No one wants to admit that they are in poverty; and that’s at least part of the problem. The 75% of Americans who are working paycheck to paycheck do not want to admit that they cannot handle a $1,000.00 crisis. All of us want to believe that we have it made and that we can manage any challenge. That’s why Amscot, “The Money Superstore” is so successful. And they rape us for our hard earned dollars.
I am not sure how or when it started, but greed has a very rich and a very long history. Sociologists’ will tell you that greed and jealousy over property did not evolve until the concept of property ownership became a human law.
A History of Greed
Once the laws of property ownership came into being, everything about humanity changed. Suddenly, men are concerned that their offspring by their very own and only their very own. Marriage evolved into a much stronger social institution once property ownership was established. Men only wanted to leave their hard won properties to their very own offspring.
The history doesn’t quite matter when the concept under discussion is social greed. Social greed is a term for two reasons, often people think of greed in terms of the effect it has on their neighbors. They want neighbors to know that they can be “better”. The other reason for the term social greed is that, at least in this country, social greed has an effect on others and our society. Our society suffers as a result of this combined sense of righteousness to attain wealth over any other human value, including our neighbor’s health.
The Coronavirus Demonstrates
The coronavirus shows us irrevocably the current tragedy that is the United States of America.
It is the mirror held up to the ugly witch’s face showing her that her once remarkable beauty is lost.
It all seems impossible. Covid-19 is a pause, an interruption, a change in everything and everyone, a change in life as we knew it.
The virus comes at us like a tornado, with a deadly wind ripping and tearing through the lives of all humans on Earth. This novel coronavirus has no bias.
What America Needs to Fix
1. Healthcare – America is the only first world country in the world that doesn’t have universal healthcare. We need it and we should have it. It’s been more than forty years since economist’ showed that healthcare doesn’t respond to the principles of economics. Healthcare doesn’t respond to supply and demand.
Uwe Reinhardt, Princeton economist, conducted massive studies decades ago and demonstrated that economics does not work with healthcare. When you put two physicians across the street from each other, prices go up, they do not go down because of “competition”. These are known facts and yet, the ignorant senators and representatives insist on letting the “market” regulate healthcare. How can they dare be so ignorant when 330million people depend on them?
2. Jobs with a living wage – it’s a fact that lawmakers allow themselves to gain wealth from their position. This allowance has given them the motivation to keep minimum wages at a minimum. Our capitalist society has convinced Americans that having wealth is a matter of merit. We merit wealth by working hard and making money. We use the principles of supply and demand to demonstrate the making of a better mouse-trap as a means to wealth. The belief is, if you aren’t wealthy, it’s because you haven’t worked hard enough or long enough. Or perhaps you are not creative enough to have built the best mousetrap.
America promotes this myth about meritocracy, that says something to the effect of “if you are a janitor, you don’t deserve to make a living, only people who go to school and earn degrees deserve a living wage.” When read like this, the concept seems absurd and that is because the concept is absurd.
Everyone; deserves to make a living wage, Everyone.
3. Lawmakers who belong to the wealthy class simply manipulate their own positions to gain more wealth. In the meantime, because they are out of touch with anyone who lives in America, they continue to make laws that will benefit themselves, as in only, me, myself and I. The wealthy want Americans to believe that they have gained wealth through their own merit and hard work. But can you say that it is hard work, when the wealthy have been bribing Senators and Representatives to keep the minimum wage, minimum. Scott Galloway commented in his blog (2/7/20) “It’s difficult for our elected leaders not to shape public policy around the concerns and priorities of the super wealthy when they have more access to their senators.” How is that meritocracy?
We can and do, what we want to gain wealth. As history tells us, this is rarely legally or morally correct. Americans have used the philosophy “the ends justify the means”. What we are missing, right now, today, is the tyranny of what Capitalism has done to us. It is dire.
The recent wealth tax breaks are clear proof of this. In what country, besides America, could someone like Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, pay zero in taxes?
4. Student loans: who can believe that in America, the Secretary of Education, Betsy Devos, is also an owner of a student loan collection agency? For comparison, I don’t mean the corrupt countries that we are all familiar with, I mean in the Western democracies.
What’s Next for America
Americans have no reason to remember the French Revolution, which they call Bastille Day. Bastille Day is the day that the French stormed the Bastille (a military base and a prison) thus starting the French Revolution. The French were very tired of being poor. The story has it that when Marie Antoinette heard that the French peasants were asking for bread and that there was no bread anywhere, she said “Let them eat cake!” According to Wikipedia, such a statement: “in context would thus reflect either the princess’s disregard for the peasants or her poor understanding of their situation if not both.”
Which is the point of this writing. Washington D.C. no longer serves the people, nor do they understand the people. Indeed, we are back to “taxation without representation” as no one in Washington represents the poor and middle class.
We are in a deep crisis in America and we are headed for a future that no one wants. Grieving families, and a majority of Americans that are starving, that is all it will take to create the American Bastille Day. The beginning of a Revolution that will end the tyranny of the wealthy in America.
