Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson made your point in the 1960's: “If a man has an apartment stacked to the ceiling with newspapers, we called him crazy. If a woman has a trailer house, full of cats, we call her nuts. But when people pathologically hoard so much cash that they impoverish an entire nation, we put them on the cover of Fortune magazine and pretend that they are role models”. --Lester B Pearson, Prime Minister of Canada (1963-1968).
I just watched a discussion on how the Larry Summers types, rich academics, rich politicians, TechBros, NEPO babies, and business/entertainment people view things as outsiders and insiders.
The Insiders get to "do" what and who they want. They also keep their mouths shut in order to STAY on the inside.
Epstein-Gate is a perfect example. I don't think any of us have any idea how many of these f*ckers are out there that will have to be forced to testify, when they could have come forward on their own. They could ask for immunity (depending on their involvement) and forgiveness, but then they would become an OUTSIDER. Horrors!
Hope they have memorized their Fifth Amendment rights. See you in the streets.
In order to get immunity, could be forced to waive 5th amendment protection.
Besides alleged perps, IMHO every member of Mar a Lago during the 2000-2008 period are potential witnesses. Every employee, delivery person, mail person, etc who serviced Epstein's residences is a potential witness. Add every payee on the financial records.
Amazing it is how the acts of parasitic wasps, sucking the life out of their victims, parallels the acts of the parasitic WASPs that suck the life out of their society.
Thom: "The WSJ article then reveals the final stage of this sickness: once the morbidly rich have extracted so much from society that it begins to crumble, they abandon society entirely."
First, I'd like to believe that those who are involved in crime, i.e. bribery and extortion, will be brought to justice. Virtually all of the perps deal in worldwide markets and are exposed to the rule of law in many countries and jurisdictions.
Second, it's nature's way that perps sometimes get their calling in the market. Today, crpto has reached their lowest prices since the scandal a few years ago. It looks like Melania and Trump crypto are verging on becoming completely worthless.
Third, at the same time that greed has overcome the adminikstration,so has treason.
From Heather Cox Richardson:
"On Friday evening, the Wall Street Journal published an article about the Trump administration’s negotiations with Russia over Ukraine that illuminated the administration’s approach to the world at home, as well as overseas. Authors Drew Hinshaw, Benoit Faucon, Rebecca Ballhaus, Thomas Grove, and Joe Parkinson explained that the administration’s plan for peace was a Russian-led blueprint for joint U.S.-Russia economic cooperation that would funnel contracts for rebuilding Ukraine, extracting the valuable minerals in the Arctic, and even space exploration to a few favored U.S. and Russian businessmen.
"Many of those business leaders have close ties to the White House.
“Russia has so many vast resources, vast expanses of land,” Trump envoy Steve Witkoff told the journalists. “If we do all that, and everybody’s prospering and they’re all a part of it, and there’s upside for everybody, that’s going to naturally be a bulwark against future conflicts there. Because everybody’s thriving.”
"On ABC’s This Week this morning, Representative Don Bacon (R-NE), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, said to host Jonathan Karl: “Putin’s the invader, he’s the dictator, he’s murdered all his opponents. But I just don’t see that moral clarity coming from the White House. We saw that Wall Street Journal article yesterday that many people around the president are hoping to make billions of dollars—these are all billionaires in their own right—from…Russia, if they get a favorable agreement with Ukraine. That alarms me tremendously. I want to see America being the leader of the free world, standing up for what’s right, not for who can make a buck…. I don’t want to see a foreign policy based on greed. I want to see it based on doing the right thing.”
Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which operates the Truth Social platform, trades on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol DJT.
-Current Price: The stock price is approximately $11.66 per share as of market activity on December 1, 2025.
=Performance: DJT has experienced significant volatility since going public. It has tumbled approximately 75% since its initial trading peak and is currently near its 52-week low range (between $10.18 and $43.46).
In the cryptocurrency market, several highly speculative "meme coins" named for Donald Trump exist. These are not officially issued by his company but have become popular speculative assets.
-Official Trump (TRUMP): This is a prominent meme coin trading around $5.75 per token today.
-Performance: Like DJT stock, these meme coins have been highly volatile, with the TRUMP token down over 8% in the last week and significantly below its all-time high of $73.43.
Melania Meme price today is $0.14. In the last 24 hours Melania Meme's price moved -12.18%. The current MELANIA to USD conversion rate is $0.14 per MELANIA. The circulating supply of Melania Meme is 834,968,732 MELANIA and the current Melania Meme market cap is $118,776,807.
Maybe the question we should ask is not how we can end this vicious circle, but with Trump in almost full control of all three branches of our government, will we ever get out of this one?
The billionaires know the end is near, and are using their billions to isolate themselves from the inevitable by building billionaire bunkers choose an article https://medium.com/search?q=billionaire+bunkers. Even private cities. A recent short lived series "Paradise" was about one such in Colorado. It is not just jet planes and gated communities, it is also private islands, floating cities
Several floating cities are in the planning or development stages, with the most prominent being the Maldives Floating City, a real project designed to be a self-sufficient and climate-resilient urban center. Other proposed cities include Dogen City in Japan, a futuristic and self-sufficient metropolis with spacecraft launch sites, and Blue Estate in the Caribbean, designed to host 10,000 people with a budget of $10 billion. Additionally, the proposed Oceanix City in South Korea is a $6 billion project that aims to be the first floating city to rise with sea levels.
And even an underwater city: The "Ocean Spiral" is a proposed underwater city by the Japanese construction company Shimizu Corporation. The project is a self-sustaining city with a floating sphere connected to a spiral-shaped structure descending to the seabed, designed to house up to 5,000 people and generate its own energy. It aims to be a futuristic solution for sustainable living, addressing land scarcity and climate challenges.
What is left out of the equation is labor, no city can exist without the commoner, labor, perhaps they think robots and AI can do the job, but there tasks like waste disposal, and equipment, like Robots, break down, and need repair, and parts have to be produced, that means access to natural resources and production. Steel plants, plastic factories, oil, transport.
Social isolation is not good for one's health. We must ignored these Fat Rats so they will evevntually starve themselves and come out of hiding join the real world as we are ahead of them with our aquired knowledge and having fun at their expense,
I do not understand how your comment is relevant to the conversation.
As a stand alone comment. If you mean the billionaires being socially isolated, not at all true, they would be surrounded with a support staff and a palace guard of sorts., and then they have each other.
Problem is the more support staff they have the bigger the problem, food supply, waste disposal, entertainment.
I spent my 18th -19th year at an isolated outpost 90 personnel, it was miserable after three months. The people at those research stations in Antarctica, must sufffer from PTSD being forced to live with each other for long periods.
As far as joining the "real world", the reason they would be in the bunkers is because the "real world" is unlivable. If the global wet bulb temperature reachs 95 degrees fahrehheit, all mammalian life perishes.
If sea levels rise and flood the cities on the shore, the population will be forced to flee inland, and there is not enough food, much less other support for such large numbers, there will be fighting, and even cannabilization.
The world that Thiel and the other wealth addicts want to live in reminds me of "Forbidden Planet" (1956). A sci-fi movie. A classic where a rescue crew discovers a deadly secret on a distant world.
In the late 22nd century, Starship C-57D travels to Altair IV to investigate why a scientific colony has gone silent.
Commander J.J. Adams and his crew find only two survivors: Dr. Morbius (emblematic of the wealth addicts) and his daughter, Altaira, along with their servant, Robby the Robot.
Morbius lusts after his daughter. Sound familiar?
After she kisses a crew member, her previously docile pet tiger attacks her. Luckily, the Captain's blaster works, disintegrating the tiger in midair.
That tiger foreshadows Morbius's (Donald's) generation of an incestually jealous, homicidal monster from his ID.
This was a movie based on "The Tempest," but there are certain similarities to the Musks, Woody Allens, Zuckerbergs, Mercers, Kochs, Alitos, Thomases, and Thiels of our world. They disdain the ruck, and some crave solitude, ideally with a close family member — if you know what I mean.
They are fortunate men with access to abnormal amounts of fame and fortune.
They must be throttled and stopped.
They are of a kind, a type of monied crackhead, where wealth is crack. They have a most deleterious effect upon society. They love to distract us with poverty, intraclass warfare, high anxiety, sports, disease, race hate, propaganda, war and misogyny, among other stuff.
Well, that was one strident, not to mention shrill, analogy.
VOTE. No matter what. [n.b. 84% of Republicans approve of this kakistocracy/plutocracy]
Having some super-rich family members and friends, I have observed that many elites are not equipped psychologically to cope with the cost of acquiring great wealth. First, once you become celebrated as $pecial, you lose anonymity. Second, you lose trust & friends. You begin to view everybody around you (sometimes even spouses) as out to exploit your wealth and influence. Both of these changes are the main reasons that the wealthy cloister.
An example of lost anonymity: Back in the '90's, I was in NYC for a psychology conference. While my colleagues and I dined, we were interrupted by a commotion at the back of our classy restaurant. A group of guests were exiting from a private enclave at the back, led by Mick Jagger and his high-rolling stones. They were mobbed by guests showering them with accolades. Not all wealthy people are as celebrated as rock stars, but they all get interrupted now and then in public places by sycophants seeking deals and influence.
An example of lost trust and friends: A student emailed me after attending a lecture I gave at Dresden Technical University soon after the "wall" came down. Over time, I began to mentor him. Stefan was a very bright kid, and we now and then hooked up when I was in town doing consulting work with the Saxon government. Junior year, I encouraged him to drop out of college to join a group forming an online business. He could always finish school later if it did not work out - which it did not. After college, Stef started his own online retail business, which soon dominated the entire EU market. After becoming super-rich, Stefan's emails stopped coming. When I asked if he no longer wanted to be friends, he said he had more important things to do. Ouch!
I have a number of stories like these that similarly validate how great wealth really does isolate one socially - even to the point of losing old friends and having to live a cloistered life in luxury. The super-rich usually do lose touch with normal life, and begin to live in an alternative reality. Funny, you probably would never think of riding the bus or subway as a privilege in contrast to having to travel locked in a limo.
The ultra wealthy do not "lose" their (previously) less ultra wealthy friends- they jettison them into the trash bin named "less wealthy and less desirable".
And yet we collectively do the morbidly rich"s bidding like rats following the Pied Piper. We buy things we don't need, go places that are overrun by other seeking a brief escape, and all the while complaining about the cost of eggs. Many called for a boycott of Black Friday for example but yet there were record sales. We have to stop doing their bidding, period. Then we need to contain the corporations, stop buying their crap and limit their power. And no more excessive wealth. Put a cap on how much wealth any individual can have. If they threaten to leave, let them. They aren't paying their fair share anyway.
Reclaiming a fair society will be complicated, but we need to start. Given the success of Mamdani it looks like some people are ready for change. We need more people like him and they are out there.
Thanks Thom. My naivete surprises me, I had no idea we had so many rich people living apart from us. Apparently, they feel no sense of country, or care for their fellow citizens welfare. Everything is for their taking the rest be damned. Have generation after generation of passed on wealth created a physically and mentally detached segment of the population?
My reaction, same as it ever was... I looked up the Talking Heads song "Once in a Lifetime"
we repeat the same patterns and make the same mistakes. Maybe the fact that there are more of us then them, we can restrain the Oligarchy. Collective Solidarity. Those of us that know it doesn't have to be this way must continue to speak up. Thank you Hartmann Report for speaking up!
While what you say about the morbidly rich and their sequestration from the suffering their greed and undue influence impart upon the rest of us is true, your assertion that "it’s happening today in the aftermath of the Reagan/Bush/Trump Revolution" exemplifies the damage done by your protection of the Democratic Party. All three Democratic administrations from Bill Clinton to Obama to Biden, saw massive transfers of wealth to the 0.1% as well as deregulation and consolidation leading to their takeover of health care, housing, education and the media. You are the one who was supposed to be fighting back against them, not protecting those responsible. This type of ahistorical partisan propaganda only reinforces the misinformation being spread by a consolidated media in the wake of Bill Clinton's Telecommunications Act of 1996. While there is no question you have a grasp of history using it as a political weapon to protect Democrats rather than an example to arm your followers with useful information in their political decision making means you are part of the problem. It is also suspect that you have completely avoided discussing the phenomenon of Mamdani, likely because it reflects poorly upon the Democratic Party as a whole.
I have to agree, given the wealth that some of the top politicians in both parties have accumulated. OF course Joe Biden's estimated net worth of $10 million, the Clintons' estimated $120 million, the Obamas' $140 million or on the other "side" (does it really matter at this level of power?) Mitch McConnell's $50 million are chump change for the Uber Rich. But such people are useful "indoor servants" for the plantation owners. Anyway, I suspect that the super rich have their escape hatches all set up in to go abroad and are ready to bail if things get really bad here.
I agree, which is why I noted his worth is apparently so much less than the others. Though to be fair they have had much more time to write books that often almost nobody reads (but donors buy) and make speeches that go nowhere but are well paid by the same groups.
Incidentally regarding my comment about these super-rich likely being ready to leave, I suspect their attitude is similar to that of ship owners who register their vessels in countries with easy laws so they can fly “flags of convenience”. Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands are examples. So in a similar way being an “American” may only be useful for the moment. If this government cracks down on them, or things fall apart here, there will be no show of loyalty in pulling out, and maybe taking everything with them. And if the dollar crashes…well, they own a lot of stuff in other places and other currencies.
This seems like a case of “life imitating” art; in this case, the ultra-wealthy are re-creating the escapist parallel society envisioned by Ayn Rand at the end of “Atlas Shrugged.”
"Wynwood’s high-end Eponymous art gallery set a new purchase record when it sold Jeffrey Edelman’s “Ungrounded” for $5 million. The multimedia piece is composed of soil, rock, and air, as it is a two-foot-deep hole the artist dug in his backyard.
“It signifies the deep pit of despair inherent to life,” explained Edelman, standing next to his hole. A tall, lanky man of slight build who hadn’t shaved in weeks, he sported a pair of bedazzled Converses, designer overalls, no shirt, horn-rimmed glasses, and a coonskin hat.
“We are creatures of the dirt, and to dirt we shall return,” pontificated Edelman. “And yet we avoid the dirt at all costs by bathing daily, cleaning our fingernails, vacuuming our houses. We dig the dirt out of ourselves, forming our own subconscious holes…” The artist droned for another 15 minutes, but this reporter was unable to follow his stream of conscious bullshit.
“It’s the most beautiful piece I ever purchased,” gushed Victor Maira, the Brazilian construction mogul who bought the work. “It’s incredible, it’s meaningful, it’s…” he paused for effect. “Deep!” Silva laughed riotously at his own joke.
Asked how he would transport “Ungrounded” to join the rest of his collection, Silva looked insulted. “You can’t transport a hole any more than you can transport a piece of sky! It’s just a lack of ground!”
"When I suggested he dig up the soil surrounding this hole, Silva turned apoplectic. “You’d just have a pile of dirt!” he yelled. “Do you expect me to place a $5 million mound of soil in my living room!?”
"So the hole will remain in Edelman’s back yard. According to the artist, a family of possums recently moved into the multimillion dollar artwork, completely oblivious to the astronomical price of their new home."
The solution is as "simple" as it has always been: to replace corrupt private finance with public finance. It doesn't have to happen all at once. We can leverage change by creating a public banking structure, an infrastructure bank and a system of postal banking, to eliminate paying tax dollars on compounding interest to these oligarchs but to build public coffers instead. Undertake rigorous regulation of corrupt corporate prerogatives and end their political spending, undertake a rebirth of the public trust. It's completing the democratic revolution, and can spread around the globe to a pleading public just as political revolutions did in the late 1700s-early 1800s.
It "only" takes public awareness, perseverance, and commitment. We have everything to gain, especially survival of the 6th Mass Extinction and the end of global warming.
The fact is the only way in truth and by math to have hundreds of billionaires is by having millions of people living in abject poverty. Only the number of ultra poor makes it possible. That means only a national policy to generate poverty makes this immoral condition possible. When everybody has a living income it makes it near impossible to accumulate that much. Maybe 2 or 3 can do it because they actually have the talent. The only way without it is by mass poverty as policy. In the south they long know how to produce long term generational poverty. Simply insure the young females get pregnant early and they will not get the experience and or training that allows them to get a good job. Once caught in the trap the only wealth they can have is in the number of children they have.
Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson made your point in the 1960's: “If a man has an apartment stacked to the ceiling with newspapers, we called him crazy. If a woman has a trailer house, full of cats, we call her nuts. But when people pathologically hoard so much cash that they impoverish an entire nation, we put them on the cover of Fortune magazine and pretend that they are role models”. --Lester B Pearson, Prime Minister of Canada (1963-1968).
One of his grandsons was a lawyer here in Baghdad By the Sea.
And then there are the secrets.....
I just watched a discussion on how the Larry Summers types, rich academics, rich politicians, TechBros, NEPO babies, and business/entertainment people view things as outsiders and insiders.
The Insiders get to "do" what and who they want. They also keep their mouths shut in order to STAY on the inside.
Epstein-Gate is a perfect example. I don't think any of us have any idea how many of these f*ckers are out there that will have to be forced to testify, when they could have come forward on their own. They could ask for immunity (depending on their involvement) and forgiveness, but then they would become an OUTSIDER. Horrors!
Hope they have memorized their Fifth Amendment rights. See you in the streets.
In order to get immunity, could be forced to waive 5th amendment protection.
Besides alleged perps, IMHO every member of Mar a Lago during the 2000-2008 period are potential witnesses. Every employee, delivery person, mail person, etc who serviced Epstein's residences is a potential witness. Add every payee on the financial records.
Amazing it is how the acts of parasitic wasps, sucking the life out of their victims, parallels the acts of the parasitic WASPs that suck the life out of their society.
Good analogy
Thom: "The WSJ article then reveals the final stage of this sickness: once the morbidly rich have extracted so much from society that it begins to crumble, they abandon society entirely."
First, I'd like to believe that those who are involved in crime, i.e. bribery and extortion, will be brought to justice. Virtually all of the perps deal in worldwide markets and are exposed to the rule of law in many countries and jurisdictions.
Second, it's nature's way that perps sometimes get their calling in the market. Today, crpto has reached their lowest prices since the scandal a few years ago. It looks like Melania and Trump crypto are verging on becoming completely worthless.
Third, at the same time that greed has overcome the adminikstration,so has treason.
From Heather Cox Richardson:
"On Friday evening, the Wall Street Journal published an article about the Trump administration’s negotiations with Russia over Ukraine that illuminated the administration’s approach to the world at home, as well as overseas. Authors Drew Hinshaw, Benoit Faucon, Rebecca Ballhaus, Thomas Grove, and Joe Parkinson explained that the administration’s plan for peace was a Russian-led blueprint for joint U.S.-Russia economic cooperation that would funnel contracts for rebuilding Ukraine, extracting the valuable minerals in the Arctic, and even space exploration to a few favored U.S. and Russian businessmen.
"Many of those business leaders have close ties to the White House.
“Russia has so many vast resources, vast expanses of land,” Trump envoy Steve Witkoff told the journalists. “If we do all that, and everybody’s prospering and they’re all a part of it, and there’s upside for everybody, that’s going to naturally be a bulwark against future conflicts there. Because everybody’s thriving.”
"On ABC’s This Week this morning, Representative Don Bacon (R-NE), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, said to host Jonathan Karl: “Putin’s the invader, he’s the dictator, he’s murdered all his opponents. But I just don’t see that moral clarity coming from the White House. We saw that Wall Street Journal article yesterday that many people around the president are hoping to make billions of dollars—these are all billionaires in their own right—from…Russia, if they get a favorable agreement with Ukraine. That alarms me tremendously. I want to see America being the leader of the free world, standing up for what’s right, not for who can make a buck…. I don’t want to see a foreign policy based on greed. I want to see it based on doing the right thing.”
Just reporting. This is not financial advice.
Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which operates the Truth Social platform, trades on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol DJT.
-Current Price: The stock price is approximately $11.66 per share as of market activity on December 1, 2025.
=Performance: DJT has experienced significant volatility since going public. It has tumbled approximately 75% since its initial trading peak and is currently near its 52-week low range (between $10.18 and $43.46).
In the cryptocurrency market, several highly speculative "meme coins" named for Donald Trump exist. These are not officially issued by his company but have become popular speculative assets.
-Official Trump (TRUMP): This is a prominent meme coin trading around $5.75 per token today.
-Performance: Like DJT stock, these meme coins have been highly volatile, with the TRUMP token down over 8% in the last week and significantly below its all-time high of $73.43.
Melania Meme price today is $0.14. In the last 24 hours Melania Meme's price moved -12.18%. The current MELANIA to USD conversion rate is $0.14 per MELANIA. The circulating supply of Melania Meme is 834,968,732 MELANIA and the current Melania Meme market cap is $118,776,807.
Maybe the question we should ask is not how we can end this vicious circle, but with Trump in almost full control of all three branches of our government, will we ever get out of this one?
The billionaires know the end is near, and are using their billions to isolate themselves from the inevitable by building billionaire bunkers choose an article https://medium.com/search?q=billionaire+bunkers. Even private cities. A recent short lived series "Paradise" was about one such in Colorado. It is not just jet planes and gated communities, it is also private islands, floating cities
Several floating cities are in the planning or development stages, with the most prominent being the Maldives Floating City, a real project designed to be a self-sufficient and climate-resilient urban center. Other proposed cities include Dogen City in Japan, a futuristic and self-sufficient metropolis with spacecraft launch sites, and Blue Estate in the Caribbean, designed to host 10,000 people with a budget of $10 billion. Additionally, the proposed Oceanix City in South Korea is a $6 billion project that aims to be the first floating city to rise with sea levels.
And even an underwater city: The "Ocean Spiral" is a proposed underwater city by the Japanese construction company Shimizu Corporation. The project is a self-sustaining city with a floating sphere connected to a spiral-shaped structure descending to the seabed, designed to house up to 5,000 people and generate its own energy. It aims to be a futuristic solution for sustainable living, addressing land scarcity and climate challenges.
What is left out of the equation is labor, no city can exist without the commoner, labor, perhaps they think robots and AI can do the job, but there tasks like waste disposal, and equipment, like Robots, break down, and need repair, and parts have to be produced, that means access to natural resources and production. Steel plants, plastic factories, oil, transport.
And what's to keep the laborers and guards from turning on them?
The same thing that kept the serfs from overthrowing the lords of the manor, the barons. Anyway, not my problem or concern
Social isolation is not good for one's health. We must ignored these Fat Rats so they will evevntually starve themselves and come out of hiding join the real world as we are ahead of them with our aquired knowledge and having fun at their expense,
I do not understand how your comment is relevant to the conversation.
As a stand alone comment. If you mean the billionaires being socially isolated, not at all true, they would be surrounded with a support staff and a palace guard of sorts., and then they have each other.
Problem is the more support staff they have the bigger the problem, food supply, waste disposal, entertainment.
I spent my 18th -19th year at an isolated outpost 90 personnel, it was miserable after three months. The people at those research stations in Antarctica, must sufffer from PTSD being forced to live with each other for long periods.
As far as joining the "real world", the reason they would be in the bunkers is because the "real world" is unlivable. If the global wet bulb temperature reachs 95 degrees fahrehheit, all mammalian life perishes.
If sea levels rise and flood the cities on the shore, the population will be forced to flee inland, and there is not enough food, much less other support for such large numbers, there will be fighting, and even cannabilization.
The world that Thiel and the other wealth addicts want to live in reminds me of "Forbidden Planet" (1956). A sci-fi movie. A classic where a rescue crew discovers a deadly secret on a distant world.
In the late 22nd century, Starship C-57D travels to Altair IV to investigate why a scientific colony has gone silent.
Commander J.J. Adams and his crew find only two survivors: Dr. Morbius (emblematic of the wealth addicts) and his daughter, Altaira, along with their servant, Robby the Robot.
Morbius lusts after his daughter. Sound familiar?
After she kisses a crew member, her previously docile pet tiger attacks her. Luckily, the Captain's blaster works, disintegrating the tiger in midair.
That tiger foreshadows Morbius's (Donald's) generation of an incestually jealous, homicidal monster from his ID.
This was a movie based on "The Tempest," but there are certain similarities to the Musks, Woody Allens, Zuckerbergs, Mercers, Kochs, Alitos, Thomases, and Thiels of our world. They disdain the ruck, and some crave solitude, ideally with a close family member — if you know what I mean.
They are fortunate men with access to abnormal amounts of fame and fortune.
They must be throttled and stopped.
They are of a kind, a type of monied crackhead, where wealth is crack. They have a most deleterious effect upon society. They love to distract us with poverty, intraclass warfare, high anxiety, sports, disease, race hate, propaganda, war and misogyny, among other stuff.
Well, that was one strident, not to mention shrill, analogy.
VOTE. No matter what. [n.b. 84% of Republicans approve of this kakistocracy/plutocracy]
Having some super-rich family members and friends, I have observed that many elites are not equipped psychologically to cope with the cost of acquiring great wealth. First, once you become celebrated as $pecial, you lose anonymity. Second, you lose trust & friends. You begin to view everybody around you (sometimes even spouses) as out to exploit your wealth and influence. Both of these changes are the main reasons that the wealthy cloister.
An example of lost anonymity: Back in the '90's, I was in NYC for a psychology conference. While my colleagues and I dined, we were interrupted by a commotion at the back of our classy restaurant. A group of guests were exiting from a private enclave at the back, led by Mick Jagger and his high-rolling stones. They were mobbed by guests showering them with accolades. Not all wealthy people are as celebrated as rock stars, but they all get interrupted now and then in public places by sycophants seeking deals and influence.
An example of lost trust and friends: A student emailed me after attending a lecture I gave at Dresden Technical University soon after the "wall" came down. Over time, I began to mentor him. Stefan was a very bright kid, and we now and then hooked up when I was in town doing consulting work with the Saxon government. Junior year, I encouraged him to drop out of college to join a group forming an online business. He could always finish school later if it did not work out - which it did not. After college, Stef started his own online retail business, which soon dominated the entire EU market. After becoming super-rich, Stefan's emails stopped coming. When I asked if he no longer wanted to be friends, he said he had more important things to do. Ouch!
I have a number of stories like these that similarly validate how great wealth really does isolate one socially - even to the point of losing old friends and having to live a cloistered life in luxury. The super-rich usually do lose touch with normal life, and begin to live in an alternative reality. Funny, you probably would never think of riding the bus or subway as a privilege in contrast to having to travel locked in a limo.
The ultra wealthy do not "lose" their (previously) less ultra wealthy friends- they jettison them into the trash bin named "less wealthy and less desirable".
And yet we collectively do the morbidly rich"s bidding like rats following the Pied Piper. We buy things we don't need, go places that are overrun by other seeking a brief escape, and all the while complaining about the cost of eggs. Many called for a boycott of Black Friday for example but yet there were record sales. We have to stop doing their bidding, period. Then we need to contain the corporations, stop buying their crap and limit their power. And no more excessive wealth. Put a cap on how much wealth any individual can have. If they threaten to leave, let them. They aren't paying their fair share anyway.
Reclaiming a fair society will be complicated, but we need to start. Given the success of Mamdani it looks like some people are ready for change. We need more people like him and they are out there.
Thanks Thom. My naivete surprises me, I had no idea we had so many rich people living apart from us. Apparently, they feel no sense of country, or care for their fellow citizens welfare. Everything is for their taking the rest be damned. Have generation after generation of passed on wealth created a physically and mentally detached segment of the population?
My reaction, same as it ever was... I looked up the Talking Heads song "Once in a Lifetime"
we repeat the same patterns and make the same mistakes. Maybe the fact that there are more of us then them, we can restrain the Oligarchy. Collective Solidarity. Those of us that know it doesn't have to be this way must continue to speak up. Thank you Hartmann Report for speaking up!
While what you say about the morbidly rich and their sequestration from the suffering their greed and undue influence impart upon the rest of us is true, your assertion that "it’s happening today in the aftermath of the Reagan/Bush/Trump Revolution" exemplifies the damage done by your protection of the Democratic Party. All three Democratic administrations from Bill Clinton to Obama to Biden, saw massive transfers of wealth to the 0.1% as well as deregulation and consolidation leading to their takeover of health care, housing, education and the media. You are the one who was supposed to be fighting back against them, not protecting those responsible. This type of ahistorical partisan propaganda only reinforces the misinformation being spread by a consolidated media in the wake of Bill Clinton's Telecommunications Act of 1996. While there is no question you have a grasp of history using it as a political weapon to protect Democrats rather than an example to arm your followers with useful information in their political decision making means you are part of the problem. It is also suspect that you have completely avoided discussing the phenomenon of Mamdani, likely because it reflects poorly upon the Democratic Party as a whole.
I have to agree, given the wealth that some of the top politicians in both parties have accumulated. OF course Joe Biden's estimated net worth of $10 million, the Clintons' estimated $120 million, the Obamas' $140 million or on the other "side" (does it really matter at this level of power?) Mitch McConnell's $50 million are chump change for the Uber Rich. But such people are useful "indoor servants" for the plantation owners. Anyway, I suspect that the super rich have their escape hatches all set up in to go abroad and are ready to bail if things get really bad here.
There is no evidence that Biden personally benefitted from a "takeover of health care, housing, education and the media."
I agree, which is why I noted his worth is apparently so much less than the others. Though to be fair they have had much more time to write books that often almost nobody reads (but donors buy) and make speeches that go nowhere but are well paid by the same groups.
Incidentally regarding my comment about these super-rich likely being ready to leave, I suspect their attitude is similar to that of ship owners who register their vessels in countries with easy laws so they can fly “flags of convenience”. Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands are examples. So in a similar way being an “American” may only be useful for the moment. If this government cracks down on them, or things fall apart here, there will be no show of loyalty in pulling out, and maybe taking everything with them. And if the dollar crashes…well, they own a lot of stuff in other places and other currencies.
His son benefited greatly from his father's political status.
This seems like a case of “life imitating” art; in this case, the ultra-wealthy are re-creating the escapist parallel society envisioned by Ayn Rand at the end of “Atlas Shrugged.”
Life as art.
From Andrew Otozo today:
"Wynwood’s high-end Eponymous art gallery set a new purchase record when it sold Jeffrey Edelman’s “Ungrounded” for $5 million. The multimedia piece is composed of soil, rock, and air, as it is a two-foot-deep hole the artist dug in his backyard.
“It signifies the deep pit of despair inherent to life,” explained Edelman, standing next to his hole. A tall, lanky man of slight build who hadn’t shaved in weeks, he sported a pair of bedazzled Converses, designer overalls, no shirt, horn-rimmed glasses, and a coonskin hat.
“We are creatures of the dirt, and to dirt we shall return,” pontificated Edelman. “And yet we avoid the dirt at all costs by bathing daily, cleaning our fingernails, vacuuming our houses. We dig the dirt out of ourselves, forming our own subconscious holes…” The artist droned for another 15 minutes, but this reporter was unable to follow his stream of conscious bullshit.
“It’s the most beautiful piece I ever purchased,” gushed Victor Maira, the Brazilian construction mogul who bought the work. “It’s incredible, it’s meaningful, it’s…” he paused for effect. “Deep!” Silva laughed riotously at his own joke.
Asked how he would transport “Ungrounded” to join the rest of his collection, Silva looked insulted. “You can’t transport a hole any more than you can transport a piece of sky! It’s just a lack of ground!”
"When I suggested he dig up the soil surrounding this hole, Silva turned apoplectic. “You’d just have a pile of dirt!” he yelled. “Do you expect me to place a $5 million mound of soil in my living room!?”
"So the hole will remain in Edelman’s back yard. According to the artist, a family of possums recently moved into the multimillion dollar artwork, completely oblivious to the astronomical price of their new home."
Ha! The racoons have become "insiders".
Lol.
The solution is as "simple" as it has always been: to replace corrupt private finance with public finance. It doesn't have to happen all at once. We can leverage change by creating a public banking structure, an infrastructure bank and a system of postal banking, to eliminate paying tax dollars on compounding interest to these oligarchs but to build public coffers instead. Undertake rigorous regulation of corrupt corporate prerogatives and end their political spending, undertake a rebirth of the public trust. It's completing the democratic revolution, and can spread around the globe to a pleading public just as political revolutions did in the late 1700s-early 1800s.
It "only" takes public awareness, perseverance, and commitment. We have everything to gain, especially survival of the 6th Mass Extinction and the end of global warming.
Regardless of one’s station in life—peasant or billionaire—DEATH is the great equalizer.
Nobody gets out alive!
You and Louise are treasures. Thank you. Thank you.
The fact is the only way in truth and by math to have hundreds of billionaires is by having millions of people living in abject poverty. Only the number of ultra poor makes it possible. That means only a national policy to generate poverty makes this immoral condition possible. When everybody has a living income it makes it near impossible to accumulate that much. Maybe 2 or 3 can do it because they actually have the talent. The only way without it is by mass poverty as policy. In the south they long know how to produce long term generational poverty. Simply insure the young females get pregnant early and they will not get the experience and or training that allows them to get a good job. Once caught in the trap the only wealth they can have is in the number of children they have.