News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Dec. 1, 2017: Not inequality itself. TOXIC inequality!
Inequality is a good thing. That’s right; up to an extent.
There is no such thing as “perfect” equality.
All attempts to create such a society dismally fails and leads to horrendous abuse and inequality. Think Stalin. Think Mao. Think plenty of other despots who preached complete equality and put themselves in charge of producing perfect equality but became monsters that controlled everyone else.
The fact is, as you know as well as I do, seeking superior performance in life and rewards for doing so, is built into human DNA and has been the source of human advancement and achievement for thousands of years.
We need successful individuals who get RICH for doing something useful. The dream of wealth is a powerful motivator for invention and improvement.
Unfortunately, that same imperative can be and often is, the basis for the most destructive forces in human society – which brings us to Trump’s America.
… Just as it previously brought me and you to Obama’s America.
So I am not attributing toxic INEQUALITY to President Trump, but he is most certainly a very active practitioner of TOXIC INEQUALITY. More so than his predecessor maybe, but Obama was a practitioner none the less. Since this is now Trump’s America and no longer Obama’s America, I will dwell on the present and the future – not the past – in this epic episode.
Now let me get right to the point …
Toxic inequality is the source of ALL societal evil. ALL of it!
It is synonymous with the extreme concentration of wealth and power.
Everything wrong with America and every other country and the world past, present and future that is subject to human control, ALL of it has the same root cause – STRUCTURAL INEQUALITY….
Inequality that manifests itself in endless different ways – most of it hidden from view because “they” do not want us to see – so that most of us never see or appreciate what is going on.
Yes, there is clearly some individual personal evil in the world not based on inequality but that is inconsequential compared to the EVILS of inequality.
The issue is not personal inequality but STRUCTURAL inequality.
That is right; you get to read it right here – a NEW theory of the one source of all society’s problems and failures or at least the refinement and clarifications of what many others have written in different ways throughout history presented here in Trump’s America this week.
Make no mistake about it, yes President Donald Trump is a player here on the WRONG side to no surprise, but just a bit player in structural inequality. Although right now his minor role is center stage with his Republican tax plan that is very likely to become law. The Republican tax plan is the product of structural inequality and will add further to structural inequality.
Trump and the Republicans put their tax plan together both knowingly and inconspicuously with a core goal of rewarding those with the most power and wealth as a result producing even more inequality in America.
Obviously, they will never admit this; they are broadcasting the FAKE message. They are doing this for the rest of us; not the rich and powerful corporations and individuals. That if they benefit, and they sure do, it is only to produce more for the rest of us. Sure it will …
Call it what it is a SUCKER deal for the rest us, no more, no less.
I do admit Trump and the Republicans can’t help themselves; that is all they know – pandering to the rich and powerful and they in turn are richly rewarded by the rich and powerful, making them likewise rich and powerful.
The problem is we should know but many of us obviously do not. The more all of them take the much less for the rest of us. Don’t get me wrong, the Democratic Party Elites – the Clintons, the Obamas and all the others who control the Democratic Party – play the same game wrapped in different packaging.
This is why it is TOXIC inequality; STRUCTURAL inequality. It is hard wired into the system called society – in our case – the American Way. Why is it that while President Obama preached equality so eloquently for 8 years, that inequality increased even more in the United States?
Allow me to tell you right here. … Because nothing President Obama did or even tried to do addressed STRUCTURAL inequality!
Here is a convenient example – ObamaCare.
Did Obamacare do anything to lessen the power or the profitability of insurance companies or drug companies or their rich powerful executives or the rich and powerful who owns most of their stock at the expense of the rest of us who keep on getting richer and more powerful? No, not at all.
Obamacare simply awards billions of tax dollars to insurance companies to pay them for the overpriced insurance many Americans can’t afford to buy. Instead of providing everyone a public insurance option and eliminating these unnecessary “middle men.”
But again, this is not about President Obama or President Trump; they are merely practitioners. It is about the STRUCTURAL problem at the core of society that infects all of it; resulting in ever greater destructive inequality and eventually DESTRUCTION of our society if we don’t address and reverse it.
Eventually, structural inequality becomes so pronounced that we reach the fabled tipping point where so many have so little power and wealth and so much of society live in an anti-society of the ‘Haves’ and ‘Have NOTS.’
The Haves then create a police state to protect themselves from the Have NOTS, who have nothing to lose.
Wait a second… am I getting carried away here? Right now the stock markets are higher than they have ever been. There are more rich Americans spending more money than they ever have and unemployment is at record lows. ALL IS WELL, and looking very, very good for the future. OR IS IT?
Some words of wisdom from a New York Times piece of Thursday, November 30, 2017, titled ….“What if Everyone Benefited When Stocks Soared?”
It begins …“Everyone knows that we are again living in a Gilded Age.
“We seem stuck in the same policy equilibrium we have been in for decades, with conservatives denying that there is a problem and pushing policies that would make it even worse, liberals emphasizing the need for education and skills development, and leftists pushing for a unionized labor market and social-democratic welfare state.”
“Some of these ideas are good ones, which would make life better for vulnerable people. But they’d do little to directly target inequality in our society or to capture all the benefits that economic fairness brings.”
ENCORE ..
“But they’d do little to directly target inequality in our society or to capture all the benefits that economic fairness brings.”
Then this from The New York Times article …
“According to new data released by the Federal Reserve, the collapse of the housing bubble and the ensuing financial crisis caused the net worth of virtually all families, rich and poor, to drop sharply between 2007 and 2010. But during the post-2010 economic recovery, the fortunes of the wealthiest grew rapidly while nearly everyone else lagged behind.”
Then this ….
“Wealth inequality is now the highest it has been since the Federal Reserve began collecting this kind of data in 1983.”
ENCORE …
“Wealth inequality is now the highest it has been since the Federal Reserve began collecting this kind of data in 1983.”
(Thank you President Barack Obama and all the others?? )
There is more ….
“In 2016, according to my calculations, the top 1 percent had an average wealth of $26.6 million, while the net worth of everyone in the bottom third combined was less than zero.”
LESS THAN ZERO! LESS THAN ZERO!!
So what is the solution? Not what this article proposes for sure.
The solution is that we make STRUCTURAL inequality THE singular issue of the 2020 Presidential race and back candidates who make addressing this core problem the basis of every decision they will make as President.
##### 30 #####
(This entire series is dedicated in honor of Liu Xiaobo)
