Heaping the Price of Wealth on the Backs of the Poor

I get the sense that most rich people just can not understand why I don't like them very much. So I think maybe I should attempt to explain this in as simple terms as possible.

No, it's not about jealousy, or wanting what "they" have. It's not about laziness, and idleness breeding contempt. What it's about is incredulity at the sense of entitlement I've seen exhibited by the wealthy. Most recently, by Mr. Smug himself, our unelected resident, king George.

Here's the deal. Wealth is not accumulated in a vacuum. In fact, in an economy based on scarcity and exchange of intangible dollars for tangible goods, wealth is actually built out of the blood, sweat, and skin of many many people. I know for a fact that when I lay down my hard-earned dollars to buy a pound of tofu, someone at the bottom of the tofu chain worked hard for the fraction of the penny on that dollar that they will receive.

This sweat-product ratio is not by any means static. You might think of it as a pyramid scheme with freedom and sovereignty of human individuals as the building blocks. The higher up on the pyramid you are, the more people you have had to step on to get there. And even standing at the pinnacle, or any point, really, exerts a tremendous amount of pressure on those supporting you. It's crucial that we are aware of this. I don't think many people are.

Turning a blind eye to this reality serves a very important function. It enables people who are undeserving of what they have to blame the needs of the less fortunate, who are frequently characterized as lazy and self-serving (ironically enough). If you pretend that wealth is not accumulated at the expense of hard working people who do not even see a fraction of the wealth, it's easy to form an argument that requiring the wealthy to contribute an exponential amount of their wealth to the general good is somehow unjust.

It is not unjust. Accumulation of wealth requires and exponential amount of resources. And not only that, but for the people who are at the base of the pyramid, supporting the weight of the wealthy, it is exponentially more difficult to acquire the basic necessities of life. In a structure built on scarcity, this is the reality.

You can see, too, why it's so important for the wealthy to disempower and disenfranchise those who are functioning at the base of the pyramid. Without the base, the whole fucking structure collapses. So it's important to keep those at the bottom in line by, oh, I don't know...acting like they are in danger of attack, constructing a system whereby they must compete in order to get ahead, proclaiming it "God's" will that they do their duty, or simply by making it so difficult to maintain the weight that they can't even think about doing anything else.

If you think people like George Bush aren't aware of this...if you think this pyramid analogy is some sort of accident...think again. Think HARD. Think about history. Think about the present. Think about the false promises that were made last night. Think about the costs of war. Think about who REALLY pays. And think about the weight you feel on your shoulders as you are thinking about it. And then think about what YOU can do about it.