We’ve spent the last few decades shoveling money at the rich like there was no tomorrow. We abandoned the poor, put an economic stranglehold on the middle class and all but bankrupted the federal government – while giving the banks and megacorporations and the rest of the swells at the top of the economic pyramid just about everything they’ve wanted.
….
Meanwhile, Wall Street is living it up. I’m amazed at how passive the population has remained in the face of this sustained outrage.
….
We need to make some fundamental changes in the way we do things in this country. The gamblers and con artists of the financial sector, the very same clowns who did so much to bring the economy down in the first place, are howling self-righteously over the prospect of regulations aimed at curbing the worst aspects of their excessively risky behavior and preventing them from causing yet another economic meltdown.
We should be going even further. We’ve institutionalized the idea that there are firms that are too big to fail and, therefore, “we, the people” are obliged to see that they don’t – even if that means bankrupting the national treasury and undermining the living standards of ordinary people. What sense does that make?
Is it some angry blogger railing against the powers that be?
No, it is one of the NYT’s leading columnists. Please read the whole column, if I could reprint it in it’s entirety I would.
From the Wall Street Journal…of all places…
The nation’s top 1% of households own more than half the nation’s stocks, according to the Federal Reserve. They also control more than $16 trillion in wealth – more than the bottom 90%.
….
There is no “average” consumer in Plutonomies. There is only the rich “and everyone else.” The rich account for a disproportionate chunk of the economy, while the non-rich account for “surprisingly small bites of the national pie.” Kapur estimates that in 2005, the richest 20% may have been responsible for 60% of total spending.
….
Of course, Kapur says there are risks to the Plutonomy, including war, inflation, financial crises, the end of the technological revolution and populist political pressure. Yet he maintains that the “the rich are likely to keep getting even richer, and enjoy an even greater share of the wealth pie over the coming years.”
Of course the WSJ’s ‘solution’ is to…..invest in those who serve the Ruling Class. Because as The Ruling Class gets richer, there is no profit in trying to sell things to those the Ruling Class have already succeeded in impoverishing, as they have no money.
Here is a Natural Law, that in my opinion is right up there with the law of Gravity and Thermodynamics:
If the rich go unchecked, they will always establish an unjust and exploitative Aristocracy.
They will use their power to increase their power. And the only way that they can increase their power and wealth is to ROB that power and wealth from the 99% of the rest of us.
And since Reagan, they have gone unchecked.
For anyone unsure of this fact…and the law that drives it I refer you to Pluto’s excellent work…Your Work Life Revealed – A Chart Extravaganza wherein what has happened under an unchecked Ruling Class that owns the government is starkly laid out.
The Ruling Class is Waging War on the Lower and Middle Classes.
Not out of some grand conspiracy or zealous malevolence or plot to make people suffer…but out of pure greed.
I think it is safe to say that “they” just don’t know what they are doing, I also think it is safe to say that “they” don’t care.
Because they have not been MADE to care.
Perhaps…just perhaps, now that the Class War IS out in the open, and the Health Care and Climate Bills are revealing just how much the Ruling Class and their financial arms in the Insurance, Finance and Energy industries have outright bought our government….
MAYBE now that the number of Americans in the combined unemployment and under employment category has increased to 20% of the population….
Maybe now that a s Herbert points out, two-thirds of all the income gains from the years 2002 to 2007 went to the top 1 percent of Americans….
Maybe now that we know that 1 out of 6 Americans live in REAL poverty while a record percentage of wealth is being transferred, by our own government, (amongst other factors) to the top 1%…
Maybe now that top columnists from the NYT and WSJ are pointing to the Class War and even THEY are saying, in effect….wow!
Maybe now we will start to see a little LESS passivity from the 99% of Americans who are slouching toward dystopia
One thing is for absolute certain, so certain that it is perhaps the othe half of the Natural Law I proposed earlier, to wit:
Unless the The Ruling Class is checked being made to be afraid of the rest of the 99% of humanity, they will just not stop. All that has ever stopped them was the fear that those that they are exploting and now outright robbing will rebel and storm their castles and take BACK the wealth they have used their power to acquire.
Or…perhaps we can use OUR government for one of its main purposes….to ensure some measure of equality for ALL of it’s citizens…not just the one percent who have bought OUR government out from under us.
We know what the first alternative looks like, which is why you hear so many references to the french revolution and guillotines these days.
We know what the second alternative looks like from Mr. Roosevelt time in office the last time the Ruling Class crashed the world economy for their own benefit and profit.
Maybe, just maybe, The Ruling Class should decide which of those alternatives it finds more palatable? Before it is too late? While they still have a choice?
70 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
Are safely isolated. They don’t know the pain and suffering of the unemployed and under employed. They don’t care. They read or watch only the media that admire them.
And that is good news for the working class and the soon to disappear middle class.
Use their arrogance against them, I say.
Sadly until American ditch their myths it will be hard to have a successful strike. Americans love their myths. Their myths are their identity. Lose the myths, lose the identity.
We then are forced to face a shocking reality: we are NOT unique.
You forgot to give yourself a rec button.
not just a class war, but also a war between at least two or more elite ruling class factions developing (one or more of which is opposed to wealth concentration at least to the degree we’ve been seeing), or Bob Herbert’s article and the WSJ article would never have been published.
So this is good news, sort of…
Are ya crabby that wealth from the upper class ain’t tricklin’ down
onto ya?Maybe you should try sellin’ dinner with yourself on eBay — that’s a quick way to make $63,500.
Or get somebody to write your autobiography for $11,000,000. Harper-Collins will fall for that one, trust me!
If ya can’t beat ’em . . . join ’em! That’s my new motto. It used to be “Drill, baby, drill” before I won the battle with tree-huggers with logic like this:
That kind of superior logic there can be applied to wealth also. Wealth needs to remain with people who are used to havin’ it. Spreadin’ it around to people that need it would upset our economy too much. What would happen to our patriotic yacht manufacturers?
I hear from many people, those I least expect, that they are so truly disgusted. The rich have overplayed this card.
the class war we will end up with a lot of bad fashion and hairstyles.
On the other hand we did have the 1980’s for that already.
First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, by Slavoj Zizek:
and this:
That is the key to understanding our situation and suggests the tactics and strategies to use to get a movement going. The police state bullshit is a minor issue. The police merely are blocking massive street actions announced way in advance.
People are stunned and in a stupor. They merely need to be woken up — they are ready. But they need a catalyst of strong, sexy, stylish (thanks undercovercalico) and committed people to stand up straight and organize communities that cannot and will not be cracked by undercover pigs (I vote to return the old word at this point in history).
It won’t take much. This country can be changed by a few thousand activists who understand what struggle and power are about and are willing to utterly risk everything. As I indicated elsewhere in this discussion — even members of the ruling elites are looking for something new.
I’ve been discouraged for a long time but I see an opening as I read the propaganda organs and observe the signs (semiotics).
Thanks for calling it class struggle rather than interest group politics. We need a Marxist perspective in this country — you can’t understand our system without starting with Marx and (more importantly) Marxism. I think we live in a post-Marxist world but he pointed in the right direction.
piece.
And thanks for pointing us to it. It’s stunning. Beyond excellent.
I would like to say more right now, but let it suffice that David Swanson, a non-stop activist individual, has this to say about what we can and should do: Your Town Can Demand Justice More Powerfully Than You Can.
Very much worth reading!