Do the Rich Want You Dead, or Alive?
The Investor/Ownership Class are Coming: First for Your Money, Then for Your Life
Are you rich? If not, you may be worth more dead than alive to the uber-wealthy. If you have a livable income and can be useful in their employment or might contribute in some way to their bottom line, they may tolerate your existence, for now. If they see you as a possible drain on their wealth because in the future you may have a catastrophic illness or you may need services paid for by taxpayer dollars, however, they may prefer that you just die.
You probably think that is a little too hyperbolic, or that it is bitterness expressed by a misfit. Please do not kid yourself.
The rich, with not a lot of exceptions, are categorically opposed to paying taxes mostly because of their immersion in right-wing philosophy and propaganda. They nearly all have come to deny that they should take any responsibility for the less well-off, the ordinary worker, the public, or those who are not productive at any point in their lives. Democracy is not their cup of tea, for the most part. Their watchwords are, “I got mine”. They have it and they plan to keep as much of it as possible, often at your expense.
It is an article of faith and a sacred principle for most of today’s wealthy investors, stockholders, owners, oligarchs, and inheritors that they are entitled to everything they have now and everything they can accrue in the future, by hook or by crook. They fear losing their position, and for many of them, any encroachment on their wealth is an existential threat. In their view generally, taxes are a form of theft or some sort of offensive assault on the natural order of things.
Our society and culture, and our economic system and highly perverted modified version of capitalism are skewed toward selfish behaviors and motives. The Scrooge moneybags stereotype has only been reinforced by recent trends and attitudes purposefully promoted by certain individuals and groups. Bullying has become second nature for most of these over-ambitious zealots.
Certainly, there are plenty of people around who have empathy, compassion, and a generous spirit who have accrued substantial fortunes. Americans on the whole remain generous and charitable. Unfortunately, however, one seldom feels secure enough to give as freely as one would like, and the needs are so overwhelming and so diverse that even large fortunes evaporate quickly, seemingly without impacting more than a small group for a limited time. Apathy and paralysis become a lifestyle.
Big money and voracious corporations are squarely behind any and all meanspirited, paternalistic, and patently unchristian campaigns and causes on the far right which have bigotry and xenophobia or extreme religious dogma as their main focus. The anti-abortion movement would be nowhere without support from big donors. They will let women die who are put at risk during problematic pregnancies and children suffer and even starve who were unwanted or whose mothers are unable to care for them. They could not care less about a fetus OR a baby. They are pushing and paying top dollar for an agenda which is anti-woman, anti-sex, anti-government, anti-life, and pro-persecution. Still, they sanctimoniously hide behind the flag and the Bible.
The story is the same with issues such as immigration. The moneyed interests are petty, spiteful, and brutish. They benefit from slave labor conditions when immigrants survive long treks and dangerous border crossings. Yet they push for cruel treatment of the undocumented who seek asylum and those who are apprehended by ICE agents. Desperate people are political pawns for them to use, many who die and many who are jailed or deported or never see their loved ones again. We have millions of unfilled jobs. But they pay the demagogues and carnival barkers on Fox to fill the airwaves with bile. One would be hard-pressed to find reasons to call these nice people.
All is fair in love and war, as the saying goes. Many of the grasping billionaires and others with excess wealth (aspiring billionaires) perceive themselves to be at war with the rest of us. If you are not wealthy, you belong in the enemy camp in their view. The obscenely wealthy see ordinary people as people to be exploited and as a potential threat. They are convinced that you want what they have and that you surely do not deserve what you have, let alone what they have.
If you need something, and the people controlling an industry can charge you an exorbitant amount for what you need, that is just how the world works. Business is only about profits in their estimation, and they are in business to maximize profits – at all cost. Free market fundamentalism, although proven to be pure fiction, is their true religion. They will gouge you at every opportunity. Elon Musk is their petulant poster boy.
This seems like a terribly cynical attitude. Americans have traditionally believed, at least in theory and in our stories, that we are all in this together and that “a rising tide lifts all boats”. All that yada yada kind of positive and self-congratulatory sentiment is for suckers, however. That outlook has probably never been shared by the very wealthy.
In recent decades, things have changed quite dramatically. “Dog-eat-dog” is much more than just an approach for the exceptionally greedy and mercenary few. Those who have managed to claw their way up the food chain to control big bucks have banded together in a special club, which has become a sizable group. Everyone else is fair game for their exploits.
The super-wealthy have completely abandoned basic capitalist principles and imagine a superiority and a special status for themselves that allows any tactics and any deceit. They are in a class by themselves and fully intend to keep it that way.
Dozens of new terms have sprung up in the business lexicon, some of which are working their way into the more common vernacular. Many of these are given away by monikers involving words such as “predatory” and “vulture”. We have “private equity” funds or organizations now. How many of us ordinary citizens can articulate what those actually entail?
We have “leveraged buyouts”, “venture capital”, “offshore tax havens”, “vulture capital investors”, “predatory capitalism”, “shell companies”, “hedge funds”, “shadowy LLCs”, “kleptocracy”, and “global finance”. There are many other novel terms and forms of wealth management and deceptive strategy lurking in the shadows. Then, of course, we are hearing more and more frequently about the new plutocrats and oligarchs, corporate dominance and corporate personhood, as well as corporate media, and all that other jazz (or jizz?).
The Free-For-All Atmosphere
Did you say you are not rich? If you get sick with a rare condition and the captains of the pharmaceutical industry have a drug that can prolong or save your life, they will charge whatever amount for the drug they choose to charge. If the money is not available to you through insurance or charity, they are perfectly happy to let you die.
Incidentally, that rare medical condition you have was likely caused by something that was marketed to you in food products that were toxic or by environmental contaminants known to be dangerous by the manufacturers or by those in the fossil fuel, chemical, or some other industry. They skirted the regulations or got them changed so they could shift the social or environmental costs to all of us and maximize profitability. We do not want socialism here, now do we! The corporate health/medical industry, which includes Medicare Advantage which is not part of Medicare and uses the name fraudulently, specializes in denying claims and cheating the federal government to the tune of billions annually.
If you are injured and have insurance coverage and need a high level of care, the fine print you never noticed may cause the denial of your claim or a strict limitation on the services available to you, leading to unnecessary immobilization or to your early demise. So be it. The titans of the medical insurance industry will extract as much as possible by way of premiums, deductibles, and co-pays, and then cut you off without hesitation or apology when some person they have hired to keep their costs down arbitrarily decides to pull the plug. They grip their purse ever so tightly.
The list is endless. The captains of industry have fought regulation and circumvented the rules at the expense of the innocent lives of their workers, consumers, and by-standers throughout history. But now, thanks to Republican philosophy and policies and the corrupted Supreme Court in the last forty years or so, there is a free-for-all climate, a concentration of power and wealth, and a strong sense of invulnerability and immunity on the part of unscrupulous actors. Donald Trump is not alone in his feeling of untouchability and entitlement. Reagan rises from the grave.
Name almost any industry, and one can find examples in this current environment of coldly calculated and mercenary profit-making policies and methods which rip off or cause substantial harm of one sort or another to the public or to the patrons and consumers of the industry. They have high-paid, high-powered lobbyists whispering in the ears of legislators in Washington D.C. and the states. They provide all manner of incentives, more accurately known as bribes, to get the laws written or modified to their decided advantage. People pay through the nose and get sick, and people die.
In finance, in car insurance, in food production, in real estate, in chemicals and cleaning products, in educational testing and other programs, in communication and electronics, in the media, in the arms and gun industries, and so many other industries, there is deception, excessive cost, along with dangerous practices or products. The real estate industry now specializes in flagrant money laundering involving vicious foreign dictators and criminals of all stripes. Rents are sky-high, while homes and apartments sit vacant. Agribusiness has swallowed up and wiped out millions of small farmers.
The current state of affairs is no accident. Certain individuals with great resources have adopted beliefs and ideas which equate aggressive and acquisitive attitudes and approaches with superiority, virtue, and high “morality”. The “prosperity gospel” has taken center stage. A cadre of right-wing enthusiasts and true believers has strategized to promote extremist views, intolerance, fear of the other or even of the ordinary, and a rank contempt for what they perceive as weakness. Their goal for generations has been universal control and domination.
To these presumably lucky and pretentiously happy, rich, and famous people, equality, decency, brotherhood, liberty, and security are exclusively for those who can afford them. Everyone else is essentially expendable, or at least unnoticed riff raff. Everyone else is on their own unless they happen to be in a charitable mood or feel a need to improve their public image. They give generously to get generous tax exemptions and fawning media coverage.
The rich and privileged have read the same literature, listened to the same voices, and colluded with others at their stratospheric level, comparing notes and organizing to insulate themselves from outsiders. They travel in luxury and in private for the most part, and in exclusive company. Some have started from or converted to membership in a religious organization or church. Some merely worship money and power. Some are more politically oriented, and many rigidly follow an amalgam of primarily extreme right ideologies and persuasions.
Opulence, elegant leisure activities, and conspicuous consumption are the mark of the lifestyles of the rich and famous, as a rule. They typically flaunt their special status. Multiple mansions, secluded cabins, beach houses, and visits to campy hotels and fancy resorts are things for their private enjoyment, amusement, and entertainment. Exclusive golf clubs, parties, and all sorts of pampered vacations and sports activities keep them and theirs from boredom and from getting too close to the working people. Security is always somewhat of an obsession.
The rich are not going to let democracy or diversity get in their way. Equality is not to their liking. They want no part of majority rule or unimpeded voting rights for minorities. They are looking down on the rest of us, virtually all of US, and they are not looking back to where they came from or to the history and infrastructure which created the conditions for their success, security, and often inherited privilege.
The spoiled rich have become the greatest threat to national security we have ever seen or imagined. Their wealth is their weapon and they are using it to win, regardless of who gets hurt.
Where there might have been a spirit of fair competition in the past, there is now a culture of corruption and vicious cutthroat competition. Instead of bringing home the bacon, the industry bigwigs and those who aspire to those elevated positions get the whole hog and flaunt it. CEO’s “earn” hundreds of times what an average worker earns. The words “mercy” and “empathy” are not in their vocabulary.
We are in a war for our survival. Workers are treated more as the disposable and replaceable property of big business and outsized faceless corporations than they were fifty years ago or even during the gilded age. They speak, and people listen. They issue orders, and people obey. They file paperwork, and people become homeless or go to jail.
Lawyers have been repurposed to assist in evading taxes, laundering ill-gotten gains, skirting the protections in law for public benefit, promoting political hacks, and rewriting the laws to give avaricious individuals the ability to manipulate the entire economy for their personal or corporate benefit. Loopholes in the tax code allow large corporations and superrich individuals to shift the tax burden to you and me.
The Silly Sop of Charitable Giving
Your fat cat heroes and their apologists never tire of trotting out the ludicrous and thoroughly discredited excuse that charitable giving would be an adequate alternative to tax-supported social services and benefits to guarantee the welfare of all the people, if government would just get out of the way of the kind helpers with grandiose love and largess on their minds. It seems a waste of time and effort to present the arguments against this bizarre nonsense. However, we must restate the obvious, once again for the record.
Quite simply, for the information of the low information individuals who may still revert to the ancient mythology and irrational logic; we know that rich people tend to be biased and subjective. However, even if they were unbiased and objective, there is zero chance that they could ever work out the efficient and fair distribution and administration of funds or services to people in need.
To achieve the slightest degree of consistency and to deliver funds or benefits in a dynamic society and economy requires a bureaucracy with trained specialists, tested policies, and checks and balances. The ideas rich people harbor about who is “worthy” of their help and how to control for abuse and waste range from one end of a spectrum to the other. Tossing out their loose crumbs to a few beggars will not solve the problem of widespread poverty for even one week.
The history of charitable giving is far from great, as a matter of accomplishment and accountability. In far too many cases, a very small fraction of available funds get to the people and organizations needing assistance. Money often gets diverted and wasted and much ends up in the hands of people who are very well-off. Tax write-offs can have a negative overall effect on the public. Graft is common. Those who have pledged to give away half or some other substantial portion of their net worth are worth more afterward than before, and grand projects seem to be white elephants more often than not.
We Face a Stark Reality
Our survival depends on reducing the enormous gap between the wealthy and the less well-off. There is no way to enjoy a temporary détente or to hope for peaceful coexistence when a tiny fraction of the population are capable of enslaving the rest of us. Royalty demands loyalty and unconditional subservience.
The wealthy control most of the media and they actively sell themselves as the saintly good guys using all the tricks of the trade. Inflation gets blamed on President Biden, e.g., instead of on the monopolists who are guilty of price-fixing and price-gouging and who are actually the people responsible for most of it. The recession of 2008 gets blamed on the naïve victims who were lured into home ownership by shady real estate brokers and bankers, instead of those slimy parasites (i.e., Steve Mnuchin the “foreclosure king” and his co-conspirators) who bundled loans and tanked the market leading to mass foreclosures and evictions.
Minimum wages are magically transformed through slick spokespersons and water carriers to become the ostensible road to ruin for small business and a loss of jobs for the working poor. All lies. They commission their bold lies incessantly, without compunction.
The professional exploiters such as Musk, Thiel, Bezos, etc., know that to retain their massive privilege and insularity, they must have the capacity to immediately and totally repress any resistance or moves toward meaningful equality. They know that relaxing the rules and bending slightly will be seen as encouragement toward an expectation of respect and dignity for the lowest of the low. Unions are verboten in the world they dominate.
Is it too late to turn the tables? Can the tables be turned, as Jesus did it in the temple with the money changers, without violence and spilled blood? Stay tuned. We cannot possibly know at this stage.
What we do know is that we cannot remain passive and wait for further victimization and exploitation. We must not merely speak out. We must be on a war footing, just as they are. We must make it clear that we will fight for a massive redistribution of wealth, come hell or high water.
The rich MUST relinquish a significant measure of their excess and they MUST choose to either join in as members of a just and fair society, or be severely spurned, castigated, and shamed. Democrats MUST have their day of reckoning during which the super-rich and their Republican toadies are humiliated. Stand your ground, or it will be gone. We have more power than most of us realize.
Protests and petitions are essential. Liberal media such as Free Speech TV help to show the way to make a difference. Boycotts will be necessary and letters to the editor and to congresspersons do get noticed. Use social media to get this message across. If you are a member of a church, remind everyone there of the Beatitudes and the many lessons Jesus is best known for teaching about humility, sacrifice, service to others, and love.
The lust for tyranny will never be popular. Gross inequality will never be anything less than tyranny. The people can force change when they unite and fight. Choose to live, or you are choosing death for yourself and your family.