Monday, March 24, 2014

This is the world we live in

There are 300 million people in the USA. 492 of them are billionaires. That represents roughly 16 millionths of 1%. In decimal form that’s 0.00000  not the 1% the Occupy Movement imprinted on the international consciousness.

It’s a free enterprise system, right? So we can assume that this 500 (to round off the figure) are brilliant, industrious, hard working people who’ve earned every penny of that money by getting up early and getting off to the foundry, office, factory, school, hospital and sundry other places where people work, while the rest of us – roughly 99.9999984% – are loutish chumps (except for a small professional elite who were smart enough to become servants to that 16/millionth) who, if we work much harder, regularly attend religious services can also hope to join them up at that fractional faction of a factional fraction at the top. Someday.

Meanwhile, at the other extreme of our population, far more people, actually tens of thousands, live in and on the street. They sleep in shelters, which put them up for the night if they are lucky enough to get in, and put them out in the morning. Or they sleep in cars, doorways, under bridges and on park benches, if there is no room at the inn – oops – shelter. But not to worry, theirs is not complete despair, abject misery or living death by comparison to the opulence enjoyed by the top fraction and its servant class.

Our bottom dwelling humans who absorb the most extreme loss that ultimately benefits upper level private profits can avail themselves of free food dispensaries at least once a day. And free health clinics and hospital emergency rooms when their economically and elements weakened state brings on illness or disease. And if they drop dead in the street and are not claimed by relatives, they are guaranteed publicly financed burial in Potter’s Fields [paupers graves].

We also have tens of millions of pet dogs and cats which live in warmth and comfort, are often loved as members of our human families, are very well fed and have health care from thousands of pet clinics staffed by educated veterinarians, including oncologists. This in a nation where some die in the street and no one even knows they had cancer until their unclaimed bodies are used for medical experiments.

Demand and create social transformation before this system destroys us all. Hurry. You can call that process democracy or revolution. The substance is what matters, not the label.

Abridged and slightly adapted from post by Frank Scott on Dissident Voice

1 comment:

ajohnstone said...

The Internal Revenue Service said yesterday that it audited fewer high-income Americans in 2013 than it did in 2012 or 2011, while it conducted more audits of people with no income.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/business/2014/03/23/fewer-rich-americans-audited-in-13.html