Buddy, Can You Spare Some Change?

[McCamy Taylor]

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_vMQfeVSYbqk/SVvLBl-580I/AAAAAAAAAWs/7uFHZ6sGozA/s400/brother+can+you+spare+a+dime_31Dec08.jpg

Wall Street is in the middle of a capital strike. Big Business is sitting on huge cash piles. The US economy is awash in money, and yet our recession recovery is jobless. Why? Maybe it’s a conspiracy to undo half a century of workers’ protections. Maybe it is cowardice---they are afraid to invest their money when their wealthy brothers are hording. Either way, them what’s got are hanging on to their wealth leaving them what’s not with nothing left to lose.

This one is for the nation’s mega-rich. The folks who have seen their wealth increase while the nation’s working class inches closer to poverty. The Wall Street bankers and the oil barons and the pharmaceutical companies and the defense industry---all the folks who reaped billion dollar windfalls from the Bush administration. Can you please spare some change? So that middle aged hard working Americans can get back to work? So that kids can start life with a decent education and good health? I promise you won’t even miss the money. Your bank accounts are overflowing, and you have already bought everything you could possibly ever need.

I am not going to talk about Dante’s fourth circle of Hell, where those who have spent their lives accumulating wealth spend their afterlives face down in the dirt, continuing their worship of material things. We have already seen that the mega-rich are immune to guilt. Their puritan faith teaches them that wealth is a sign of God’s grace. Because they are rich, they are godly---

What would a kind and benevolent deity do if confronted by so much despair, so much misery, so much poverty? “Would He smile his work to see?” Or would He send down some loaves and fishes? And maybe some jobs.

If I can’t appeal to your altruism, then how about your instinct for self preservation? When the founders said “We must all hang together, or we shall surely hang separately” the we they were talking about was not just the rich land and slave owners. A country is only as strong as its weakest links. “A dog starved at its master’s gate, predicts the ruin of the state.” And the state has been very, very good to Big Business. Bailouts, corporate welfare, trade policy---if I were super rich. I would love my country. I would want to see it prosper. I would want to see federal coffers filled again with working citizens’ tax dollars.

So what if your pals at the country club are sitting on their money? You didn’t get to be a rich man from following the herd. Do you want to be a business leader or a business follower? Think hard before you answer. If you are one of the herd, it would be very easy to step over a cliff---because that is where all the other rich businessmen are going. And, like the Roman Empire, once the United States falls into chaos and ruin, it will not be coming back.

[knowbody0]

1. good stuff

seed for thought. thank you

[JDPriestly]

2. Thom Hartmann stated yesterday that the Fed is considering

just considering expanding the money supply -- which could cause some inflation -- but which would also cause those sitting on there money to stop squatting because their money is likely to lose value. If this happens, it is a smart move by the Fed.

[dtotire]

3. Hear Al Jolson

Listen to the song.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F4yT0KAMyo&feature=player_embedded