Ain’t We Got Fun

Several notes I wrote for possible Sense posts have a common theme of the rich getting richer, at the expense of the poor. I suppose it is the nature of the human animal for the stronger to take advantage of the weaker, thereby guaranteeing the survival of the species. Capitalists lovingly embrace this Darwinian truth.

But humans also believe they are the highest of animals and that the rich must not exterminate the poor. In Deuteronomy 15:11, we read, “For the poor will never cease out of the land: therefore I command you, saying, You shall surely open your hand to your brother, to your needy, and to your poor, in your land.” In Proverbs 22:22 we are warned, “Rob not the poor because he is poor.”

So how does society allow the natural course of rich advantage, while at the same time protecting the poor from extermination”? The philosopher Spinoza in the 17th Century informed us, ”To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach of every man....Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.” As Western society developed economic concepts and technological inventions to produce unprecedented riches, the gains accrued to the rich in enormously disproportionate amounts. Laissez faire capitalism was advocated and widely adopted, and the gap between rich and poor grew to obscene proportions.

Communist economic theory was advocated as a natural antidote to capitalism, but it was only adopted by one major nation, the Soviet Union around the time of World War I, until China adopted it after WWII. Soviet economic communism ended in the late 1980s because of a sequence of events leading the Soviet Union to conclude it was time to change the way their economy operated. The same thing happened to laissez faire capitalism as a result of the Great Depression. China has been moving its economy away from communist principles for several years. The few other communist nations, such as Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea are not major economic players.

So how are we in the US doing nowadays in controlling the natural course of the rich exploiting the poor? Not so good, according to my notes. Here are a few examples:

● Exxon Mobil last year made the largest profit in the history of mankind, a 40% increase, but its tax bill only went up 14%.

● The Federal Reserve reports that between 2001 and 2004, the typical American household net worth remained flat, with a savings decrease of 23% offset only by the inflated value placed on housing.

● In King County (Seattle area), in 2004, the top 20% of people earned almost half the income, while the bottom 20% earned less than 4%.

● The Bush budget proposes total repeal of estate taxes on the death of the wealthiest of the wealthy, foregoing $300 billion in taxes over 10 years, while making $10 billion a year cut in medicare for the poorest of the poor.

● The Federal Pension Guaranty Benefit Fund continues to provide welfare for incompetently managed corporations and their shareholders at the expense of lifelong workers who are seeing their hard earned pensions diminished or wiped out by corporate bankruptcy.

● Personal bankruptcy laws were made more onerous to bleed more money out of the impoverished for the benefit huge financial corporations.

● While new tax benefits for wealthy investors are being added, the minimum wage for workers languishes.

● Bush advocates “guest worker” laws for immigrants as part of the ongoing Republican war against unionism.

● Without any valid evidence in support, the new Chair of the Federal Reserve wants to see the largest tax cuts for wealthy Americans in history made permanent.

● In New Orleans, we are witnessing the start of a process by which the catastrophic displacement of the poor is going to result in tremendous economic gain for the rich.

● As young Americans who enlisted out of economic need continue to die in Iraq, corporate giants like Haliburton are making huge fortunes on no-bid contracts.

Songwriter Raymond B. Egan, seemed to foresee the coming of the Great Depression when he wrote these lyrics in 1921:
“There’s nothing surer,
The rich get rich and the poor get poorer,
In the meantime, in between time,
Ain’t we got fun.”