Life is always about competing interests and there are many players in the field. Most of the time, however, the lesser players suspend the pursuit of their interest to join a stronger group in the hope that they will be rewarded with at least "a piece of bone" in the end. The consequence of such re-alignments is that every struggle has boiled down to one between two camps. For example, there is now or has been the notion of Left vs. Right, East vs. West, Freedom vs. Repression and so on where one giant group of players was pitted against another giant group of players.
However, as one group won and the other lost, long held notions disappeared to be replaced by other notions, and so the global landscape has constantly changed in purpose and outlook. But as the old saying goes, the more things change the more they remain the same, and this happens because the dead notions keep coming back at a later date. And they came back throughout the ages under the same name or a different one as if recycled by a mysterious force called necessity.
In fact, what is going on in the United States of America at this time is the shaping of a struggle which is sometimes referred to as a class struggle but is in reality something else even if some of the militants seem to borrow from what used to be the old European class struggles. For a lack of a better expression, I shall call the American version a struggle between the heavy lifters whom I consider to be the pillars of America’s capacity to produce wealth, and the paper pushers whom I view as shameless in-your-face freeloaders.
In any given economy the heavy lifters are those who create real wealth, meaning those who produce tangible goods. These are the farmers, miners and manufacturers - be they blue collar or white collar workers, owners or hired hands. They are also producers of the sort of services that give logistical support to the first group. These would be the transportation, utility and construction people.
There are also heavy lifters in the purely service industries without whom an economy cannot go far. These are the educational, medical and hospitality industries. And there is also what I call the necessary evils such as the wholesale and retail trades as well as the financial industries such as the insurance and banking services.
I call the wholesale and retail trades evil because they can be the fields on which to learn how to make a gain without the pain. And I call the financial industries evil because they are the fields where the industries are often misused resulting in tragic consequences.
It is from this last category that comes the bad apples I call paper pushers. In the United States of America, these people have locked themselves into a deliberate class struggle with the heavy lifters who are, in effect, almost everyone else. This is not a class struggle in the old European sense but a struggle between two classes of people nevertheless.
There is in America, as there is everywhere else, those who lead a style of life commensurate with the wealth they produce, and there is the paper pushers whose taste for the high life comes in the inverse proportion to what they are capable of producing. But only in America does the latter group make a virtue of their excesses.
In America, the heavy lifters want a system of meritocracy that rewards them for what each individual is capable of producing and is willing to work for. The paper pushers, on the other hand, want a hereditary system that supports them because of who they believe their ancestors were. The first group wants to build a world of their imagination and enjoy it; the second group wants a world like they imagine their ancestors enjoyed even if no such world was left for them to inherit.
I would say that the tension between these two groups has existed in America since the founding of the nation and may have been the creative force that produced the nation’s ability to renew itself and was, therefore, the secret of America’s continuous vitality. But every good thing comes to an end when pushed too far as it is evident by the current financial crisis which brought the struggle between the groups to the fore with a clarity that prompted some people to see it as a manifestation of Cowboy Capitalism.
The financial crisis started when the paper pushers pushed the envelop past the breaking point. Just before that, they were making hundreds of millions of dollars not because they produced as much as a paper clip but because they clipped from the gross national product a share of the wealth that went past the grotesque and past what is considered to be an indecent level of executive compensation.
These people, in fact, went as far as to paint a picture of what constituted a financial pornography and did not even stop there. They had the gal to demand that they be admired for the financial instruments they were creating, those they considered to be masterpieces and used as a teaching tool to demonstrate to the developing markets of the World the financial clout that they have gathered with nothing more than the force of their limitless financial prowess.
But the crisis came and exposed them as something else especially when it spread to the real economy, the engine which used to create the wealth that made it possible for them to engage in the orgies of their secret dealings. However, as if they did nothing wrong, these people went to the government and asked to be handed billions of taxpayer dollars so that they may continue to do business as usual because as they saw it, society owed them a standard of living at that high level. And the proof they gave as to why they deserved what they were getting was that they hired each other at those levels of salary, perks and bonuses.
You see, dear friend, this is the work of the same old Society of Mutual Admiration which goes like this: I say you’re terrific and you say I’m terrific. I say you’re worth 400 million and you say I’m worth 400 million. And no one will argue with that because we’re the experts, and the proof of this is that we’re making 400 million a piece which cannot be said about those who give us the money to pay each other 400 million a piece. Case closed. Hand over the money and shut up. Class dismissed…the class that does the heavy lifting, that is.
For a long time, this sort of argument kept the general public under sedation as everyone was made to dream that they too will someday lead the high life. This sort of mentality went unchallenged as long as most of the people were making enough income to live on and had something left over to save for emergencies and for the future. But then the people were awakened by the fact that they, their neighbors or someone they knew were losing their home, life savings, retirement account, health insurance, the means to send their children to college and so on. And they asked: Why is that?
Only at this point was it revealed to them that this is how the system really works. And the description that was given as to how the American system works in reality as opposed to how it is supposed to work clearly demonstrated that the American system had little to do with what Europe experienced since the Continent got rid of its medieval set up.
Contrary to all that was previously advanced, it proved that at the heart of the American system resided not meritocracy or even a preference for one industry over another but a preference for one human characteristic over another. It turned out that in America, the smooth talking but aggressively acting con man was the most cherished of the brands even if such operator came with the word SWINDLER written all over his forehead.
It was explained in plain language that there exists in the system something called bankruptcy whereby an industry such as the auto industry is forced to rid itself of its obligations towards millions heavy lifters in order to stand on its feet and be viable again. "But what about the financial institutions? Why not let them go bankrupt?" asked the people. And the answer was that those institutions cannot be made to fail because if they do, the whole system will fail.
But what about the executive paper pushers who were responsible for the failures? Why should they get compensated as much as before? asked the people. And the answer came: Unlike the obligation to the millions in the auto industry where a contract goes down the tube together with the bankrupt company, in the case of the financial industries a contract is a contract is a contract.
But that’s not all, argued the intellectual arm of the paper pushers. It went on to say that even those who may have committed criminal offences should not be investigated because these people are special people who must be handled with special care. You can easily find a President to preside over a 14 trillion dollar economy in exchange for a million dollar salary but you cannot find a con artist to run a financial institution for less than 400 million a year. Get it once and for all, you idiot.
That was never the reason for the French Revolution or the Bolshevik Revolution that followed or even the American Revolution. This is revolting, pure and simple.