Why Do we Plebians keep blaming the Super-rich? Because, Dammit, They're to Blame

We're an odd bunch, we Americans.  We've had a hate-hate relationship with the very rich for as long as we've existed as a country, but damn their golden hides, we can't stop taking care of them.

After all these years we've become used to sparring with the super-rich over how much they get to keep and how much they should share.  They want to keep it all.  We want them to behave like responsible citizens, and they don't think they should have to.

It's a long-standing battle, but it was infinitely fairer when they needed us as much as we needed them.  Most of them built their fortunes while still being Americans in America, by being major forces in the building of the strongest, richest country in the world. Now there is almost nothing American about the major corporatists, but we still insist on treating them as if they were a part of us.  We can't help ourselves.  We cling to our nationalism, to our sense of superiority, and even after decades of sliding downhill, of watching our resources leave our shores for parts unknown, we can't believe our industry, our infrastructure, our wealth, is gone.  We refuse, in fact, to believe it, even though our roads, our bridges, our buildings, our very way of life is crumbling around us.

We are slow to learn.  It's one of our least likable traits. As our factories and our mills closed, one by one, we heard over and over that we would be stronger as a nation if we adjusted to becoming a service economy.  Many of us knew a scam when we saw one, and protested mightily.  Others kept harping about buggy whips or some such. 

A service economy meant only one thing:  The many would be serving the few, with no real rewards for the many. If we stopped building things, we would be dependent on other less stable economies for our goods.  We would lose an entire sector of workers without making provisions for a new kind of labor.  If wages went down--or became non-existent--our tax base would shrivel, as well.

So what did we do?  We went along.  We rewarded the super-rich, those vainglorious bastards who shipped our jobs and our wealth out of the country, not just by cutting their taxes to bare bones, but by treating them as whole-cloth Americans while they turned their backs on us and refused to do anything more for our country than live here.

We really should have known better, but once again, we've let big money nearly destroy us.  They've grown stronger, thanks to us, and now they've invaded our lives, right down to choosing the politicians most likely to let the super-rich maintain the status quo.

These are not the Rockefellers or the Vanderbilts--the money people who, ruthless and greedy as they were, hauled us into the industrial age and built this country, brick by brick.  They wanted it all, too, but at least they knew to keep it within our shores. They weren't above buying politicians in their day, but their power only went so far.  They were rich but their riches didn't own us for decades on end.

Now it does.  It buys politicians and courts and it buys silence.  It buys respect where respect is not deserved.  And we're growing poorer and shabbier every day.  We're a shadow of our former selves while the stockpiles of the very rich have grown beyond their wildest dreams--and our wildest imaginations.

They don't need us.  They don't want us.  And as long as we keep insisting that everything's gonna be all right, the super-rich will be alive and doing exceedingly well in America.

As for the rest of us--we'll be exactly where they want us.


(Read the article in Truthout that prompted this. It's an issue that needs to be up front and on our minds come the next election cycle. If we stop blaming them we'll have nobody to blame but ourselves.)

Note:  Cross-posted at Dagblog and Alan Colmes' Liberaland.  Featured on Crooks and Liars MBRU. Appreciate it!)

Sure Road to Success - Stick It to Labor

I can say this because I'm a liberal and a Michigander: My heart breaks for the laboring class in this country. I feel sorrow even for the workers who can't see that the unions are their only lifeline and inexplicably fight against them with a passion reserved only for one's worst enemies.

The working class, the significant majority in numbers, has somehow, ever since Ronald Reagan declared war on them, become the least of us--the minority. Privatization and outsourcing have rendered them nothing more than powerless drudges.

The working class is the laughingstock, the disposable, the darling of the politicians when they need their votes, and the most wretched of pariahs when the monied class sees their mountain top begin to erode.

The children of the working class hold no status and deserve no consideration. There are millions of people who would rather spend their money fighting against abortion laws than feed and care for poor children.

• More than 9 million children are estimated to be served by Feeding America, over 2 million of which are ages 5 and under, representing nearly 13 percent of all children under age 18 in the United States and over 72 percent of all children in poverty.
• According to the USDA, an estimated 12.4 million children lived in food insecure (low food security and very low food security) households in 2007.
• 8 states plus DC have more than 20 percent of children living in food insecure households, the states of Texas (23.58%) and Mississippi (22.84%) have the highest rates of children in households without consistent access to food.
• The top four states with the highest rate of food insecure children are Texas, Mississippi, Arizona, and New Mexico.

There is a concerted effort in this country to abolish public education, which means that the working majority would receive little or no schooling. Instead of working to fix the massive education problems that face us, there is a faction (which includes sitting politicians) that would, instead, like to see all education privatized and turned into a money-maker.

The working class is subject to scams that in any other culture would be considered criminal. PayDay loans and cash advance loans are legal in all but a few states. Credit card interest rates can run as high as 35% legally. Usury laws went by the wayside, along with even the most basic consumer protections. All that those concerned, including governmental agencies, can do now is put out bulletins warning against scammers.

The goal is the impoverishment of the working class, and I believe we're reaching that level faster than any Imperial Fat Cat could have imagined in his wildest wet dream.

What stuns me and keeps me awake at night is that there are millions of laborers here in America who see no disparity, no unfairness, no real need to change the status quo. Wages and protections go down at a dizzying pace while costs to live rise by the minute.

Robert Reich wrote in his blog today that manufacturing jobs are gone forever, so we might as well

. . .stop pining after the days when millions of Americans stood along assembly lines and continuously bolted, fit, soldered or clamped what went by. Those days are over. And stop blaming poor nations whose workers get very low wages. Of course their wages are low; these nations are poor. They can become more prosperous only by exporting to rich nations. When America blocks their exports by erecting tariffs and subsidizing our domestic industries, we prevent them from doing better. Helping poorer nations become more prosperous is not only in the interest of humanity but also wise because it lessens global instability.

Want to blame something? Blame new knowledge. Knowledge created the electronic gadgets and software that can now do almost any routine task. This goes well beyond the factory floor. America also used to have lots of elevator operators, telephone operators, bank tellers and service-station attendants. Remember? Most have been replaced by technology. Supermarket check-out clerks are being replaced by automatic scanners. The Internet has taken over the routine tasks of travel agents, real estate brokers, stock brokers and even accountants. With digitization and high-speed data networks a lot of back office work can now be done more cheaply abroad.

I don't know. Maybe that's what so depressing--that notion from even the most learned, the most logical, that we might as well just give up. Privatizing and outsourcing works. Our days of actually producing goods are over. Where it used to be patriotic to produce goods, we now find that the best way to keep our country strong is to send the workers packing.

So now what do we do? Here's Reich again:

The biggest challenge we face over the long term -- beyond the current depression -- isn't how to bring manufacturing back. It's how to improve the earnings of America's expanding army of low-wage workers who are doing personal service jobs in hotels, hospitals, big-box retail stores, restaurant chains, and all the other businesses that need bodies but not high skills.

Unbelievable. Even Reich. They got to Reich. Who's next? God??

Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here.)