One of the few things that garners any bipartisan support these days is that America is embroiled in a Class War. The wealthy are doing OK by their own admission. They just want to be more OKer than they are and are willing to hire lobbyists, fund gigantic super-pacs, shut factories, or buy politicians to do it. Their chant is, “Taxes? Taxes? We don’t need no stinking taxes…you do…and more of ‘em too!”
FUNNY HOW THAT WORKS OUT - Everyone seems to see the widening wealth gap as a bad thing...except the wealthy.
Regardless of how the economy is doing it seems the super-rich come out ahead. The rest of the nation, not so much.
If you’re on the lowest economic rung you might as well just step off now, because your life is getting steadily worse – even if you’re only there “temporarily” while you’re laid off from a job that’s not coming back, waiting for the foreclosure notice, or for the repo-man to come for your car or first-born child – whichever fetches the most money. You folks living in homeless encampments have no worries at all, malnutrition and illness will kill you off soon enough. And hey – no death panels to worry about thanks to the reforms of the healthcare reforms!
You folks in the middle? Sure, you have to work two or three jobs but the foreclosure notice hasn’t arrived yet. You’ll squeeze another 50,000 miles out of your AMC Gremlin, while choosing which meal to forego to pay BP for $3.00 per gallon (and rising) gas. Yes, you’re worried about a leak in the roof, but you’ll cover it with a cheap tarp. Besides, if it causes damage it won’t be your problem when your friendly CitiBank “wealth manager” breaks drops in to get the key.
His house. His leak.
The Express Elevator to Fabulous Wealth
But those folks on the top? They’re not even on the ladder anymore. They’ve jumped in a plush, express elevator that goes so high it doesn’t even have up buttons. However, they keep the elevator operator because, well, why not? He tells good jokes and they can afford him.
Many people think this outsized upper-end income growth is just fantastic. It’s the American way they say. It’s what the free market dictates they explain. Besides, they can’t be expected to “compete” with Chinese prison labor without the “efficiencies” (layoffs and declining wages) for which they’ve so handsomely rewarded themselves. Oddly enough, this view happens to be most prevalent among those who are making the big bucks.
Who could’ve guessed?
But as the folks in the newly remodelled corner offices take off for their Aspen homes via private dirigible, the US wealth gap grows and their inflated sense of self-worth shines like a new Maserati.
The World According to Greenspan
You hear about the wealth gap sometimes, mostly from those “liberal” media outlets like the Wall St. Journal. But now even Ayn Rand‘s evil spawn, Alan Greenspan, is sensing a little irrational exuberance in the wage disparity.
He understands that when the proletariat complains about The Suits’® penchant for uber-high living and not having a clue about what the average American puts up with, it’s more than just a case of sour grapes. He can see that if we expect to put a chicken in every pot, we need someone to grow the grain to feed the chickens and make the pot in which to cook them. Today, many don’t even have the pot left to piss in and they get their chicken on KFC’s liver and gizzards night.
The thing is that Ayn Rand and hundreds of executives notwithstanding, we’re close to killing the chicken and that’s bad for 100% of workers. The market for chickens and pots is pretty small when it’s restricted to the Top 1 Percenters®. But, the other 99%? Now that’s a big market, but nobody’s going after it except the Top 1 Percenters® who are the only ones left with enough cash to make the weekly chicken and pot-buying trip to the Super Wal-Mart.
Dear rich and powerful persons, feast well because you’re steadily choking your own chicken.
JACKBOOTS OR FLIP FLOPS? - The government's vow to "keep a boot" on BP's neck enraged the Conservosphere and turned out to be more like "a flip flop" on BPs neck anyway. Now neither side wants to talk about it.
Back when the Gulf Oil Disaster was only an oily sheen in the public’s eye, White House flak Robert Gibbs pledged the Obamites would, “keep a boot on the throat” of BP to ensure they did what they repeatedly have pledged – “do the right thing”.
At the time, the Conservasphere went ballistic at the White House employing such, “over heated rhetoric, half-truths, and down right distortions” to hold BP accountable. I experienced some of the same vitriol from free marketeers for my post, “The Gulf of Gelatinous Goo and the Tarball Etouffee” and I saw several other similar posts and comment threads too. The fact that Obama’s jackboot to the throat turned out to be more like a stomp administered by a 6-year old using her Hello Kitty flip flops doesn’t seem to have mattered much.
BP Overcome By a Huge Run of Bad Luck
The long and short of the free market cum Teabagger rhetoric revolved around the curious opinion that BP – apparently like every other corporation on the planet – was merely a good corporate citizen overcome by a huge run of bad luck, over-regulation, and the public’s unreasonable desire to dismantle the American economic system oil barrel by oil barrel. In other words, BP was getting a raw deal and if only left alone, would use a firm, earnest handshake and the power of the marketplace to correct and fully atone for what it had wrought.
So how’s that working out for you guys now?
Let’s forget for the moment that Tony “I Want My Life Back” Hayward more than rivalled Gibbs’ words in their dumbness and sometimes faux harshness. Let’s forget that BP wouldn’t know a promise from an oily pelican. Let’s even forget that the sheer grandiosity of BP’s ineptitude makes Bush’s Iraq and Afghanistan war performances look like the 30-day cake walks that was promised.
But, BP isn’t alone in its ineptitude. Almost every day we’re treated to a story about how the administration has colluded with the British Pissants to make the hook from which they should be hung as small and painless as possible. Or even better, not even force the skeevy bastards to look at it for fear of hurting their delicate sensibilities.
America Doesn’t Torture
Remember, America doesn’t torture, especially when you’re a big campaign contributor.
There is a lesson here, as expensive, horrible, and demoralizing it may be. Never put all of your faith in the much vaunted private sector to correct anything beyond the underpayment of the CEO’s last quarterly bonus. They will rob you blind and then make you apologize for the robbery…for a fee.
There’s another lesson too. Never put all your faith in government. It’s a publicly held sausage maker using cast-off oil corporate chitlins for ingredients and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of We the People (Very) LLP, but entirely financed by its board of private-sector directors.
Of course, there are sops to those gullible enough to believe that mere words would mean jack-shit in the scheme of things. We still get daily news briefings designed to suck the truly naive and daft into the market uber alles mentality. And yes, our iron-willed-willed Congress is looking for truth, justice, and the American way, but I’d lay a bet that the only malfeasance they’ll find is why a kangaroo “BP Squad” was empaneled to begin with.
As a nation, we’d better have some healthy mistrust for our chosen BFFs – government and private – and look at things realistically.
What better way than to lace up the truly independent jackboots and do some ass kickin’?
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