The pyramid of wealth

AlterNet has an interesting article called "Democrat Not Spoken Here" by Kevin Griffis. It describes why Southerners just don't want to vote Democratic any more even though they might have done in the past (the Kennedy years) or just plain should do for their own good.

The main reasons? Focusing on fear and loathing of "those people" that has nothing to do with their own well being. Also buying unatainable goals promised by preachers of G.O.P. mantra that serve their own self-interested aspirations but again, in reality, not their own good.

The former is something I've always known about, the latter is something I've been hearing for the past few years. When the going gets good everyone suddenly sees a stairway to riches and assumes that they must adopt the part of the rich before they get there just insure their entrance pass. However no-one ever tells them its a big pyramid scheme based on pushing wealth up to the few at top of the pyramid.

Of course the dirty secret of pyramid schemes that everyone gets a sudden blindness too - for every dollar that is gained at the top, someone at the bottom looses a dollar. Another way to look at it, every person at the top is standing on the shoulders of someone less well-off underneath.

So if you climb your way up you're just pushing someone down off the top or, more likely, you'll need some new povety stricken suckers to line up underneath you. mmm, how about a few million cheated stock investors? No, not enough, how about six million undocumented workers, that might do the tric? No, still not enough, how about tens of millions of sweathshop workers proping up your well being? Now we're talking!

As the article points out. Those golden Kennedy years were actually the sixties and early seventies before corporations took their stranglehold on government and started their oh so successful campain to squeeze out the middle class. This created a vast plateau of poverty at the bottom, topped by a pointy Alpine peak of super rich at the top. Where does the mid point lie? Well in 2000 the top 20% of people earned about the same as the bottom 80%.

If nothing else, the article gives a good selection of attitudes and ideas held down in "Bush country". If you'e not a G.O.P. voter then you need to read it, because addressing those ideas and winning some hearts and minds there are the only way you're going to win back this country.