Posted on 12/26/2006 7:30:59 AM PST by pabianice
Not since 1937 have the richest 1% of Americans been so far above the average citizen in assets and earning power as today. More, these one percenters are not coupon-clipping, Palm Beach-squatting heirs. They are wage earners and entrepreneurs, and their prospects just get grander as globalization grows the market capitalization of all enterprises. Further, the one percenters are pulling away not only from everyone in general but also from the richest of the rest. Their income has doubled since Ronald Reagan, while in the same time frame the merely rich, the 90th to 95th percentiles, have flatlined.
What this means today, brooding on George Santayana's drollery that you are doomed to repeat the history you don't learn from, is that it is useful to travel back to New York City in 1937 to see what severe and, truth be told, grotesque income disparity might mean in the world of affairs ahead.
January 1937 was a savage landscape of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. New Yorkers awoke on a cold, fair morning to learn that the national economy was rocked by more than 33,000 men on a sit-down strike at General Motors plants in Flint, Michigan. The United Auto Workers demanded company-wide collective bargaining. General Motors responded that it wanted to negotiate separately with each plant. Strikers took command of the entrance to the Buick plant while intimidated company cops stood by. Fighting broke out between factions of strikers. One man was hospitalized for whipping wounds.
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
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I believe the similarities between now and 1937 are much more related to the rise of deadly enemies adversaries (Militant Islam and Red China) similar to the fanatic impiralists and fascists of that era more than anything else.
After reading this I have more work to do. If I'm not in the top 1% there is still room for improvement.
All kidding aside, it's not what you make, it's what you end up with. If I make $1,000,000 per year and spent $1,500,000 a year (as some celebrities seem to do) you will be worse off than making $50,000 per year and spending $40,000.
-b-
This is a typical headline quote that strikes a chord until you examine the substance.
By the way, everyone knows that the situation of those 'in poverty' (western world) is far above that of the past.
It's portrayed as though 99% of us are poor and destitute.
I'd much rather be considered poor nowadays than considered being rich in '37.
bttt
I remember my Father talking about that.
He had to walk 5 miles uphill to school in blinding snow and then walk uphill home through tornado's on the way home.
By the time he got home the fire was out and he had to walk the rail line (up hill) to pick up coal so he could warm his back by the potbelly stove until he turned around so he could warm his front.
Then he would go find a stick (uphill) so he could walk through 2' of snow (uphill) and when he found a mound in the snow he ran the stick into it and bagged himself a grouse so he could take it home (uphill)to feed the family.
Poor nowadays is not having the money to buy a Nintendo for your kids without using a credit card to buy it...
Monty Python's
We Were So Poor Script
Four well-dressed men sitting together at a vacation resort. "Farewell
to Thee" being played in the background on Hawaiian guitar.
Michael Palin: Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable.
Graham Chapman: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine,
ay Gessiah?
Terry Gilliam: You're right there Obediah.
Eric Idle: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin'
here drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine?
MP: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup
o' tea.
GC: A cup ' COLD tea.
EI: Without milk or sugar.
TG: OR tea!
MP: In a filthy, cracked cup.
EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a
rolled up newspaper.
GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
TG: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money
doesn't buy you happiness."
EI: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to
live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.
GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one
room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the
floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for
fear of FALLING!
TG: You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a
corridor!
MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a
palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish
tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting
fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.
EI: Well when I say "house" it was only a hole in the ground covered
by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US.
GC: We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and
live in a lake!
TG: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty
of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.
MP: Cardboard box?
TG: Aye.
MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in
a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the
morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down
mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home,
out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in
the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to
work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad
would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we
were LUCKY!
TG: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox
at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues.
We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four
hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we
got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.
EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night,
half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), eat a lump
of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill
owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home,
our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves
singing "Hallelujah."
MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't
believe ya'.
ALL: Nope, nope..
There are a lot of differences - we are not seven years into a great depression, for example.
I think what he is pointing out though are the similarities. The really should not be ignored.
LOL!!!
I try and take after them...but the average Joe today is in debt up to their eyelids over the possesions they have in their home, but do not own. This is also an important point that should be "gotten".
Propserity is not necessarily about how many toys you have in your possession, but how many of the things that actually matter that you own.
Anyhow...back to my original point. I believe the similarities between this and that era are much more related to the rise of enemy nations and ideologies and the impact they can have on us, just as they had on the people of that era.
Amen.
Thanks...and here's a BUMP back. Eternal vigilance is one of the prices of freedom.
Common sense, which is not so common these days.
"What good fortune for those in power that the people do not think."
--Adolf Hitler
The people of 1937 weren't victims of income disparity. They were victims of insane Federal Reserve policy.
And about to be victims of the New Deal.
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