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writing for godot

Debunking Today's Gospel of Wealth: “1% Deserve Loot Plus Our Thanks”

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Written by Robert S. Becker   
Monday, 13 July 2015 05:10

News shocker: less than one-third of Americans with $3 million+ fortunes think “the wealthy have a moral obligation to share their good fortune with those less fortunate,” a new U.S. Trust survey reports. Imagine two-thirds, then, of plutocratic, yacht-sprawling Scrooges: “Who else earned our treasure, fair and square, in the open market? No one ‘shares’ our loot – except brainy managers who protect our assets. Only saints give away hard-won fortunes to less deserving, ‘less fortunate.’” Modern misers apparently scoff at Andrew Carnegie’s wisdom, “The man who dies rich, dies disgraced.” Or that robber baron’s concept of sharing “surplus wealth.”

Will yawning inequality, let alone crushing, downward mobility, get reversed until voting majorities turn against the entrenched avarice that betrays good morality, economics and democracy? Dumbed down by Paul Ryan’s austerity playbook, such self-serving defenses delink excessive profits from millions of hard workers hardly awarded the same “free time” by the “free market.” Billionaires, after all, know far more about amassing (and spending) money than about the countless backs which “tote that barge and lift that bail” so they can live high on the hog.

Caught in this mix, the impoverished, agonized single parent faces the mirror: “working hard and persevering isn’t enough. Something beyond my control is broken or fraudulent.” Yet the super-rich, gazing into the glass, see only heroic masterminds who deserved to “strike it rich.” Who makes the “it” if not the multitudes who turn resources into products and profits? Did miraculous modern appliances emerge from the heads of Edison, Ford or Chrysler, or from numberless hands on the aptly-named “mass production line.” If no man is an island, that goes triple for billionaires — whose fortune and life-styles depend on everyone else all the time.

Super-Rich, Waiting to Be Thanked

Among today’s most corrupt big lies, this whopper deserves ceaseless debunking: that collective affluence answers solely to a band of elite masterminds. This upside-down fairy tale pals around with other delusions, like “every man a king” because “you can be a millionaire.” Behold the debased Gospel of Wealth, now regurgitated with this perverse twist: The anointed elite do God’s work and “create” wealth so that dependent lower classes, if they don’t act up (read: rebel), get pie-in-the-sky. And maybe crumbs on the way.

Which is exactly how one Goldman Sachs CEO famously embarrassed himself, declaring banks do “God’s work” by fulfilling “very important” roles that produce general affluence: banks loan money to growing companies that "create wealth” which, in turn, allow “people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle.” And immensely lucrative cycle, too, for oligarchs who just spread prosperity.

What’s unnerving, despite the exposed viciousness of this circle since ‘08, is not enough voters banish the slavish assumption everyone’s modest family fortunes still trickle down, like liquor drips from a still. Sure, taking creative risks, working feverishly, and inventing something new, better or cheaper deserve generous rewards. But not over-the-top, super-lottery payoffs that only reinforce the corrosive, primitive equation of great wealth with great knowledge and judgment, even wisdom (did someone say “Donald Trump”?).

No baseball slugger succeeds without team members on base to make a grand slam, and don’t all players count equally when crossing home? Let winners earn a king’s ransom, say $10 or 20 million dollars, perhaps $50 million; let those who inspire new industries take home $100 million dollars. What happened to socially-conscious taxation on income and estates across what is to some extent a zero sum game?

When is enough enough? Consider the median American family nest egg, roughly $175K. Wouldn’t a fetching career prize equal 100 times that total ($20M)? Wouldn't 50 times that 20X multiplier, or a billion dollars, qualify as unbelievable compensation, satisfying even the most profligate family? What rational system allows “surplus wealth” surpass 300,000 times (!) the average family median, well over $60 billion?

For every median family dollar, our fattest cats boast a staggering 300,000 bucks. So much for progressive taxation, social mobility, or representative government. That rarefied air is what produces deified, Trumpian arrogance, as Derryl Hermanutz brilliantly summarizes, well beyond banking: “The Divine Right of Private Property has replaced the Divine Right of Kings as the 'justification' for the banksters' ruling power. By acquiring private ownership of the Earth, the banksters and their courtiers acquire the Divine Right to rule the Earth.”

Big Yachts Don’t Raise All Boats

Fueling today’s tight-wad Gospel of Wealth is, curiously enough, the circular logic that glories in unspeakable concentrations. Would simply clever computer, finance or technology geeks have banked so much had they not deserved it all? And how many, loaded with tens of billions, don’t end up concluding they must have invented wealth itself, out of the air, just like gods? No doubt big winners glorify the “virtuous” circle beyond dreams of avarice: whoever earns a fortune, without getting indicted, wins confirmation by the invisible hand of capitalism.

In fact, this mentality plays on the discredited Great Man Theory of history (the strongest, heroic will determines the destiny of the age) into a ludicrous Great Man Theory of wealth. Since money makes the world go round, those few with the most should rule, having the most to gain or lose. That explains why the 1% grow ornery when tax breaks, credits and subsidies don’t satisfy their lust for glory. Like all Midas figures, jealous divinities expect homage by multitudes, openly appreciative of all their “virtuous” blessings.

Robber Barons, Meet Progressives (Again)

Thankfully, progressive voices are joining forces, with once unlikely allies. Certainly, the sustained, tin-ear, oligarchic "party of the stupid" propels change (right, another round of rousing, extremely low-brow GOP presidential debates). Pope Francis, hardly oblivious to tarnished belief systems (apologizing this week for the brutal Catholic conquest of Native Americans), keeps up his revolutionary calls: “Let us not be afraid to say it: we want change, real change, structural change," decrying a system that "has imposed the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature.” One American politician, Bernie Sanders, sounds the same themes (the “idolatry of money”) and with the same urgency to ever-expanding crowds.

Andrew Carnegie in 1889 (originating the phrase, “Gospel of Wealth”) supported extensive, scrupulous, collective sharing of great wealth. Opposing automatic aristocratic inheritances. he shunned funding a next generation of idle rich. Long before any sort of progressive income tax, Carnegie defended progressive estate taxes (up to 50%): "By taxing estates heavily at death the State marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire's unworthy life.” Of course, this good Christian believed bettering society and other people’s lives rewarded the philanthropist at the gates of Paradise. Who knows, he could well have been right.

P.S. See my related piece, on the Worship of Wealth, “The Illegitimacy of Ginormous Wealth, Fouling Politics, Economics & Religion.”
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