In Economic Crisis, the Rich Still get Richer
After two years of steady economic decline in the U.S. a Forbes
Magazine poll showed that America’s richest people managed to increase their
net worth by ten percent! Every day we hear about more plants closing,
more workers being laid off, unemployment at a decade high number, an
overall increase in working hours; in general, we are in tough economic
times. Yet Forbes Magazine, a beacon for the capitalist class, shows
that the richest of the rich profited this year.
As contradictory as this may appear at first glance, it doesn’t take
much to see what is really going on. The interests of the rich are
diametrically opposed to those of working people. Whereas working people
want to make a decent living wage, provide schooling and health care to
their children, the bosses understand that these notions represent an
attack on their profit margins. With the power to hire, fire, and move
factories across national boarders the capitalist class has been able to
deteriorate the standard of living of many Americans, while lining
their pockets with the rewards. Peter Newcomb, Forbes senior editor, says,
“There’s been this enormous shift in the geographic distribution of
wealth…” and he is exactly right. However, the significance of this shift
is not from east coast corporations to west coast corporations, as he
suggests, but in the disproportionate distribution of wealth between the
capitalists and the workers.
Forbes Magazine reports that Bill Gates is now worth $46 billion,
Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen is at $22 billion, and so it goes down the
line. The wealthiest 10 Americans are reported to be worth $955
billion! To give some perspective to this astonishing amount of money, I
have prepared a list of items that are in the interest of working people
and the amount they would cost:
*Eliminate illiteracy in the U.S. ---- $5 million
*Annual salary for 38,182 school teachers ($55,000 each) ---- $2.1
billion
*U.S.’s share to fight AIDS worldwide---- $3 billion
*Healthcare coverage for 7 million children ---- $16.5 billion
*Double federal support for mass transit ---- $12 billion
*Save 8 million lives worldwide by fighting infectious diseases --- $27
billion
*Improve, repair, modernize 30,000 schools --- $66 billion
The kicker is this: all the wealth that is possessed by these
multi-billion dollar CEO’s and Ivory Tower paper pushers is made by exploiting
the labor of working people. The question must arise, why is that there
are so few of them, with so much, while there are so many of us, with
so little? To truly answer this question one has to start at the root
with a critical analysis of the political/social/and economic
structuring of society within the framework of capitalism. Ultimately this
inequity will burst under the weight of a socialist revolution, where the
working class rises up to take power and as Lenin said, “Steal back the
stolen!”
By Rob Segovia-Welsh in response to an AP article “Net Worth of
America’s richest people rises after two years of declinel” in Sat. September
20, 2003 Ashland Daily Press.
|