Getting Hip to Bruce Springsteen’s Ruse
Religion & Liberty Online

Getting Hip to Bruce Springsteen’s Ruse

On his albums Bruce Springsteen may pose as a working-class hero. But as Bruce Edward Walker notes, in his real life he’s a crony corporatist:

Add in the concert receipts and song royalties, and you have a guy with an estimated net worth of $250 million who shouldn’t have too much trouble making the mortgage on his 200-acre plot in Joisey and other properties valued well over $5 million. Poor Bruce and family pay $138,000 each year for taxes on their house on three acres. But the Boss also receives a generous tax break from New Jersey on his 200 acres since he owns horses and grows tomatoes (organic, of course), qualifying him to write off the property as a “farm” for which he pays less than $5,000 in tax each year.

And yet, the champion of the 99 percent still churns out songs about the evils of fat-cats who have never soiled their hands with physical labor like writing songs, playing guitar, and buying $800,000 ponies for his little girl.

Pay no attention to that man when he’s off the stage, Dorothy.

Joe Carter

Joe Carter is a Senior Editor at the Acton Institute. Joe also serves as an editor at the The Gospel Coalition, a communications specialist for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College. He is the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible and co-author of How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator (Crossway).