Skip to main content

Anyone who is willing to work ...


The bit of wisdom above is from the second page of the novel The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by the mysterious B. Traven. It is often the case that wealthy people believe that jobs are readily available for the poor -- and it is probably not a coincidence that this is self serving in that it helps them to justify being wealthy.

Marie Antoinette is, by tradition, credited with saying these words in response to the information that poor people had no bread to eat: "Let them eat cake." It was a demonstration of how utterly calloused she was or of how utterly ignorant she was of the circumstance of most of the people in France at the time.

Today, we are in a new Gilded Age with extremes of wealth and poverty and a shrinking middle class. Yet, it is the wealthy from whom we hear complaints. The Republicans complain that Obama is initiating class warfare by drawing attention to the great disparities in our country, and the fact that for over the last forty years wealth that has amassed from gains in productivity by workers has almost all gone to rich people and not to the workers, themselves.

Too, there is the absurd situation where many middle-class people are paying higher income-tax rates than those making many millions of dollars. Yet the Republicans are unwilling to allow a correction of this circumstance.

The wealthy no longer live in regular neighborhoods like the rest of us.  They have their gated communities to put them in a wholly secure, other world where they cannot be touched by suffering or the troubles of ordinary people.  A high number of wealthy people come to think themselves royalty of a sort.

The Times are frivolous and superficial. Welcome to our own private garish, tasteless, gaudy Imperial France.

Comments

Steve said…
Outstanding post, Tom! It echoes what I'm reading right now in Robert Reich's great new e-book "Beyond Outrage." As you imply and he explicitly states, the REAL "class warfare" is what the rich are inflicting on the rest of us by using their wealth-enabled political power to grab bigger and bigger slices of the American pie while leaving the rest of us to scrap for a diminishing number of crumbs. Marie Antoinette had nothing on them. And they're so isolated from us behind their security gates that they probably don't even know it, and they actually feel slandered when someone dares to suggest that Mitt Romney's wife has no understanding of the daily challenges most women face.
Unknown said…
I have Krugman's new book, End this Depression NOW which echos much the same sentiment.

Too, I am happy to see that yesterday the Times had an editorial highlighting some frightening facts about disparities in income and debt between the rich and the rest of us, "Inequality, Debt and the Financial Crisis."

Maybe, just maybe, the people in our country will wake up and rise up against the injustice that is alarming already and quickly getting worse and worse.

Popular posts from this blog

More obstacles revealed in effort to make Mather cottages habitable

Mold, asbestos and lead paint, oh my! The 35 cottages out at Mather Community Campus seem closer to being condemned today than ever again being inhabited. But the expectation that some of the cottages can and will be restored to house homeless families before spring abides. A report in the Sacramento Bee tells us ... Some [of the cottages] have extensive mold, a county analysis showed. It's not clear how the county planned to deal with lead paint and asbestos, [Rancho Cordova] Councilwoman Linda Budge said. Still, hope of getting some of the cottages in shape such that homeless families can move in is in play, though not before New Year's day.  Word of where the money might come from to make needed restorations has not been forthcoming, though it is known that the Winter Shelter Task Force hopes to hold a fundraiser to boost the pool of funds to meet the need to keep homeless people warm and safe. At the end of October, placing families, totalling 105 individuals, was

Ron Russell and Summerhills Realty

Readers of this blog should be aware that I am receiving some information that Summerhills Realty and someone named Ron E. Russell is using this blog as a reference in an effort to scam homeless people.  Be aware that Mr. Russell and his business is cited as a possible perpetrator of fraud by a website called Ripoff Report .  See this webpage .  Also, there is this claim of fraud against Ron Russell Properties at the website BizClaims - Latest scams, frauds and complaints . Please be aware that the information of being 'ripped off'' may be coming from only one source is coming from multiple sources, with perhaps as many as twelve persons/couples now pursuing legal action after paying thousands of dollars for services and receiving none of the services that were promised/contracted. While I know neither Mr. Russell nor Summerhills, I do know that an inordinate number of “in links” from readers of this blog have come via summerhillsrealestate.com for quite some time.  I

Loaves & Fishes implicates Buddhism and Jack Kornfield in its June Donations Plea.

The Sukhothai Traimit Golden Buddha was found in a clay-and-plaster overlaid buddha statue in 1959, after laying in wait for 500 years. It's huge and heavy: just under 10 feet tall and weighs 5 1/2 tons. At the beginning of their June newsletter , Loaves and Fishes relates a story, taken from the beginning of renowned Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield's 2008 book The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology . The first part and first chapter in Kornfield's book is "Part I: Who are you really?" and chapter 1 is called "Nobility: Our Original Goodness," which ought to serve as a clue to what the beginning of the book is about, not that that sentiment isn't strewn through-out the chapter, section and book such that what Kornfield is telling us should be crystal clear. Somehow, the not-ready-for-primetime management at Loaves & Fishes have managed to use Kornfield's wise and kindly words in a way that mangles th