OP's note: The following is not to be read as some cringey manifesto. I just wanted to vent what has been on my mind for literally decades. It finally reached a tipping point.
Making money is not a moral endeavor. To be rich is to be a sociopath because how can you sleep at night without your conscience bothering you because you exploited so many people? You cannot have a moral compass, ethical code or even a modicum of humanity when you conduct business because that term merely means the art of ripping someone else off through sheer exploitation and deceit. I'm not religious but Jesus was absolutely right when he said it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
Of course there are exceptions to the rule but do you really need a billion dollars to live comfortably? Let alone millions, as in plural? It's fucking greed, plain and simple. I don't think your bathroom faucet needs to be made out of gold or platinum, or you need premium bottled water just to wash dishes (yes, I've heard about a billionaire family who does this and I'm not alluding to that Kimmy Schmidt show on Netflix, either). And I'll go ahead and say it: All of the “philanthropy” done by celebrities or titans of industry-that is exhaustively covered by traditional media at the urgency of their publicity team-is just a tax write-off.
Oprah and her ilk are so fucking out of touch. I don't need to tip a person who is merely doing their job at a store. That's the employers' role. I also don't need to be asked to donate to a charitable cause at check-out when I can barely afford necessities myself. Why don't you, the mega-corporation, donate? I'm sure your accountants pointed out the benefits in doing so. But who the fuck am I kidding? We now hail robber barons like Jeff Bezos, who made their billions by operating their venture at a loss and bypass taxes with an offshore loophole. How noble of them. Yeah, it's good when your grandpa was once the head of DARPA-you know, the agency that invented the Internet; not Al Gore-and your investor parents giving you 200k to start up your little Amazon project. Don't even get me started on the others like Musk or Gates, either. I'm getting all conspiratorial anyway. Again, for another sub (but this is entirely factual by the way; not conjecture).
(And I'd like to add that I'm not politically partisan by any means as I believe that the two major parties merely serve as an illusion of choice. But Republicans are the most blatant hypocrites by shrouding themselves with pages of the Bible and “traditional values”. They have already sold us down the river ages ago. Democrats, on the other hand, do the exact same thing, except they put a BLM or LGBT+ sticker on it. Don't believe me on the democrats? Look at all the Democrat mayors of major cities across the country. They give tax abatements or incentives out like candy to developers while they can't pass an ordinance to cap rental rates or allocate more funding to public programs and services. FFS, even the Romans built roads that have lasted thousands of years yet our roads today need to be repaved every couple of years or so. How we got where we are today is due to a concerted effort by decades of presidential administrations-regardless of their political parties-who signed pro-corporate legislation into law; Nixon with the creation of HMOs, Reagan deregulating many sectors and industries, Clinton signing NAFTA into law and Obama forcing you to take out a health insurance policy, otherwise you have to pay a penalty when you pay your income taxes.)
Do you know who leeches off the government the most? The rich via subsidies, tax breaks/incentives and, more recently, the NON-REPAYABLE PPP loans (whatever happened to practicing what they preach as in “saving for a rainy day” or “pick yourself up by the bootstraps”?). We live in a society where we fund professional sports stadiums/arenas with our tax money and still have to pay for admission and a parking spot to watch a game. I mean, how asinine can we get? (And guess what? Games are rigged. Expect more of this with today's explosion of sports betting, too.) Yet we cry foul whenever we see a struggling mother pay for her groceries at Wal-Mart with an EBT card. (And speaking of Wal-Mart–nah, I digress. This post is turning into a book.)
The economic disparity in this country is reaching its peak. I don't even want to research the French Revolution because I will probably learn that the reason(s) behind it is paltry in comparison today. And to think we created this country on the basis of “taxation without representation”. Maybe that was all a lie, too. (And I'm going to be that guy by saying yeah, it was a lie. But that's for another sub.)
Every aspect of life is now monetized. You will not make it or continually struggle unless you have a substantial figure appearing in your bank account. Money, our system of credit, is just created out of thin air. What we get out of bed every morning for is essentially worthless. It is no longer backed by gold or silver or other goods. It's simply an instrument to transfer debt. The rich know this and that's why they're gobbling up tangible assets and consolidating all their ventures to usher in complete domination. Society's biggest mistake of the last century was the marriage of healthcare (that should be a fundamental human right) and business. We live in a world where it costs just as much as a new automobile to get a picture taken of your insides by a CT scan or MRI. That is inherently evil, in my book. I can only imagine how karma feels about that.
Now let me write something in the vein of Ned Beatty's memorable monologue in the movie, Network: Government is business. This is why every single piece of legislation, political decision or issue has the best interest of business in mind. The entire globe runs on commerce. If it was truly for the people than we wouldn't even recognize what kind of world we live in due to the drastic change.
We, as a society, are rapidly regressing. That social progress you constantly see in legacy media is just advertising copy by corporations saying we want to tap into new markets. The very same businesses and institutions marginalized, or downright refused to do business with, minorities decades ago. TL;DR: They just want your money.
And I haven't even started on labor itself. Wages aren't even stagnant any longer. They have incredulously decreased, despite this inflationary economy. If you're a hard worker, meaning you perform the job of three or four people and always act like a “team player”, you'll just be compensated with more work; not a raise. Remember that employers have no humanity. They only worship the almighty dollar–with a portrait of Uncle Milty hanging above the altar. To hell with fairness and empathy, their sole existence is to widen profit margins. The fruits of your labor have been siphoned by someone at the top who probably landed their cushion job through nepotism or constant brown-nosing. And to think that all these mid-level managers, who are on power trips and have that god awful Type-A complex, are delusional enough to believe that one day they'll reach the top by squeezing every last cent out of their subordinates and treat them like livestock. (LinkedIn is testament to this sentiment. I get physically ill each time I have to log-in that godawful site. It's a place where bootlickers love to sniff their own farts and post about it.) Fuck the corporate world for we are already living in a corporate dystopia where any semblance of humanity is stripped and replaced with a Terminator-like determination to maximize profits for your employer's board of directors and shareholders. They. Don't. Care. About. You. Period.
It was never about democrats versus republicans, left versus right, whites against blacks, gays versus straights and so on. For that's the rich's game of divide and conquer. We are constantly being diverted from the real enemy by squabbling over ourselves. There has always been a tug-of-war between labor and capital, the haves and have-nots, and it will continue to be in perpetuity unless we wake up and realize we have to do something about it. Now is the time. Every hundred years or so we have a populist movement in this country that the powers that be throw a concession at us in order to shut us up and dissolve it. It's a vicious cycle that ought to stop for good.
This is the part where I'd like to take a boomer-and even some Gen Xers-by their collar and shove them against the wall. They continue to live in the past and have no understanding how vastly different the economy is today. They immediately dismiss our grievances as laziness. They come from a time when you could comfortably provide for a family of four on a single income and still own a house, car and an annual vacation. I haven't read or heard any first-hand accounts of how the work life of yesteryear was, but I have a big hunch that employers treated you with more respect and valued you greatly, hence an actual pension. You had reason to be dedicated to your job. You got compensated for it. Newsflash: 401ks aren't meant to be the sole source of your retirement, neither is Social Security–oh hell, we will never see a penny of that despite contributing towards it every paycheck.
Our grandparent's and parent's eras were simply a stroke of luck by being born in a particular time period with a booming post-war economy. We should have a national holiday commemorating the Greatest Generation who endured the Great Depression and a world war. They spawned an entire generation, the boomers, who received the benefits of the result of their hardships. And now these boomers are delusional to believe that the economy is still the same as it was–or they just got greedy and simply don't care what is happening nowadays. Yeah, probably the latter.
We are currently living the consequences of this whole “fuck the future because I won't be around for it anyway” mentality that is being exacerbated by our apathy. Maybe this is why we have this unprecedented economic disparity because the rich know what's going to unfold on the horizon and that's why they're hoarding everything without batting an eye. Think AI, smart cities (open-air prisons, basically) so they can geofence us, transhumanism and a social credit system like they have in China. (The aforementioned was all announced by the World Economic Forum and other think-tanks, too.)
Alright, I think I've done enough bitching to last me for the rest of the year. If you're still reading this I bet you're wondering what can be done about the status quo and are there any solutions. 1) Civil disobedience 2) Vote with your wallet 3) Never resort to violence or destruction.
They want you to be incensed and provoked so that way they can jail your ass. (OK, maybe I won't grab some boomer by the collar after all. But I'll warn them that they're about to go to a home or assisted living because they have multiple liens on their home.) You're easier to control when you're angry. And all those radicals you see on TikTok and other platforms acting all macho and tough, they're agent provocateurs. Plus remember all those pallets of bricks inexplicably appearing at demonstrations for George Floyd years ago? Planted by you know who. I don't like the fact that John Lennon abandoned his first son, Julian, but he was right about protesting. Laugh at their face, use humor. See through them. Be the better one.
And about voting for your wallet: That's probably the most effective way in sending a message to the real owners of this country. They live, breathe and worship the dollar so don't give your hard-earned money away to them. Make a conscious decision on every single purchase. Support local businesses and the mom and pop places. Sure, this may be an inconvenience but it's a major step in the right direction. You'll just have to budget accordingly and choose more wisely. So cancel your subscriptions, stop being loyal to a particular brand or product and eat organic! I forgot to mention the collusion between the (processed) food industry and healthcare. Correlation is not causation but explain to me the uptick in cancers, dementia and GI issues when most of us primarily eat chemicals and not actual foods.
And change doesn't start at the top, either. It begins with helping mom with the dishes and attending city council meetings by addressing your concerns. Be an active participant.
Finally, if there is only one thing you get out of this verbose diatribe let it be this: UNIONIZE!