Forbes just released their annual report on the nation's four hundred top income "earners". The average income of this group is 1.38 Billion dollars, yes that is right. The numbers confirm that they are richer than ever. To get our heads around it, perhaps it would help to divide the income of just one of these ultra rich people by the four hundred million or so people in The United States of America. Looking at the numbers this way puts it in slightly better perspective. Let us say that each one of us, every man woman and child gave three dollars and fifty cents to one of these folks, then, to keep things straight, these folks made a line four hundred deep. Each one in turn would come to the front of the line and get their $3.50 and so on. They would collectively receive $1,400 from each man woman and child in America. Now I'm not provincial enough to not understand that most of these folks are involved in a worldwide network of exploitation (sorry to all the rich folks out there, I mean earnings), but to get a better picture of how much wealth these folks control, it helps to break the numbers down to what an average person can understand. I raised four children for the last twenty years on around 20K. If you look at the cost to our household alone of these very wealthy individuals, it would be about 1/4 of our income, siphoned off to support these levels of earnings for just those 400 wealthiest individuals.
I do not begrudge them their wealth, but I do detest the fact that they unduly influence public debate, political fortunes of our representatives and I certainly will not remain silent as their agendas are pushed through the Halls of Congress, The White House, or The Courts. I certainly do not want them to receive any sort of corporate welfare or subsidization of any kind. However, many of these fortunes are subsidized greatly and the extreme reach of government virtually assures that these people are rewarded at the expense of the rest of us. It is our hard work and as they say, our blood, sweat and tears that fund this level of luxury.
My children, if they want to "make something of themselves", will go into debt for the privilege, paying interest for years, so that the wealthy can play the system for all it is worth. If my children want to purchase a home, many of these people will get richer at their expense. If I or my children do not read labels carefully and remain ever-vigilant about the products that we buy, it assures that a large part of their purchases will flow to the pocketbooks of these billionaires. We will look a little closer at the numbers, but letting this sink in for a while will help to see some of the problems, and solutions that are necessary if we want to return to being a nation for, of and by the people.
Less than 2% of these 400 individuals are self-made women. Nearly ten percent of the top four hundred are female, but the vast majority of those women inherited their wealth. Once again, looking more closely at the numbers, the vast majority are older white men. I have tried to forgive as many of the mistakes that this "class" of people have made over the years as possible, but for their continued attempts to claim that climate change is fiction, for their continued fight against living wages for the rest of us, for their rape of the planet and her people and for the insensitivity to the levels of corporate welfare flooding into their coffers, I am not ready to forgive them. It seems that most of these individuals are either blind to their own responsibility or in denial about their complicity in many of our national problems, most of the environmental destruction and the lion's share of the human tragedies that are lived with day in and day out by the rest of us.
The wealth of the heirs of the Wal-mart fortune is a good case in point. Just one of the three stores that this company has built in my home town, (that continuously skims off money to be sent to Atlanta, never to return.) has received millions of dollars in subsidies. The local tax payers paid dearly for the "opportunity" to shop there. Not only was Wal-mart given seven years of tax exemption, (what small businessperson would not love to have that opportunity?) but the facility needed an intersection that cost over one million dollars to upgrade. The creek that used to flow past the area, supporting a wide variety of wildlife is now choked with boxes and bags, shopping carts and car piddle from the giant parking lot. Our city is not huge, only around 100,000 people, but this giant corporate entity thinks that building a fourth facility right in the heart of the city would help them to capture more wealth from our residents. The public is not interested in having them, but the monied interests weigh more heavily on state and local officials than the people who have to live here.
The most vile subsidy that we give the Wal-marts of the world, at least here in Wisconsin is that the poverty wages that they pay assure that publicly financed health care and food stamps are helping to keep their wage slaves alive. Millions more dollars, not going directly to the corporation, but paid by our citizens to prop up the economically unsustainable approach of the exploiters. Then, we can add in the dozens of locally owned and operated fabric stores, food stores, clothing stores, shoe stores, pharmacies, art supply stores, appliance stores, stationary shops, hardware stores and bike shops that have gone away since they came to town and you have a rough sketch of how they gobble up our quality of life while wresting more and more income from places that cannot afford a single penny more, for less. No one seems to like to look in the mirror anymore. We are the ones who have let this exploitation occur. We are the ones who feel threatened by our own poverty and we are ultimately the ones who line up for this sort of exploitation at the hands of the oligarchs.
It is my humble opinion that we need to understand that there has always been class warfare and the truth of the matter is, as Warren Buffet (who is always at or near the top of this list) himself has said, "My class, the rich are winning."
I do not begrudge them their wealth, but I do detest the fact that they unduly influence public debate, political fortunes of our representatives and I certainly will not remain silent as their agendas are pushed through the Halls of Congress, The White House, or The Courts. I certainly do not want them to receive any sort of corporate welfare or subsidization of any kind. However, many of these fortunes are subsidized greatly and the extreme reach of government virtually assures that these people are rewarded at the expense of the rest of us. It is our hard work and as they say, our blood, sweat and tears that fund this level of luxury.
My children, if they want to "make something of themselves", will go into debt for the privilege, paying interest for years, so that the wealthy can play the system for all it is worth. If my children want to purchase a home, many of these people will get richer at their expense. If I or my children do not read labels carefully and remain ever-vigilant about the products that we buy, it assures that a large part of their purchases will flow to the pocketbooks of these billionaires. We will look a little closer at the numbers, but letting this sink in for a while will help to see some of the problems, and solutions that are necessary if we want to return to being a nation for, of and by the people.
Less than 2% of these 400 individuals are self-made women. Nearly ten percent of the top four hundred are female, but the vast majority of those women inherited their wealth. Once again, looking more closely at the numbers, the vast majority are older white men. I have tried to forgive as many of the mistakes that this "class" of people have made over the years as possible, but for their continued attempts to claim that climate change is fiction, for their continued fight against living wages for the rest of us, for their rape of the planet and her people and for the insensitivity to the levels of corporate welfare flooding into their coffers, I am not ready to forgive them. It seems that most of these individuals are either blind to their own responsibility or in denial about their complicity in many of our national problems, most of the environmental destruction and the lion's share of the human tragedies that are lived with day in and day out by the rest of us.
The wealth of the heirs of the Wal-mart fortune is a good case in point. Just one of the three stores that this company has built in my home town, (that continuously skims off money to be sent to Atlanta, never to return.) has received millions of dollars in subsidies. The local tax payers paid dearly for the "opportunity" to shop there. Not only was Wal-mart given seven years of tax exemption, (what small businessperson would not love to have that opportunity?) but the facility needed an intersection that cost over one million dollars to upgrade. The creek that used to flow past the area, supporting a wide variety of wildlife is now choked with boxes and bags, shopping carts and car piddle from the giant parking lot. Our city is not huge, only around 100,000 people, but this giant corporate entity thinks that building a fourth facility right in the heart of the city would help them to capture more wealth from our residents. The public is not interested in having them, but the monied interests weigh more heavily on state and local officials than the people who have to live here.
The most vile subsidy that we give the Wal-marts of the world, at least here in Wisconsin is that the poverty wages that they pay assure that publicly financed health care and food stamps are helping to keep their wage slaves alive. Millions more dollars, not going directly to the corporation, but paid by our citizens to prop up the economically unsustainable approach of the exploiters. Then, we can add in the dozens of locally owned and operated fabric stores, food stores, clothing stores, shoe stores, pharmacies, art supply stores, appliance stores, stationary shops, hardware stores and bike shops that have gone away since they came to town and you have a rough sketch of how they gobble up our quality of life while wresting more and more income from places that cannot afford a single penny more, for less. No one seems to like to look in the mirror anymore. We are the ones who have let this exploitation occur. We are the ones who feel threatened by our own poverty and we are ultimately the ones who line up for this sort of exploitation at the hands of the oligarchs.
It is my humble opinion that we need to understand that there has always been class warfare and the truth of the matter is, as Warren Buffet (who is always at or near the top of this list) himself has said, "My class, the rich are winning."
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