BadTux makes a very good point in this post: The Occupy Wall Street protests are a symptom of something that is very wrong in this country, namely, the hyper-concentration of wealth in this country in the hands of very few people.
We can fix things, now, and go back towards the days when workers were paid a living wage and the managers were paid a good amount, not a rapacious amount. Or the country can try to clamp down on the protestors.
But keep this in mind: The protests are a symptom of what is wrong. They are a symptom of the fact that class mobility has stagnated.* Masking or ignoring symptoms is a bad idea. It's like playing the radio louder to cover up the squeaking noise coming from the engine. Or taking aspirin to quiet that annoying pain in your chest. All masking symptoms does is ensure that when the problem does overcome the masking, it comes back stronger and louder.
Let's assume that the wealthy succeed, for now, in continuing on with their raping of the rest of America. When the blowup comes, either way, the rich will lose, for either they will have everything taken away from them in a violent revolution, or they will impose a police state. The former is self-evident. In the latter case, the rich are OK until those holding the guns ask themselves "why are we working for those guys" and then they take it for themselves.
If you think that is impossible, then ask "who is the richest man in Europe." You might be surprised to know that it is not a person with business acumen or inheritance. It is the man with the guns.
So this is the choice facing the very top of the pyramid: Engage in an open discussion, now, of how to reform the system so that the rest of Americans have a chance to succeed. We need to get back to the days when it was more merit-based than based on who your parents were.**
We can go back to making the inter-generational concentration of wealth disfavored once again, to reduce the importance of Lucky Sperm Lotto.*** Or we can kick this can down the road.
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* A key indication of that has been the ultra-conservative attack on public education.
** Anybody who believes that George W. Bush would have been president if he had grown up being raised by a single mother in Texas had better put down the meth pipe.
*** An exemption for family farms is good. An exemption for Koch Industries is not.
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5 comments:
I was raised in one of those "middle class" families in a far away place called Berkeley Ca.
I have seen the result and aftermath of a number of riots, first hand as a high school student. I too was raised to believe in the American way. I shuned all that in my late teens when I became 'aware' but I believed it was still a viable concept: work hard and get ahead.
NOW I see better, those were the very end of those days , then. I no longer have that opportunity, my kids never did, nor my Grandchildren. I worry as to what kind of world my Great Grandchild will grow up to.
We seem to be at a crossroad. Change or Die, as a country.
I wonder too which will win out. So many willingly ignorant people, they don't Want to understand. They don't Want to care, like sheep for the slaughter.
w3ski
Once upon a time, if you worked hard, obeyed your teachers, went to college, and did all the right things, you would get ahead in this country. Nowadays... not so much. One interesting figure I came across was that the median yearly personal income in America is around $25,000, which is pretty close to the "official" poverty level for a family of four. The only way most families make it is if two people are working (thus median household income of around $50K), which isn't the case in all too many families today thanks to so many jobs being outsourced to other countries. Unless you seriously insist that 50% of Americans are lazy good-for-nothing slackers (in which case you're delusional -- by all measures, Americans are the hardest working most productive workers on the planet), something is wrong.
Is OWS going to fix what's wrong? Nope, OWS is just a symptom, like a fever when you have the flu. Is suppressing OWS going to fix what's wrong? Nope. But if things don't get fixed so that going to school, working hard and doing the right thing once again allows a working man/woman to earn a living wage, Bad Things are going to happen...
- Badtux the Apocalyptic Penguin
It was clear to some as early as the late '60s that class mobility had begun to stagnate.
As for the rich, I can only conclude that they really don't have any sense that their actions have consequences, or that consequences may be permanent.
If there are better tools to promote social mobility than the estate tax, I can't think of one. But around here, those median-income people vote for candidates who call it the "death tax" and want to repeal it. Go figure.
But Joe, the Democrats want to take their guns away, gay marry their children, and outlaw their religion. So of course they have to vote Republican. Duh. Get with the program, you'd know all this if you watched Fox News every night!
- Badtux the Tongue-in-beak Penguin
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