Tuesday, January 24, 2006

For Richer or Poorer

I have to admit going into this one that I really don't have my thoughts all that organized, so there are likely things that I will not present too well. Take it as opinion, if you chose.

Today, I heard someone talking about how Bush's tax cut for the rich is actually good for America. Talking about how it is a good thing to have the majority of the wealth of this country concentrated at the top. That if the spending power were to be put into the bottom, consumption would run rampant and everything would be in shambles.

Huh? Did I miss something? I thought consumption was already running rampant, and yet there are a great many people who still cannot fend for their families, can barely scrape up enough to keep their roofs over their heads. The rich like it this way, because that means there are plenty of people to pay starvation wages (a.k.a. minimum wage) to so that they can make their obscene profits even more obscene. Planned/forced obsolescence plays well into the retail markets and credit card companies, giving the middle class all the money they want, so long as they pay it back, so they can live like kings while being broke...because the already-rich now have their money, making them richer.

However, the middle class is largely blind to this, because they feel like they have a hand-up on the ladder towards becoming themselves rich someday. They are most likely wrong, and their debts are only going to get worse as they fight to compete with the Joneses to have the biggest, baddest in home theaters, cars, computers, whatever. They have it; I have to have it, only mine will be even better. How long before we realize that we are feeding the beast? Does it really make any of us happy, in the end?

And what happens to the little guy? The people who can't get anything? The poor are invisible to the middle and upper classes. A division created and fed largely by the upper class. The upper class is the smallest, but has the most, the highest of them propagating this obscene culture of the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer...and the middle class are owned by the rich.

How do we fix this problem? By giving the rich even more money, is what that guy seemed to think, I suppose.

An interesting take (which I half mentioned a moment ago) on all this is that the rich hold their position by making the middle class believe that they can at some point become a member of the elite. So, when the middle and lower class should be demanding that the taxation laws be more lenient on the have-nots than the haves, the upper class keeps the middle class out of it with the carrot-on-a-stick tactic, or the American Dream as we like to call it.

In other countries, the rich are taxed much more heavily than the middle and lower classes, and they do not complain. Why? Because the people, not deluding themselves that they might be able to step on their hallowed ground, don't let the elected officials give the rich that kind of power. Sure, it isn't perfect, but it is a step in the right direction.

Personally, I, myself, would like to make it to the elite upper class, but I do not hold the illusion that I will make it beyond the upper-middle. I want to be protected as a citizen of this country regardless of my class standing, and that includes that if I wind up broke with nothing to give, I don't want to let what nothing I don't have help to make the fat cats on top purr all the more loudly. And if, by chance, I ever did actually make it up to the top, I would not want to do so on the backs of the poor or middle class.

Well, that was a rant, and contained no hard evidence, but it is my beliefs, and my blog, so deal with it. However, I am confident of my positions, and will likely start hunting down some statistics to support this, and will include them in a subsequent blog.

I've also been contemplating a split-off to be more a base for my political opinions, but I don't think anyone is reading this yet, so I will try to get a few more readers first.

And that was my Random Thought.

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