Class warfare is odd anathema for politicians in a democracy. Whenever a policy is suggested favoring - however slightly - anyone making less than, say, $100,000 a year, the proposal reflexively is stamped with that very term and shouted down in a frenzy implying real and present danger of frothing peasants storming torchlit citadel keeps to judge by hayfork and bill-hook well-meaning, good-hearted fatcats.

The fear of "class warfare" seems to flow uphill, to the more advantaged; not so much of it trickles down to the rest of us, who realize, as we eke out a living paycheck to paycheck, that class warfare is an ongoing part of the American economic system, always has been, and that the less fortunate are the exclusive collateral damage left in its atrocity and wreckage.

The underclass here, as everywhere, has the privilege of fighting - and dying - in this nation's wars, and starving through its "market corrections", as well as shouldering the burden paying for these sporadic misadventures. Add in your life's blood, and that's really what's meant by the inevitable "death and taxes" bargain of "making a living".

Glibly making a shaky case that CEOs deserve their egregious bounty - since, without them, we'd be a po'-folk backwater - Jay Ambrose opines in his Baltimore Examiner column that without those rare few comfortably lounging in first-class, wearing tasseled shoes, calmly rifling briefcases, we'd enjoy no superpower status, no ready access to the alternating current that powers our metropolitan transportation systems and kitchen juicers. No paved roads. No Magic Mountain.

We've had a managerial revolution since the early days of this country's history, the scholar Alfred Chandler wrote in 1977 in a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "The Visible Hand."

As a review reminds us, businesses grew in size to do things small businesses could not do, and out of that emerged an increasingly professional, technically able class of administrators who mastered systematizing, coordinating and supervising arts that increased efficiency and output and reduced costs...

It is not, after all, just an accident that the United States remains the single biggest national economy in the world, outstripped only by the 27-nation European Union; that we continue to be the top manufacturing power in the world, despite a decline in jobs caused by technology; that we have made up for that loss with service jobs that typically pay much more than the manufacturing jobs, or that we have the highest productivity per worker in the world.

Persuasive stuff, although Ambrose overlooks these wildly overpaid executives are a phenomenon that became monstrous only two or three decades ago, and that without them, we'd have no burst-pinata economy, either.

This country became the richest, most powerful nation long before front-office types paid themselves such breathtaking salaries, bonuses, financial incentives and "fringes". From the Economic Pay Institute: "In 1965, U.S. CEOs in major companies earned 24 times more than an average worker; this ratio grew to 35 in 1978 and to 71 in 1989. The ratio surged in the 1990s  and hit 300 at the end of the recovery in 2000."  By 2001, when the high-flying Bush Era took hold, the average ratio of CEO to worker pay peaked at 525 to 1. And this aside put me a little off my feed, as I cracked open my brown bag at lunch today:

In 2005, a CEO earned more in one workday (there are 260 in a year) than an average worker earned in 52 weeks.

The argument goes: Top talent will earn top money, and if a company doesn't reward these titans accordingly, a competitor will. But... if these executives are that good, why are their companies coming to Congress for financial rescue in the form of taxpayer money? It appears this uberclass of American businessman - and woman - is enriched like Croesus to... gamble away money and resources on shell-game financial instruments that have wiped out the wealth of nations.

It is unsettling, even more than enraging, that these detached, greedy morons were paid so much to perform so incompetently. That degree of blithering delusion and ineptitude had to crash; it epitomized ass-backwards mechanics contravening all cosmic laws.

But, of course, with our lickspittle media chiming in to run interference, still they are propped up by their own bloat. Their companies are too big to fail without taking down the rest of civilization as we know it. The alternative to rescuing them is too awful to contemplate.

As we saw them lined up, uncomfortably cramping one table, at yesterday's House Banking Committee hearing, they seemed less Olympian than used-car-shyster; they are aware now of public anger scoring them, as the Nation's Chris Hayes pointed out on "Countdown", but remain baffled to comprehend reasons why. In their insulated halls of power, they have become completely out of touch with the rest of us air-breathing detritus down here on planet earth, out of touch with reality itself.

Writing in the the Feb. 16 edition of Newsweek, Jerry Adler ponders why Americans haven't hated the wealthy among them, as opposed to the level of up-looking distaste traditionally present in most other countries. It's the accessibililty of the wealth, he proposes, that stifles such animosity:

...Lacking a hereditary upper class, Americans have typically looked at themselves in the mirror and asked, why not me? The belief that anyone can become rich in America has its roots in an extraordinary statistical fact... 'Large majorities of Democrats and low-income Americans agree with Republicans and more affluent people that it is still possible to start out poor, work hard, and become rich.' People who expect to join a country club someday are, obviously, less likely to want to burn it down now.

That makes sense. Our bottom-line culture means money, not blood or background, is the signifer of American success. We have no stultefying, vitrified aristocracy, and no established, state-sanctioned fairy tales to entrall and distract our cash-and-carry priorities. But Adler seems to have the gestalt exactly backwards:

In America, the country that invented the modern model of wealth--i.e., derived neither from inherited landholdings nor royal patronage--mocking the rich is historically one of the most durable cultural memes, matched only by envy of them.

Americans traditionally don't begrudge the rich their riches, it's true. But we are angry today at how they got that wealth. More and more, it seems evident that over the past few years, those in position to loot our private financial systems did just that. And now they've come seeking public money... to continue the breezy, flagrant cruise to which they've become accustomed. Maybe even... addicted.

And how much have the rich ever been envied? Really? Isn't it more a matter of the rich - themselves - needing to be envied? After all, what is status without envy; can exclusivity enjoy any cachet unless it attracts jealous regard from covetous have-nots?

No, Jerry, most of us don't envy them. We despise them. They are thieves and need correcting. But, of course... that's hoping for too much.

It's difficult for the Jay Ambroses and Jerry Adlers to conceive of this: What's important to Americans is what is close - their families, their homes. What they have themselves - even if it isn't the best, and likely to hold future value only as a garage-sale conversation-starter.

For someone who's heart is in the right place, I found this on an online list of Obama well-wishers as he readied his inauguration:

Dear Barack Obama,

Congratulations! 1 Corinthians, 13 verse, 4 to 7 says love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. God will direct you in the right path! I'm praying for you, and I will continue to ask God for protection over you and your family. Enjoy yourself in the White House!

Yours truly, Emmanuel Jatto, 7