Top 12% .. Bottom 12%
“As a civilized society, do we measure economic success by how well the top 12 percent of our population is doing, or the bottom 12 percent?” [David Alexander/Powell, <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Ohio; 083105 Letters to NYTimes]
I really thought we’d put a stake in that blood-sucking Vampire, SupplySide Economics, in the ‘80s when it proved a think-tank Bright Idea that failed abysmally in the Reality-Based World. But behind a smokescreen of supposed Values, the giga-Greedy have slurped our blood all the way to the Swiss Bank. Of course true Christians or true any kind of gentle and loving Fellows would not count profit until AFTER the (fellow) workers had been kindly dealt with. The idea of screwing every centavo out of a workforce is so ugly that you know the people doing it have forfeited most of their humaneness and all of their claim to inclusion in the Family of Humanity.
This Religious adherence to the theory of “Efficient Markets” against all evidence shows the denial of an addict. Somehow these insecure souls bolster their faux self-esteem by brandishing their Bank Accounts. Like other addicts, they are in deep and repulsive denial about the effects of their bloodthirsty, bloodhungry behavior on their (human) family.
As we alchemize from the cutthroat competitive model of clearly outmoded capitalism (Does your skin not crawl? Can you really continue to mouth the nostrums?) to a collaborative model of fellowship, we have to toothpick open the eyelids of the HaveMores in order that they grok the human rights of the Bottom 12% without whom they clearly would not BE the Top 12%. The HaveMores did not earn the sweat-equity in their supposed accomplishment.
I think every elected official and Top12%er must agree to spend one full week every two months living on the minimum wage (for the government official) or on the lowest wage in their corporation. Just as leaders would be required to send their own child or grandchild to combat (Let them wonder if every time the phone rings, Is this the ‘I regret to inform you’ phonecall?) in any war they claim noble enough to declare, they should walk the walk that these are sufficient wages – put their way of life and their families' way of life where their damn Think-Tank policies are. Other Real People have to live these Stupid Scripts. And when they say, Oh You can climb the ladder, that still leaves somebody at the bottom of the ladder in the foul rag & boneshop of the damned slum, you FattHogggist. Nobody can live a proper and flourishing life on minimum wage. I don’t object to what are so euphemistically called disparities, but when you’re making $431 to my $1, and I have no health care and no hope of accumulating a decent pension, you’re getting more than your share. And we do share the planet, pilgrim.
Real Leaders always got dirty with the foot soldiers, bared their own breast to the enemy sword at the very front of the charge. Who would have followed them otherwise? These pipsqueaks loot with the law. Rape the days of the (fellow) workers. Pillage the hopes of our childrens’ futures.
How can it possibly count as profit if your (fellow) workers are not flourishing quite a little? How can you look yourselves in the mirror? The Bottom 12% is the mirror of the Top 12% — every cent you gain beyond what they have is at their expensive. You are not worth more than they are at the Gates of Heavens or Hades or Cielos or Nirvanas. Naked, nobody counts your filthy lucre. Those scales weigh only kindness.
Shame. It is time to say Shame.
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John Rawls who is a hero to many on the libertarian right once proposed that the lowest standard of living in society should be something that the highest strata would be willing to accept if they had to.
I think there is a difference between a “free”market and a “fair” market. When you talk to people about what they really want, it's a “fair market” system. that still has protections for the weakest and most vulnerable while rewarding initiative and creativity.
Gee, chancelucky, we's on the same wavelength again. Pogblog's next post, The Rot at Capitalism's Core will be published at midnight Sept 13 2005 and speaks exactly to the unexamined and enslavingly false idea that money is the necessary reward for initiative and creativity.
It is NOT so.