"Imagine a parallel universe where the Great Crash of 2008 was followed by a Tea Party of a very different kind. Enraged citizens gather in every city, week after week—to demand the government finally regulate the behavior of corporations and the superrich, and force them to start paying taxes.
In the UK, the Great Recession has inspired ordinary people to do just that—with some success. link
7 comments:
Good question. The super rich have a lot of support here but I'm not sure why. Maybe there has to be some critical mass of outraged people first. But there's not, and I don't know if it's because people fear the very rich and the corporations, or they want to, in effect, kiss up to them, as if they adore them, or what. Is it the American myth that we can all be rich?
I just occurred to me that the lottery web site always shows pictures of winners smiling and everything, and this, I assume they have determined, will make me want to buy into the game. Similarly, the media is constantly depicting happy, really cool people who are rich and I want to be like THEM. And of course, buy the things that they have, but mainly be nice to them.
Roy, I think you have pretty much nailed it, lack of critical mass and a highly sophisticated system of perception management run by Wall St and the Belt Way think tanks that manage Main St., shored up accessibility to credit which supports the illusion that things are better than they are.
At some point the "American Dream" stopped being about equality and freedom Of and From religion, free speech and all that and became home ownership, ie debt. If we could pin point when that shift occurred, I believe we would see exactly when the rich became a secret tyrannical aristocracy and American Dream died.
That's an interesting observation--the illusion that things are so great. Anyone who has a job instantly has the ability to have all this . . . stuff. And it's mostly crap, but we are constantly shown how great it is, and how it is our entry to the American Dream.
I regret I spent so many years at my last and longest lasting job and spent most of the money on this kind of stuff. At the moment, most of the stuff is long gone, too.
Well there's always today, until there isn't ;), and the coffee's on at the Bee, the place that never was and always is. That's something, kinda...
And now if you'll open your hymnals to page 88, we will all sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."
Free coffee at the Bee later on . . . if the creek don't rise and the bell don't ring.
I think its all about a shrinking social attention span, and leisure being the only real priority of Americans. I think as long as we believe we are the middle class, we will never put up a fight.
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