But the Republicans for hundreds of years have supported the rich at the expense of the middle class and the poorest. The fact that people w the highest incomes in our nation pay meager taxes so the rest of the country can make them richer is truly an evil illness.
The twisted minds of these people and their supporters confirms what we’ve always known
Patricia, Is it a sickness? Some strange malady that plagues us, or is it the logical progression of Capitalism and the canard of the “Free Market?”
Personally I feel we are inexorably heading into NeoFeudalism, which a lot of Marxian economists see as hyperbole, since this all feels more like a powerful example of late stage Capitalism.
Regardless, Americans are totally in the grip of the canard that any constraints upon the rich is an impediment to system which will somehow “trickle down” down us peasants in a manner that makes life and the system a heaven on earth.
I love the phrase 'morbidly rich' because ultimately, greed and avarice will kill you. Look at Elon Musk; I remember years ago, when he just started Tesla, he appeared on a morning show with his first wife and family (young children at the time). He was an earnest, rather sweet genius who had all sorts of ideas to address our climate crisis. Fast forward; smokes way too much weed and is at times a paranoid psychopath. Greed will do that to you. I believe that Smith would agree; you cannot serve God and mammon, you must love one and despise the other. Do a deep dive on the etymology of the word 'mammon' - it means more than just money.
That these wealthiest , that occupy 1% of our population , who have benefitted most from the American Dream , are comfortable enhancing their dreams at the expense of the other 90%of population . GOP has embraced this vision and added additional support and benefits by allowing , encouraging and legislating against the poor and middle classes, minorities, and women . And they are taking it upon them selves to persecute people that don’t join in their corruption. LGBTQ population faces the
wrath and anger and false accusations by the GOP
To marginalize these minorities and in some cases try to exterminate them .
Leaving wealthy white old christian men making every decision based on retention of their paranoid powers and their stolen wealth from 90+% of Americans .
Thats who we want in power ?
Do not be naive the GOP will pretend they’ve had an awakening to needs of the poor and the middle class. They are lying , and as we know they are good at lying.
More good points. Ms. Lane. I also feel that there is in the uber-rich an inability to recognize the series of critical events that were pure chance. Like picking the right parents for starters.
Most people will honestly state that they work hard and most of the people who “make it.” attribute meritocracy as a major factor. They don’t like attribute their success to God having favored them, because it means that God doesn’t care about you or me as much. It is this blessed by God nonsense that provides the guilt free consciousness that justifies any taking advantage of others, because we all know that God does not enable bad people to prevail.
Countries and laws are created for the privileged. It has been thus throughout history. The legacy of America is that of the Norman conquest. William le betard conquerant was not interested in England, except as a tax farm
Here is a sample. We do not own property, we merely hold title to it in fee simple (the word fee is the cue, it is feudal). The practice evolved from Edward I and the 1st Baron's rebellion. The sovereign held all land in allodium (the right of conquest), and allowed loyal lieutenants, styled as barons, dukes, etc, to hold fief (an estate held in fueudal service). Depending on how he felt that day, or who had most ingratiated himself with the sovereign. A feudal lord (baron) might find himself dispossessed and his fiefdom awarded to another.
Edwards concession was the creation of the fee simple, one could hold title to the fief as though they owned it and even sell it or pass it on to heirs, so long as they pledged and maintained loyalty to the sovereign by paying taxes, contributing men and arms to his service, and obeying the laws of the sovereign. But only the sovereign had allodial land rights.
This concept remains today, the sovereign is no longer a person, but the amorphous county, which bands together to form a state a discussion here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County
The American revolution was fomented and started by wealthy, merchants in the north and planters in the south, each with their own motivation. The planters motive was to be the nobility of America, with titles,privileges and such, they had enough wealth to afford the prices demanded by the monopoly of the East India Company. Trade with England was their source of income.
The American constitution was written ,as we all know, by the ruling class of landed, white men, who set up the government specifically to protect and provide for maintenance of their power, and even the non governmental social instruments like the press and pulpit depended on their support and approval, thus did their bidding.
Very little has changed in that regard when the first adventurers and indentured servants set foot on that bit of swamp that became known as Jamestown, and 1620 when a group of 102 Putirans, of which 32 were religious fanatics known as Brownists, and who called themselves saints,and we call pilgrims (32 in number), halted thir trip to the Hudson River,to replenish their spply of beer by stopping at Massachussets bay.
The Virginia Company of London, built an economy based on free labor, indentured servitude and after 1654 slavery. While the New England weather and climate did not support a plantation economy, and Crown laws did not permit home grown industry,, it eventually developed an economy based on lumber and ship building with income derived from exports to Britain and Europe. And in the north the merchant class became the power structure, and the merchant class was of course, landed white men.
Nothing has changed,not really. In England and Europe, the owners, the ruling class, were visible,they road in carriages, wore feathers in their hats, dressed in ridiculous non functional clothes. Today they are invisible living in gated communities or on barely accessible spits of land like Martha's Vineyard, the Hamptons, islands and mountain refuges.
We don't call them lords, your grace, dukes or duchess, and they have cleverly commonized (did I just coin a word) the words sir or madam, so as to hide their privilege. They are virtually invisible because we don't confer them with titles, bow and curtsy, in fact they are occasionally lionized by their magazines, media, movies, television and even elected to high office. Very seldom to the House of Representatives, except to get their feet wet and as an apprentice, most often to the house of lords (the senate) and the presidency. 12 of our Presidents were scions of the First Families of Virginia, and then there is Donald Trump. Occasionally you will have an upstart, an anomaly, like Lincoln and Obama,who is not rooted in America's aristocracy,but who would not exist (hold office) were he not to display fealty to the real powers that be.
Trump was not an exception, though he held forth an image of being a populist, his very status as a member of the ruling class, and his known, by the real powers, as a corrupt, perverted, grifter meant that he would not come though on his promises and that it was all a con. The PTB, the American nobility knew, it was and is the suckers, motivated by press and pulpit in a culture war, that were conned. Conned or willingly deceived?
But they still control the country, not only through the bestowment of monetary gifts, like donations, but through the tremendous influence they wield in press, pulpit and a relatively new creation, non profit institutions like universities, think tanks and purpose driven public corporations.
As you noted in your article Thom, it required a Great Depression and a World War to produce the type of electoral change necessary to significantly change the trajectory of the Nation. I wonder if something that catastrophic would be sufficient to effect the changes that are required today? The plutocrats are even wealthier, more organized, and have greater societal and political control through their concentrated corporate ownership, modern technology, and available bribery funds?
I've read that DeSantis has lined up 22 billionaires to support his 2024 POTUS bid, including Charles Koch and other like minded, radical right-wing plutocrats. Florida used to be a purple state, but DeSantis has followed his marching orders and gerrymandered it into a red state. It's grossly inadequate State Budget of 105 billion is funded by a very low, regressive state income tax. The poorest people pay at a higher rate than the richest. Their Plan A is to mooch off the Federal Government and leave a lot of citizens stranded and stretched with higher property insurance premiums, if affordable insurance will be available. Hurricane Ian is estimated to cost 258 billion alone, and Florida has other major environmental problems its budget doesn't begin to adequately address. No wonder DeSantis has focused on not wearing masks or getting vaccinated, CTR where it doesn't exist, and going to war with teachers, librarians, Disneyland, minorities, and Dem AG's.
That link shows the bottom 50% of the global population holding more than $5 trillion, very similar to the bottom 50% of the USA, weirdly. Again, that is much more than the top 10 plutocrats, thankfully -- though $5 Trillion among 4 billion is only about $1200 each, and we know it is not evenly distributed.
This is based on analysis and data from Credit Suisse at that time:
Again, importantly, the point is that We the People, the 99%, the 90%, the most of us, are powerful not just in numbers but financially, if we will just use that knowledge to be more assertive and active in the management and governance of our country -- *not* that it's ok to maintain these Gilded Age levels of wealth disparity.
Question: Are the uber-wealthy people at the top more militant and more willing to resist attempts to rebalance the scales than the rich were in the last century? Will the white supremacists, white nationalists, Second Amendment freaks, free market fundamentalists, and religious fundamentalists unite to stop any attempt to decrease inequality and oligarchic power? I worry that a Biden or other president or other leaders who attempt to effect changes such as FDR managed and the mostly Democrats passed through Congress will have a much more difficult row to hoe. Have we crossed the Rubicon?
Why didn't you put your money where your mouth is? Where were you when we tried to raise the minimum wage? What happened to that cheaper, better health insurance? Why have you protected predatory loans, especially the one to students? And a million other questions about their VOTING RECORDS could be the way to fight the existing office holders.
What will be worrisome are new candidates that they dig up and put through the think-tank process. Face it, the tanks really know how to polish a turd and create talking points. There are a certain percentage of younger people that are conservative. Some fresh minority faces won't be that hard for them to find; they will be looking for some to cultivate.
Now if only they had an attic to lock Trump, Taylor-Greene, and Boebert in. At least we know they are coming to their devious senses. Maybe they will talk themselves into a corner on one or two things.
Wealth disparity needs a constant spotlight, but I don't know where the citation for a few billionaires owning more than the bottom 50% comes from. Robert Reich has said it, I believe.
The Federal Reserve says that the bottom 50% holds more than $4 Trillion in net wealth. The top few billionaires have had as much as half a trillion, $.5 Trillion, about, and that is extreme -- but nowhere close to the bottom 50% ( link below )
Why focus on this?
None of the top billionaires, as reported anyway, hold even 2 thousandths of our private wealth.
We need to know our total household wealth, and to assert our voting power over the wealthy. We have the money -- not them. We are the board of directors of the boards of directors.
But again, we need to know and report and constantly cite our massive collective net household wealth, to be able to know and say that the zillionaires are not our overlords, not with such small piddling fractions of our expansive net wealth of the households of our citizens. -- b.rad
ps this does not begin to account for the wealth of our federal enterprise, which I have to believe is the most solvent, richest entity in human history, by itself. But all we hear about is our federal 'debt.'
The inequality.org claims seem closest, but they cite 2016 for the bottom 50% and 2018 for the top 3 billionaires.
That page says the bottom 50% owns $250 billion, which is drastically smaller than the CBO and Fed numbers for any quarter that year. ( see Fed link at http://uswealthclock.com )
Weirdly, this suppresses the power of the poorest of us — it’s depressing and not right, and I believe it depresses and suppresses the vote of the poorest to constantly hear it.
The poorest half of us together have much, much more than the top few zillionaires, and the number is updated quarterly, so there is no excuse for getting it wrong.
Regardless, the mass of us have much, much, much more than the zillionaires, but we don’t act like it. I believe that is because we don’t hear and know the number, and don’t have it at the ready.
thanks — b.rad
ps extra thanks for the CBO link, it’s the only other place I know of to see the distribution and growth of wealth … seems it must be related to the Fed data
Once again , ‘the truth will set you free’ .
But the Republicans for hundreds of years have supported the rich at the expense of the middle class and the poorest. The fact that people w the highest incomes in our nation pay meager taxes so the rest of the country can make them richer is truly an evil illness.
The twisted minds of these people and their supporters confirms what we’ve always known
Patricia, Is it a sickness? Some strange malady that plagues us, or is it the logical progression of Capitalism and the canard of the “Free Market?”
Personally I feel we are inexorably heading into NeoFeudalism, which a lot of Marxian economists see as hyperbole, since this all feels more like a powerful example of late stage Capitalism.
Regardless, Americans are totally in the grip of the canard that any constraints upon the rich is an impediment to system which will somehow “trickle down” down us peasants in a manner that makes life and the system a heaven on earth.
I love the phrase 'morbidly rich' because ultimately, greed and avarice will kill you. Look at Elon Musk; I remember years ago, when he just started Tesla, he appeared on a morning show with his first wife and family (young children at the time). He was an earnest, rather sweet genius who had all sorts of ideas to address our climate crisis. Fast forward; smokes way too much weed and is at times a paranoid psychopath. Greed will do that to you. I believe that Smith would agree; you cannot serve God and mammon, you must love one and despise the other. Do a deep dive on the etymology of the word 'mammon' - it means more than just money.
That these wealthiest , that occupy 1% of our population , who have benefitted most from the American Dream , are comfortable enhancing their dreams at the expense of the other 90%of population . GOP has embraced this vision and added additional support and benefits by allowing , encouraging and legislating against the poor and middle classes, minorities, and women . And they are taking it upon them selves to persecute people that don’t join in their corruption. LGBTQ population faces the
wrath and anger and false accusations by the GOP
To marginalize these minorities and in some cases try to exterminate them .
Leaving wealthy white old christian men making every decision based on retention of their paranoid powers and their stolen wealth from 90+% of Americans .
Thats who we want in power ?
Do not be naive the GOP will pretend they’ve had an awakening to needs of the poor and the middle class. They are lying , and as we know they are good at lying.
More good points. Ms. Lane. I also feel that there is in the uber-rich an inability to recognize the series of critical events that were pure chance. Like picking the right parents for starters.
Most people will honestly state that they work hard and most of the people who “make it.” attribute meritocracy as a major factor. They don’t like attribute their success to God having favored them, because it means that God doesn’t care about you or me as much. It is this blessed by God nonsense that provides the guilt free consciousness that justifies any taking advantage of others, because we all know that God does not enable bad people to prevail.
Countries and laws are created for the privileged. It has been thus throughout history. The legacy of America is that of the Norman conquest. William le betard conquerant was not interested in England, except as a tax farm
Here is a sample. We do not own property, we merely hold title to it in fee simple (the word fee is the cue, it is feudal). The practice evolved from Edward I and the 1st Baron's rebellion. The sovereign held all land in allodium (the right of conquest), and allowed loyal lieutenants, styled as barons, dukes, etc, to hold fief (an estate held in fueudal service). Depending on how he felt that day, or who had most ingratiated himself with the sovereign. A feudal lord (baron) might find himself dispossessed and his fiefdom awarded to another.
Edwards concession was the creation of the fee simple, one could hold title to the fief as though they owned it and even sell it or pass it on to heirs, so long as they pledged and maintained loyalty to the sovereign by paying taxes, contributing men and arms to his service, and obeying the laws of the sovereign. But only the sovereign had allodial land rights.
This concept remains today, the sovereign is no longer a person, but the amorphous county, which bands together to form a state a discussion here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County
The American revolution was fomented and started by wealthy, merchants in the north and planters in the south, each with their own motivation. The planters motive was to be the nobility of America, with titles,privileges and such, they had enough wealth to afford the prices demanded by the monopoly of the East India Company. Trade with England was their source of income.
The American constitution was written ,as we all know, by the ruling class of landed, white men, who set up the government specifically to protect and provide for maintenance of their power, and even the non governmental social instruments like the press and pulpit depended on their support and approval, thus did their bidding.
Very little has changed in that regard when the first adventurers and indentured servants set foot on that bit of swamp that became known as Jamestown, and 1620 when a group of 102 Putirans, of which 32 were religious fanatics known as Brownists, and who called themselves saints,and we call pilgrims (32 in number), halted thir trip to the Hudson River,to replenish their spply of beer by stopping at Massachussets bay.
The Virginia Company of London, built an economy based on free labor, indentured servitude and after 1654 slavery. While the New England weather and climate did not support a plantation economy, and Crown laws did not permit home grown industry,, it eventually developed an economy based on lumber and ship building with income derived from exports to Britain and Europe. And in the north the merchant class became the power structure, and the merchant class was of course, landed white men.
Nothing has changed,not really. In England and Europe, the owners, the ruling class, were visible,they road in carriages, wore feathers in their hats, dressed in ridiculous non functional clothes. Today they are invisible living in gated communities or on barely accessible spits of land like Martha's Vineyard, the Hamptons, islands and mountain refuges.
We don't call them lords, your grace, dukes or duchess, and they have cleverly commonized (did I just coin a word) the words sir or madam, so as to hide their privilege. They are virtually invisible because we don't confer them with titles, bow and curtsy, in fact they are occasionally lionized by their magazines, media, movies, television and even elected to high office. Very seldom to the House of Representatives, except to get their feet wet and as an apprentice, most often to the house of lords (the senate) and the presidency. 12 of our Presidents were scions of the First Families of Virginia, and then there is Donald Trump. Occasionally you will have an upstart, an anomaly, like Lincoln and Obama,who is not rooted in America's aristocracy,but who would not exist (hold office) were he not to display fealty to the real powers that be.
Trump was not an exception, though he held forth an image of being a populist, his very status as a member of the ruling class, and his known, by the real powers, as a corrupt, perverted, grifter meant that he would not come though on his promises and that it was all a con. The PTB, the American nobility knew, it was and is the suckers, motivated by press and pulpit in a culture war, that were conned. Conned or willingly deceived?
But they still control the country, not only through the bestowment of monetary gifts, like donations, but through the tremendous influence they wield in press, pulpit and a relatively new creation, non profit institutions like universities, think tanks and purpose driven public corporations.
As you noted in your article Thom, it required a Great Depression and a World War to produce the type of electoral change necessary to significantly change the trajectory of the Nation. I wonder if something that catastrophic would be sufficient to effect the changes that are required today? The plutocrats are even wealthier, more organized, and have greater societal and political control through their concentrated corporate ownership, modern technology, and available bribery funds?
I've read that DeSantis has lined up 22 billionaires to support his 2024 POTUS bid, including Charles Koch and other like minded, radical right-wing plutocrats. Florida used to be a purple state, but DeSantis has followed his marching orders and gerrymandered it into a red state. It's grossly inadequate State Budget of 105 billion is funded by a very low, regressive state income tax. The poorest people pay at a higher rate than the richest. Their Plan A is to mooch off the Federal Government and leave a lot of citizens stranded and stretched with higher property insurance premiums, if affordable insurance will be available. Hurricane Ian is estimated to cost 258 billion alone, and Florida has other major environmental problems its budget doesn't begin to adequately address. No wonder DeSantis has focused on not wearing masks or getting vaccinated, CTR where it doesn't exist, and going to war with teachers, librarians, Disneyland, minorities, and Dem AG's.
As defined by their memoirs and documents, our founders absolutely did not design our
governments to accommodate corporate influence, power or control.
Our entire fed and State systems of governing were in fact created to protect the people from
the two enemies of which they warned, if not restrained would destroy America. The churched men
and the corporation . "Churched men " was their term for the Christian Right. Corporate men
were often referred to as "the moneyed men ". They defined both as "enemys within."
Further our economy was designed only for the people. Not for Wall Street Predators.
All twenty-three powerful regulations put in place by our founders to restrain corporate power
and protect the people... have been removed and destroyed.
WE SHOULD REPEAT AND SMEAR OUR ENEMY'S WITH THESE AXIOMS OF WISDOM,
ENDLESSLY AND REPEATEDLY.
Here is a great visualization of global wealth, from last September 2021 (Visual Capitalist):
<https://www.visualcapitalist.com/distribution-of-global-wealth-chart/>
That link shows the bottom 50% of the global population holding more than $5 trillion, very similar to the bottom 50% of the USA, weirdly. Again, that is much more than the top 10 plutocrats, thankfully -- though $5 Trillion among 4 billion is only about $1200 each, and we know it is not evenly distributed.
This is based on analysis and data from Credit Suisse at that time:
<https://www.credit-suisse.com/about-us-news/en/articles/news-and-expertise/global-wealth-report-2021-effects-of-covid-on-household-wealth-in-2020-202106.html>
Full report (pdf): <https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/about-us/research/publications/global-wealth-report-2021-en.pdf>
--
Again, importantly, the point is that We the People, the 99%, the 90%, the most of us, are powerful not just in numbers but financially, if we will just use that knowledge to be more assertive and active in the management and governance of our country -- *not* that it's ok to maintain these Gilded Age levels of wealth disparity.
The US numbers can be reached from <http://uswealthclock.com> -- best luck to US, b.rad
Question: Are the uber-wealthy people at the top more militant and more willing to resist attempts to rebalance the scales than the rich were in the last century? Will the white supremacists, white nationalists, Second Amendment freaks, free market fundamentalists, and religious fundamentalists unite to stop any attempt to decrease inequality and oligarchic power? I worry that a Biden or other president or other leaders who attempt to effect changes such as FDR managed and the mostly Democrats passed through Congress will have a much more difficult row to hoe. Have we crossed the Rubicon?
Why didn't you put your money where your mouth is? Where were you when we tried to raise the minimum wage? What happened to that cheaper, better health insurance? Why have you protected predatory loans, especially the one to students? And a million other questions about their VOTING RECORDS could be the way to fight the existing office holders.
What will be worrisome are new candidates that they dig up and put through the think-tank process. Face it, the tanks really know how to polish a turd and create talking points. There are a certain percentage of younger people that are conservative. Some fresh minority faces won't be that hard for them to find; they will be looking for some to cultivate.
Now if only they had an attic to lock Trump, Taylor-Greene, and Boebert in. At least we know they are coming to their devious senses. Maybe they will talk themselves into a corner on one or two things.
Wealth disparity needs a constant spotlight, but I don't know where the citation for a few billionaires owning more than the bottom 50% comes from. Robert Reich has said it, I believe.
The Federal Reserve says that the bottom 50% holds more than $4 Trillion in net wealth. The top few billionaires have had as much as half a trillion, $.5 Trillion, about, and that is extreme -- but nowhere close to the bottom 50% ( link below )
Why focus on this?
None of the top billionaires, as reported anyway, hold even 2 thousandths of our private wealth.
See <http://uswealthclock.com> and the sources ( Federal Reserve, Treasury )
We need to know our total household wealth, and to assert our voting power over the wealthy. We have the money -- not them. We are the board of directors of the boards of directors.
But again, we need to know and report and constantly cite our massive collective net household wealth, to be able to know and say that the zillionaires are not our overlords, not with such small piddling fractions of our expansive net wealth of the households of our citizens. -- b.rad
ps this does not begin to account for the wealth of our federal enterprise, which I have to believe is the most solvent, richest entity in human history, by itself. But all we hear about is our federal 'debt.'
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/just-8-men-own-same-wealth-half-world
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-bottom-half-of-america-has-half-the-wealth-it-did-30-years-ago/
https://www.businessinsider.com/bottom-half-americans-hold-2-percent-wealth-richest-have-third-2022-9
https://inequality.org/great-divide/bernie-3-billionaires-more-wealth-half-america/
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/14/richest-1-percent-now-own-half-the-worlds-wealth.html
It all depends on how you count, but the picture is crystal clear.
The inequality.org claims seem closest, but they cite 2016 for the bottom 50% and 2018 for the top 3 billionaires.
That page says the bottom 50% owns $250 billion, which is drastically smaller than the CBO and Fed numbers for any quarter that year. ( see Fed link at http://uswealthclock.com )
Weirdly, this suppresses the power of the poorest of us — it’s depressing and not right, and I believe it depresses and suppresses the vote of the poorest to constantly hear it.
The poorest half of us together have much, much more than the top few zillionaires, and the number is updated quarterly, so there is no excuse for getting it wrong.
Regardless, the mass of us have much, much, much more than the zillionaires, but we don’t act like it. I believe that is because we don’t hear and know the number, and don’t have it at the ready.
thanks — b.rad
ps extra thanks for the CBO link, it’s the only other place I know of to see the distribution and growth of wealth … seems it must be related to the Fed data