Here’s a sobering essay from Forbes magazine (“the capitalist tool”) about a two-pronged plan by the super-rich in the U.S. to gain even more political clout and wealth at the expense of the middle and working classes. Business publications (like Business Week and Fortune) are so much more straightforward in explaining how capitalism works than the bashful mainstream press. Rick Ungar’s meandering essay explains how gutting the union’s bargaining rights in Wisconsin includes a larger campaign to end the payroll check-off programs that allow public employees to painlessly send a few dollars of each paycheck to their union. The money adds up and gives organized labor the capacity to challenge pro-business political donors in some arenas (although it’s worth noting that the total assets of all unions in the U.S. equal less than the bonuses Goldman Sachs paid its executives in 2007-2009). Ungar says ending the check-off is especially important to business now that Citizen United decision allows labor to spend its general treasury money on ads for specific candidates. He then explains a second stick-it-to-the-needy strategy that is gaining support from leading Democrats and Republicans; it’s actually decades old and we see it here in North Carolina: policymakers are cutting corporate taxes or increasing business subsidies while pushing more costs onto the poor and middle-class taxpayer, pensioner and public employee. Ungar says the business elite are tired of paying for warfare and welfare; taxes are for suckers. Sharing the financial windfall from the increased productivity of a computerized workplace is also unthinkable. Hence, we’re back to the biggest gap between the rich and everybody else since the Robber Barons, and it’s growing wider.