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Understanding America's Class System
Joe Bageant ^ | August 16th 2010 | Joe Bageant

Posted on 08/22/2010 11:52:59 AM PDT by Cardhu

How about them political elites, huh? Five million bucks for Chelsea Clinton's wedding, 15K just to rent the air-conditioned shitters -- huge chrome and glass babies with hot water and everything. No gas masks and waxy little squares of toilet paper for those guys.

Yes, it looks big time from the cheap seats. But the truth is that when we are looking at the political elite, we are looking at the dancing monkey, not the organ grinder who calls the tune. Washington's political class is about as upwardly removed from ordinary citizens as the ruling class is from the political class. For instance, they do not work for a living in the normal sense of a job, but rather obtain their income from abstractions such as investment and law, neither of which ever gave anybody a hernia or carpal tunnel. By comparison, the ruling class does not work at all.

Moneywise, Washington's political class is richer than the working class by the same orders of magnitude as the ruling class is richer than the political class. This gives the political class something to aim for. To that end, they have adopted the ruling elite's behaviors, tastes and lifestyles, with an eye on becoming members. Moreover, it is a molting process that begins with the right university and connections, and culminates in flying off to Washington with the rest of your generation's most privileged and ambitious young moths.

They make enough dough to at least fake it until they make it. Fifty-one of the 100 members of the US Senate are at the very least millionaires -- probably more than that, since multi-million million dollar residences and estates are exempt from the official tally.

(Excerpt) Read more at joebageant.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: america; class; rich; superrich
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A good read and right on the money.
1 posted on 08/22/2010 11:53:00 AM PDT by Cardhu
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To: Cardhu

I hate it when the peasants mouth off like this. They really should remember their place </sarc>


2 posted on 08/22/2010 11:59:34 AM PDT by glorgau
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To: Cardhu

Sounds like a pinko to me — the pointless vulgarity is usually a tip-off.


3 posted on 08/22/2010 12:01:22 PM PDT by BenLurkin ("They do their business behind closed doors, and pretend that the world is just beggin' for more.")
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To: Cardhu

There’s radical liberal elites - and the borderline criminal underclass that keeps them in power.

Then there’s conservatives workers ...


4 posted on 08/22/2010 12:02:25 PM PDT by GOPJ (Are Time Magazine staff members coservativephobes?)
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To: Cardhu
You hear it all the time these days: The top one percent of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 45% of the rest of Americans combined. I have seldom met an American who thought this is a good thing, and seldom met one who understood how the ruling class got so rich. Simply put, it was through constant cultivation of bigger and more labyrinthine government, creating legal and technical complexities to sluice money nationally and globally in their direction, and to cover their asses in the process. The results are such things as 3,000 page health care bills (defining which corporate elites get which parts of the cake), or the 2,000-page NAFTA and its 9,000 tariff product codes.

The next time a lib tells whines about wealth-inequality and that we need to raise taxes on the rich, you can point out how their love of Big-Gov't caused exactly the thing they hate most.

5 posted on 08/22/2010 12:07:59 PM PDT by PGR88
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To: Cardhu
No ... waxy little squares of toilet paper for those guys...

And I was totally sure that they used only one square per visit. Silly me...

6 posted on 08/22/2010 12:13:46 PM PDT by C210N (0bama, Making the world safe for Marxism)
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To: BenLurkin
Sounds like a pinko to me — the pointless vulgarity is usually a tip-off.

Looking at reality isn't pinko, I wouldn't change the system; I will acknowledge it's shortcomings.

7 posted on 08/22/2010 12:14:07 PM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed, and I do not give a damn.)
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To: Cardhu

“Meaning everybody in his class, the educated liberal class. Hard to believe their predecessors were the point men and women for the Scopes trial, the eight-hour day, unions, anti-McCarthyism, Cesar Chavez, Negro civil rights.”

I have trouble with this part of his article. Is he giving liberals credit for these? Is he being sarcastic?


8 posted on 08/22/2010 12:14:59 PM PDT by Mortrey (Impeach President Soros)
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To: BenLurkin

I know this man - he used to live in the same town in Virginia. He is a super-ultra liberal. A group of us used to hang out at the local pub and talk politics until I couldn’t stand it anymore.

Arrrgh! he has found his to Free Republic.


9 posted on 08/22/2010 12:17:55 PM PDT by 30Moves
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To: 30Moves

Sorry - forgot the word “way”.


10 posted on 08/22/2010 12:19:08 PM PDT by 30Moves
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To: BenLurkin

He’s a whiney pinko mouth from Winchester, VA with an axe to grind and apparently a failure in just about everything he’s tried.

He hates suburbanites, the DC metro in particular, worships the poor in foreign countries as authentic, and just WHINES about everything.


11 posted on 08/22/2010 12:24:08 PM PDT by OpusatFR
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To: BenLurkin
What does he expect? It's a fallen world. I recall something else Galbraith says, which is seldom do men do so little harm as when the engaged in buying and selling. Businessmen are more like yapping dogs than wolves. Wolves kill without purpose.
12 posted on 08/22/2010 12:34:15 PM PDT by RobbyS (Pray with the suffering souls.)
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To: PGR88
The next time a lib tells whines about wealth-inequality and that we need to raise taxes on the rich, you can point out how their love of Big-Gov't caused exactly the thing they hate most.

If you think "Big-Govt" wasn't created of by and for the extremely wealthy, you don't know your history.

13 posted on 08/22/2010 12:37:51 PM PDT by Carry_Okie (The environment is too complex and too important to manage by central planning.)
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To: Cardhu

And I hope and pray that I can witness the “ruling class” folks receive the same end as did those who formerly ruled during the French Revolution.

Really...death is actually a just end for these folks ...given what they are knowingly doing to us.


14 posted on 08/22/2010 12:48:04 PM PDT by Da Coyote
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To: OpusatFR

Coolest head shop I have ever been in was in Winchester. Coincidence?


15 posted on 08/22/2010 12:59:57 PM PDT by cardinal4 (Kagan and Sotomayor-Hope and Change)
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To: 30Moves

Here’s a great line. Actually, two.

“Side effects of Risperidone include a mild speed like buzz, a super erection lasting hours, lactation and suicidal tendencies. Phew!”

Just what America needs. Give it free to all of the Queer Nation crowd. They will like the “mild speed like buzz”, will they certainly appreciate (and unquestionably find socially unacceptable uses for). The “super erections lasting hours”, will be popular, by definition. And, the trans-gendered and most of the rest of Queer Nation will find perverse uses for the drug induced lactation.

For the rest of America, the “suicidal tendencies” part of Risperidone holds out some hope of eventual societal relief.

Big Pharma may become popular again.

;-)


16 posted on 08/22/2010 1:04:55 PM PDT by GladesGuru (In a society predicated upon freedom, it is essential to examine principles,)
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To: GladesGuru

Please forgive the typos. Afternoon coffee needed.


17 posted on 08/22/2010 1:07:20 PM PDT by GladesGuru (In a society predicated upon freedom, it is essential to examine principles,)
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To: OpusatFR

Ditto! Leftist...Big time...a hate filled and profane parasite who talks like a defeatist and falls flat on his big fat liberal butt.


18 posted on 08/22/2010 1:08:50 PM PDT by Ronbo1948
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To: Da Coyote

A French Revolution rerun may actually happen in the next few years and Leftist parasites like the author above may have their heads on the chopping block first.


19 posted on 08/22/2010 1:14:55 PM PDT by Ronbo1948
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To: Carry_Okie; PGR88

I am a populist in the sense of believing the rich will always get richer and dump on the little guys, but I differ in that I know that attempting to remedy these inequities by means of government only makes them worse. Big money and big government are certainly bed mates.

The only thing that gives the little guy hope of having a good life is freedom, the rule of law, and property rights.


20 posted on 08/22/2010 2:08:57 PM PDT by Pining_4_TX
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