E.A.U.
Egalitarianism Ain’t Us
Egalitarianism Ain’t U.S.
Egalitarianism Ain’t Under the sun anywhere (within the sorry domain of this particular System).
In a certain sense the left ought to feel foolish. For all the analyzing, organizing, strategizing, stomping, kvetching, and occupying over the last 200 years inequality just keeps increasing.
The left has gotten the elites to recognize that in the absence of a social safety net there would be more in the way of instability. Such was the motivation for the New Deal, for example. Social welfare programs are more effective than charity.
But The System cannot be, never has been, and never will be egalitarian. Under conditions of mass society all policy exists out there somewhere, remote, impersonal, unaccountable, irresponsible.
Of the total US net worth (assets minus liabilities) the percentage of the top 1% rose from 23.5% in 1989 to 31.4% in 2021.
The total net worth of the top 10% rose from 60.7% to 69.6% between 1989 and 2021. In other words, of all the personal wealth in the country, the top 10% own about 70% of it.
The top 10% owns almost 90% of stocks. The stock market has gone up by a factor of five (over 400%) over the period of the last 12 years (the SP 500 was at around 800 in 2009 and now is at around 4200). Ninety percent of that windfall has accrued to the wealthiest top 10%.
It would be an accomplishment for the left to scream and protest and rebel until the wealth percentage of the top 1% declined all the way back down from 31% to 23%. So the fuck what.
Memo to the left: Don’t spread illusions. This paradigm of society cannot be, never has been, and never will be egalitarian. Abandon it.
Wooden ships on the water, very free and
Easy, you know the way it’s supposed to be
Silver people on the shoreline, let us be
Take a friend by the hand
Together abandon this foreign land
Sail away, to where we might laugh again
We are leaving, you don’t need us
