Soak The Rich?

[Hypognosis]

On BBC Breakfast this morning, they showed a story on the right edge of the page of some broadsheet, with the headline (paraphrasing) "We should Soak the Rich to solve the deficit." It's something Clegg said at conference.

I've lived in the UK since birth and have not encountered this usage of 'soak' before. Can anyone who bought a copy today and has managed to elide the meaning please let us know what it says?

[woofgang]

i think it was used in the Jeeves books, so not new.

[Hypognosis]

Oh?

I'm none the wiser as to the meaning. The sense is one of absorption (of ackers) but soaking is the opposite of that, no?

[Cloverjo]

Hypo, which newspaper was this? I can't see it in either of the broadsheets that I read.

[woofgang]

origin in 1935
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1935

[woofgang]

are you sure you mean "elide the meaning"?

[Hypognosis]

@woofgang

"are you sure you mean "elide the meaning"?"

Having checked my dictionary, no. I must have spent too much time exposed to TV presenters, who insist on using that word in the sense of "extract", or "extract meaning from".

Good to have a fresh excuse to blow raspberries at them. Ta! ;-)

[janbee]

We can never make the poor rich by making the rich poor. Clegg is an idiot... but then we already new that !

[Quizmonster]

The earliest use of "soak the rich" as such was, indeed, in 1935, but the word 'soak' itself - in the sense of 'charge heavily' - had started life as an American slang term in the 1890s.

[Hypognosis]

@janbee

You can't make the rich poor - they have yachts, they have huge houses, they have Swiss bank accounts, they have creative accountants. No government on earth can make them feel 4/10ths of their income going in PAYE, NI, VAT, council tax and all the other myriad ways they take money away from the people who produce the stuff that makes the rich people rich…

But this isn't the politics section ;-)

[Hypognosis]

@Quizmonster

Interesting. Now that you mention it, the Britishism used to be 'sop', as in 'sopping wet'.

Or 'Edward Heath' in Thatchler speke.

[sandyRoe]

I like that phrase nearly as much as, 'Squeeze them(the rich) 'til the pips squeak'.

[andy-hughes]

It's an easy soundbite - it's something the electorate can latch onto, and it makes the Lib Dems sound like they are a party who can acual do something about the economy themselves.

They can't - of course, and Clegg is clutching at straws - again.

[Old_Geezer]

I don't think anyone is trying to make the poor rich, merely help them when they need it. If society's coffers need filling it is better to "soak" those with a large portion of society's wealth in their possession, meaning they can afford to contribute, than it is to "soak" those who have little and struggle without benefits/welfare. And unfair to "soak" those in the middle who can afford it less than the rich, and have probably struggled and been prudent to no longer be poor.

[Quizmonster]

I thought I'd look into 'sopping wet', Hypo, and it was first used in 1897. However, I was rather taken by a quote from twenty years earlier in a farce written by W S Gilbert - he of Gilbert & Sullivan fame - which reads, "Two sopping females have quartered themselves on two dry bachelors."
Hello, I thought, is this some Victorian naughtiness? But, having had a glance at 'Foggerty's Fairy', the farce concerned, it wasn't!

[Hypognosis]

@QM

In what sense can batchelors be 'dry'?* Any insight into that would make sopping its opposite, presumably?


* dissipated, maybe. (fnarr)

[aelmpvw]

'soak' sounds like a euphemism for 'bleed'

[jno]

people are (or were) called dry old sticks if they seemed bloodless or unemotional - particularly males, for some reason. In that case, a sopping female would be one who was controlled by her emotions, as females were commonly supposed to be.

Presumably there's a happy medium between dry and sopping - a happy medium rare, maybe.

[Hypognosis]

Thanks jno.

You want fries with that? Butter-fried mushrooms too?

[Quizmonster]

In the case referred to, J, the 'sopping females' were thus because it was p'ing down outside and the men were 'dry bachelors' because they were indoors!

[Clanad]

To support Q's hypothesis (and why not), the reference for the origination of the phrase "to soak" in 1935 derives thusly: "...In the Depression years of the early 30's, the rich was a term used by socialist and populist politicians as an epithet, especially in promoting progressive taxation. The first citation of the slogan soak the rich is from James P. Warburg's 1935 book, "Hell Bent for Election," in which President Franklin D. Roosevelt was charged with "being 'clever' when he tried to steal Huey Long's thunder by suddenly coming out with his ' soak the rich ' tax message." (Source: Phrase Origins )

Huey Long was an especially corrupt politician from the bayou's of Louisiana... but that's another story.

In this context, "to soak" lends itself to drawing the word picture of placing a soiled cloth (or other waste) in a bucket filled with warm water and perhaps a solvent of sorts. The end results is that the clean water and sovent would enter the soiled cloths and leech out the dirt... captured in the phrase "filthy rich" (again, another story). Much like a sponge "soaking up" liquids.

Problem is, as Ms. Thatcher stated, "... one soon runs out of other people's money..."

Nice to see you again Q... sincerely hope all is well...