Is a populist moment emerging?

The AP discovers an example of America's democratic class struggle:

When it comes to paying for health overhaul, Americans see just one way to go: Tax the rich.

That finding from a new Associated Press poll will be welcome news for House Democrats, who proposed doing just that in their sweeping remake of the U.S. medical system, which passed earlier this month and would extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans.

The poll found participants sour on other ways of paying for the health overhaul that is being considered in Congress, including taxing insurers on high-value coverage packages derided by President Barack Obama and Democrats as "Cadillac plans."

That approach is being weighed in the Senate. It is one of the few proposals in any congressional legislation that analysts say would help reduce the nation's health expenditures, but it has come under fire from organized labor and has little support in the House.

What makes this case interesting is the "make the rich pay" sentiment present among Americans today. Decades of GOP-led welfare state retrenchment, deindustrialization, anti-labor reaction, race-baiting, etc. have dulled the sense that wealth is a social product, not a consequence of an individual's good work.

Class and distributional conflict in California

From a recent article in the Sacramento Bee (cited by Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis and Naked Capitalism):

State workers donned their rhetorical boxing gloves in 2008 and slugged it out — with each other.

This column and its companion blog chronicled some of those battles: state workers in Sacramento vs. those everywhere else, staff vs. management, sworn law enforcement officers vs. non-sworn public safety workers, dues-paying union members vs. workers who pay reduced "fair share" fees and just about everyone, it seemed, vs. the correctional officers union.

Online, state workers defended themselves from attacks by private-sector workers and jabbed the governor (not so affectionately referred to as GAS) for wanting to furlough or lay off workers. And they attacked each other.

Forms of solidarity, such as unions, are most severely tested (and are most difficult to create) during those moments when they are needed most. Groups, organizations and the like will decompose when individuals feel compelled to survive as individuals without also affirming a sturdy commitment to any or most other individuals. Abstractly put, solidarity is the non-rational solution to the actual or potential lack of solidarity.

Most Americans want a more equitable distribution of the nation’s wealth

According to a recent Gallup Poll (via TPM):