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| L-R Bezos, Musk and Branson Source |
Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
Think of this, or let it sink in as we say here in the US: According to a poll
by the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health, almost 40% of American
households said they have experienced severe financial difficulties in the past
month of the Pandemic, and “About one fifth have depleted all their
savings”.
The big business media will claim that
workers are profligates, are stupid and live beyond our means. But we know
better. And that one fifth is of 40% of households, that’s probably
conservative and not a small number.
In addition, the poll finds that, “Nearly
60% of US households earning less than $50,000 a year reported facing serious
financial challenges in recent months.” And thirty percent of that
60% lost all of their savings.
What does it mean to lose all one’s savings?
It can mean that everything you put aside after working 40, 50 maybe 60 hours a
week over the past 10-15 years or more has evaporated.
As to be expected, the poll found that
wealthy people and big business has done well or stayed buoyant during this
period, while, “…many lower waged workers were thrust in to financial
crisis.” WSJ 10-15-21
I was recently in a rather extensive
discussion on Next Door, a local platform for neighborhood gossip and sharing
information, that centered around crime and in particular the stealing of
catalytic converters, parcels from porches and other petty crime. As usual
there are those that are quite adamant that the police should stop this
anti-social behavior, “lock ‘em up” is not an uncommon refrain.
I think if you want to discover why someone
would risk jail time for stealing a catalytic converter, these figures and
other examples of wasteful activity by the US ruling class, like wasting our
money flying around in the atmosphere, provide the answer.
I was reading yesterday about a mini feud
between two social parasites having a little fun. Well, it’s a little fun for
them, but they are doing alright, I would say more than alright, they are the
two richest men in the world.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, a
privileged son from (white) South Africa whose dad owned an emerald mine, is
worth $222 billion according to the Bloomberg billionaires index. And on Monday
he managed to find the time to send out a tweet apparently in response to the
world’s second richest man, Jeff Bezos who’s worth a mere $191 billion. He
wanted to remind Bezos that he occupied the number two slot. Musk’s wealth
doubled in the past 12 months.
Bezos himself had tweeted earlier referencing
an article from 22 years ago that called Amazon’s business model in to
question. “Today, Amazon is one of the world’s most successful companies and
has revolutionized two entirely different industries.”, he wrote.
According to the Wall Street Journal it is
very difficult to gauge the net worth of the richest people in the world
because they keep it private.
As these two characters have a pissing
contest on Twitter, we might consider what is happening to the rest of us and
what those figures really mean in terms of people’s everyday existence; the
insecurity, fear, shame being blamed for conditions not of their own making.
There is no greater anti-social behavior than
that practiced by this parasitical pair of privileged alpha males, Bezos and
Musk and their class.
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