News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Aug. 16, 2013: It’s time for my semi-annual vacation episode. Each August. Each December.
I don’t begrudge anyone a vacation, including President Obama.
It’s not the concept of a vacation at issue here but what this President’s vacations say about so many other issues. Call Obama’s vacations allegorical. When is the last time you heard anyone call a vacation allegorical? Never! That’s why you read Obama’s America!
Now to the subject at hand. Remember last summer? Our “hard working” President did not take a summer vacation. Why? Because he is hard working? NO silly. Because he was running for re-election and luxuriating on an exclusive estate on Martha’s Vineyard with all the other Super Rich & Highly Influential in August last year was not a good campaign message to run on. So Obama “sacrificed” his vacation for the greater good. His re-election so he could continue to live his very good life 4 more years.
The White House has informed me that what our readers should know is it is a WORKING vacation because it is a fact – Barack is WORKING hard on his golf game. Not only that but his basketball too, and at dining out with friends. With so much WORK on his schedule it is surprising he has any time to enjoy himself.
Then again, as we all know, Barack Obama is a special kind of President and we should expect more from him than the others. And he delivers for Barack if not us!
Now let’s get down to business here. I am not on vacation but on deadline.
It’s time to allegorize Obama’s vacation as promised. I have not in the past.
So let me bring in the subject of this allegory. INEQUALITY in America. And I will turn to my favorite source after giving them a “vacation” last week. The New York Times and another good source The Financial Times. Both with useful articles about inequality.
Barack Obama by taking his summer vacation as usual with the exception of re-election year in the most exclusive summer vacation town in America (yes above the Hamptons where the Clintons vacation) Obama is where many of America’s Elite also vacation, and Obama even better than them is staying at one of the more elegant and prominent mansions on the Vineyard – not just some expensive vacation house. He deserves better!
Keeping in mind that while he may pay the pricey rent on the big mansion or not, he may or may not be the guest of one of his super-rich friends who owns the place – fellow Chicagoan David Schulte – regardless the tens of millions some estimates go as high as $100 million – for all the many costs involving in transporting and serving to his family’s every whim, and for support staff and lots and lots of security – which is all paid by us.
So since our President’s as much as any job they have is to act (in every sense of that word) as a symbol for our nation, how and where the President vacations, is a very powerful symbol of who and what America is at any point.
SURPRISE! Barack Obama’s is top of the heap – spare no expense, go to the most exclusive place for vacation and wall yourself off in an isolated mansion except for choreographed stops around town for ice cream and stuff “with the people” – the other rich people also vacationing there, if in less palatial digs. This says everything about America – a nation of the SUPER-Rich and the rest of us.
Which finally brings us to these two articles about equality which add allegory to President Obama’s vacation. First The New York Times, my favorite source, and because this article has an extra dose of inequality in it because it speaks of Black inequality in America still raging with Black President Barack Obama in The White House …..
Titled “The Complex Story of Race and Upward Mobility” published July 25, 2012.
To the article …
“Many of the areas where climbing the economic ladder is most difficult are also the areas with the largest concentration of African-Americans.”
“The metropolitan areas with the highest percentage of African-Americans are clustered in the southeast and the industrial Midwest. So are the metropolitan areas where low-income children have the longest odds of making it into the middle class.”
“In areas like these, fewer than one in 20 children born into a family into the bottom fifth of the income distribution in the early 1980s has made it to the top fifth as adults, the study found. By contrast, in the regions with the highest mobility, the chances can exceed one in 10. Those regions include some of the whitest parts of the country, like Utah, Idaho, Minnesota, the Dakotas and upper New England.”
Enough! …
The point is while inequality is rampant and growing in America it is that much worse for most African Americans who are at the very bottom of the barrel and stay there. It absolutely is not a problem on Martha’s Vineyard this summer, where one of the small group of Rich Black Americans is the President of the United States.
Now on to The Financial Times and the even wider issue of inequality which includes Americans of every color and the rest of the world too – which is growing increasingly more unequal. That is more unequal here in the 21st century not less. And it is global!!
This article from FT is titled: “How the Wealthy Keep Themselves on Top” from today August 15, 2013. The short answer is of course they do it by screwing the rest of us but …
Let’s add more context here by quoting from the article …
“There should be no doubt about the facts: the income share of the top 1 per cent has roughly doubled in the US since the early 1970s, and is now about 20 per cent. Much the same trend can be seen in Australia, Canada and the UK – although in each case the income share of the top 1 per cent is smaller.”
“But should we care? There are two reasons we might: process and outcome. We might worry that the gains of the rich are ill-gotten: the result of the old-boy network, or fraud, or exploiting the largesse of the taxpayer. Or we might worry that the results are noxious: misery and envy, or ill-health, or dysfunctional democracy, or slow growth as the rich sit on their cash, or excessive debt and thus financial instability.”
“The uncomfortable truth is that market forces – that is, the result of freely agreed contracts – are probably behind much of the rise in inequality. Globalization and technological change favor the highly skilled. In the middle of the income distribution, a strong pair of arms, a willingness to work hard and a bit of common sense used to provide a comfortable income. No longer. Meanwhile at the very top, winner-take-all markets are emerging, where the best or luckiest entrepreneurs, fund managers, authors or athletes hoover up most of the gains. The idea that the fat cats simply stole everyone else’s cream is emotionally powerful; it is not entirely convincing.”
“This is what sticks in the throat about the rise in inequality: the knowledge that the more unequal our societies become, the more we all become prisoners of that inequality. The well-off feel that they must strain to prevent their children from slipping down the income ladder. The poor see the best schools, colleges, even art clubs and ballet classes, disappearing behind a wall of fees or unaffordable housing.”
ENOUGH. You have the message by now. Inequality is bad and getting worse each year and the rich and the super-rich in particular are getting better and better of grabbing yet more for themselves and in reality doing so stealing it from the rest of us.. Of course it is “legal” stealing since they write the laws that decide what is and isn’t legal. It is a very convenient and efficient system if you are rich. If not you get screwed! It is also very, very useful for keeping the rich out of jail since jails are for those at the bottom of the barrel.
So indeed President Barack Obama on vacation this week on Martha’s Vineyard is in fact a perfect allegory for the reality of America and even better that he is Black!
Do you think Barack reads Obama’s America on Martha’s Vineyard??
No I am sure he doesn’t; he is too busy working on this working vacation. There is only so much time in a day even on the Vineyard for golf, basketball, ice cream, etc, etc.
Have fun for us Mr. President because we aren’t having fun being unequal.
Summertime or any time! Maybe we should all go to Martha’s Vineyard too!
