Long back I read sci-fi story, real sci-fi not a magical fantasy masquerading as sci-fi. It was set on a planet with a weird orbit. The government astronomers discover that the planet is going to get into a completely unexpected 40 year eclipse that has never happened before. The government selects a group of essential people needed for the survival of the civilization and builds an impregnable fortress and hoards food and supplies to ride out the 40 year winter. The story is told by the son of a mid-level bureaucrat in this select group. The government gets increasingly draconian, and the mid level functionaries brutalize the population, assuage their guilt, justify their actions and they implement all the policies handed down and strip the population of all food and supplies.
And, in the end, on the eve of eclipse the mid level bureaucrats discover that they were not really the real "select group". The select of the select barricade themselves inside the fortress and lock their side-kicks out. Leaving them to the tender mercies of the population they had brutalized and the much maligned semi-sentient beings called lorin. "Presently the lorin came" was the last line of the novel.
That is what I was reminded of when I saw this news story about mid level money mangers losing their jobs.. The top 1% does not care about anyone. Definitely not the next 9%. These are the people who defend the top 1% most vociferously, out do one another in demonstrating their loyalty, watch fox news and drink the talking points cool aid and fight many a blog war. And as soon as their usefulness is over, the 1% will kick them out without any mercy.
The 90-99%ters are not going to be treated any differently than the 0 to 90%ters. For the top 1% in the stratosphere there is not much of difference between street level and the top of the Empire State building.
This is the message we need to deliver to the comfortably placed, slightly apathetic voters who instinctively equate Republicans with lower taxes. Those who drank the cool-aid are gone. But there are lots of disengaged 90-99%ters for us to get. There is a tax cut waiting for the 90 to 98%ters. It is the Republicans who are holding it hostage to fund a bigger tax cut for the super wealthy.
[Wrote it long ago and forgot about it. Found it hiding in the drafts.]