Money Doesn't Talk, Part 1

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." --Justice Louis Brandeis

"Money doesn't talk, it swears."--Bob Dylan

Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz probably made history when he went down to the Occupy Wall Street demonstration to speak in support.  In addition to documented police brutality, New York is making it as hard as possible for demonstrators to exercise their First Amendment rights, for example by banning any electric amplification, including bullhorns.  The demonstrators' solution is a chorus of people who repeat the words of the speaker.  They try to do it in unison, but at times it gets harmonic, and is all the more effective for being beautiful.

Stiglitz published this article in Vanity Fair a few months ago about an economy and a politics that is " Of the 1% by the 1% for the 1%"-- the richest 1/100th part of the American population.  He describes what is happening, how and why it is happening, in a succinct if all too familiar recitation of suffering and middle class collapse.  But here's an intriguing bit of historical context in human terms:

"None of this should come as a surprise—it is simply what happens when a society’s wealth distribution becomes lopsided. The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy become to spend money on common needs. The rich don’t need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security—they can buy all these things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may once have had. They also worry about strong government—one that could use its powers to adjust the balance, take some of their wealth, and invest it for the common good. The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes."

This suggests that the destruction of the American middle class, explainable in terms of American-based corporations and uber-rich Americans who exploit near-slave labor in other countries rather than pay American workers or taxes, is by now feeding on itself.  The question is whether a tipping point has been reached.  History suggests it often is, Stiglitz concludes:

"The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late."

The question is whether the United States is going to let this happen.  That history is being written right now.

Incidentally (maybe), I was struck by Wall Street demonstrators like those pictured above. With money stuffed in their mouths, they seemed to be intending to portray the rich as zombies or vampires of greed. The rich as blood-sucking vampires makes particular sense.  But it reminded me of a theory proposed for why zombies are so popular with the young at the moment: recall Michael Moore quoted in a previous post about these demonstrations, saying that the young are reclaiming their futures, because their futures have been stolen.  People without a future are symbolically the living dead.