THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Wednesday, December 13, 1995           TAG: 9512130014
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A12  EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Letter 
                                             LENGTH: Short :   46 lines

PERHAPS CLASS WARFARE ALREADY IS UNDER WAY

Conservatives are always disparaging ``special-interest groups,'' but there are clearly some special-interest groups served by Republicans. The National Rifle Association and the Christian Coalition are two. As a special-interest group, the rich are less visible but even more effective in exercising their political influence.

In the 1980s, Reaganomics widened the gap between the wealthy and the rest of us. The United States is already the most economically stratified nation in the industrialized world. The richest 20 percent of Americans own 80 percent of the wealth. Even Alan Greenspan, the conservative chairman of the Federal Reserve, considers this an alarmingly destabilizing trend.

Now the Republican Congress is trying to widen that gap. The Republicans are slashing programs that benefit the poor and middle class, the young and the elderly. At the same time, they want to cut income taxes, corporate taxes and capital-gains taxes to benefit primarily the rich. According to the Treasury Department, 52 percent of the proposed tax breaks will benefit families making more than $100,000 a year.

They have proposed repealing the minimum tax on corporations (costing $25.2 billion) at the same time cutting the earned income tax credit (saving $23.3 billion). This represents a transfer of wealth from working people making less than $28,000 a year to corporate executives and stockholders.

Worker productivity is up, corporate profits are setting records and the stock market is surging, but employee wages are flat. Congress has resisted President Clinton's proposal to raise the minimum wage, which is only $4.25 an hour.

The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is stagnating. The so-called ``angry white males'' of the struggling middle class are still angry. Republican politicians have been successful in misdirecting that anger, so far.

I am not advocating class warfare, but it is obvious that a covert war is being waged by the rich on the rest of us.

DAVID L. CAMPBELL

Virginia Beach, Nov. 27, 1995 by CNB