Sunday, October 4, 2009

Capitalism: New and improved

All the fear about the U.S. becoming socialist is absurd given that the top wealthy 1% owns as much wealth as the bottom 95%. Only Switzerland surpasses the U.S. in economic disparity.

U.S. economic disparity has been growing longer than Michael Moore has been making movies, yet we treat Michael Moore not unlike Dr. Stockmann in Ibsen's Enemy of the People. When we don't like the truth about ourselves, we scuttle the truthtellers.

This situation would not be possible without the belief that the market will solve everything, and the top 1% has enormous advantage in selling this message. It took all of a week for lawmakers to bail out Wall Street, yet providing universal health care for the same amount of money is a seemingly impossible task.

What has happened in this country is a turning a blind eye to the people suffering from the excesses of capitalism. It is much easier to blame the poor than to change our belief that what's good for Wall Street is good for us.

Is the market really free when banks "to big to fail" get boosted by taxpayer money, yet the same taxpayers continue to lose homes while the banks amass more wealth?

The redistribution of wealth has favored the wealthy for a long time now, yet this does not keep the ignorant poor from going out and protesting "socialism." I'm reminded of that quote from The Usual Suspects: "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."

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