except hostility. (The racial dogwhistles involved in welfare-bashing, and the myths that undocumented immigrants are living high on taxpayer money, need a whole other diary.)

Last year a San Francisco Chronicle article showcased a successful program helping homeless people who hung out at the main library. One of the first responses from a reader: "Since homeless people don't pay taxes, why are they allowed to use the library at all?" (Show your W-2's at the door before you enter the library, or call the fire department, or send your kid to school, or stop at a stoplight...)

And now some companies are openly advertising that they will only hire people who are currently employed. Because if you've been downsized, you must not be Worthy, right?

Politicians don't like to talk about poverty. They talk about the "middle class," which presumably contains people who are at least somewhat Worthy. With the series of economic disasters over the last few years, the media will occasionally show some interest in talking about unemployment or foreclosures - as long as it's a formerly middle class person who lost a job or home. But they'd still rather talk about rich people who are now slightly less rich.

Barbara Ehrenreich is one of the few journalists who addresses issues of poverty on a regular basis. She gives a depressing description of a formerly middle-class family forced onto welfare, where the requirements included fingerprinting, applying for 40 jobs a week (with no transportation help), and a "job readiness" class 35 miles away that was no help at all. But the populist hostility is aimed at the family struggling to get by, not at the company taking taxpayer dollars to teach no specific skills but "readiness" for nonexistent jobs.

The latest criminalizing-poverty idea out of Florida is drug testing for all welfare applicants. Sure, it funnels a lot of taxpayer money to the company doing all those drug tests, but it has the right punitive attitude toward those Unworthy impoverished people. Other measures in various states have included making food stamp cards a conspicuous bright orange (which serves no function other than shaming), a proposal to require Norplant for welfare recipients (which failed to pass in Mississippi), and the much-ridiculed (and unsuccessful) proposal to replace the clothing allowance for foster kids with a debit card that could only be used in secondhand stores. (The company managing the debit cards - at taxpayers' expense - would not be subject to any shaming, of course, just the kids.)

Ehrenreich catalogs ways that poverty has literally been criminalized: arresting people for sitting or lying on sidewalks, arresting anti-poverty volunteers for handing out free food, and the classic story of Al Szekeley, a disabled Vietnam Vet who had been staying in a shelter:

He had been enjoying the luxury of an indoor bed until December 2008, when the police swept through the shelter in the middle of the night looking for men with outstanding warrants. It turned out that Szekeley, who is an ordained minister and does not drink, do drugs, or cuss in front of ladies, did indeed have one -- for "criminal trespassing," as sleeping on the streets is sometimes defined by the law. So he was dragged out of the shelter and put in jail.

There's the guy who's oppressing Rick Warren by not paying enough taxes.

Any system that declares the Haves morally superior to the Have-Nots will always get the support of the Haves. Our political and media establishments are run by Haves. They're currently engaged in a campaign to convince the Have-Littles that they're on the same side, being oppressed by the Unworthy Have-Nots. Somehow, we have to keep countering with the truth: up is not down, slavery is not freedom, and robbing the poor to give to the rich is not justice.

Obligatory Rec List Update: When I went to bed last night, this diary had 10 comments, half of them mine. Thank you Rescue Rangers, and thank you to all the people who left thoughtful comments on the diary. It's much appreciated.