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Monday, March 14, 2011

Self-made Nobodies

Self-made American billionaires.
You have to be kidding.
Self-made men, that’s what America is all about.
Rubbish.
One person, raising themself up by their own bootstraps, and making a fortune single handedly. It’s the American way.
You are kidding, aren’t you?
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Let’s analyze the myth of self-made wealth in the United States.
Begin at the beginning.
Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, John D. Rockefeller, et al, what do they all have in common?
Aside from some spare simoleons, these allegedly self-made wunderkinds were all lottery winners. They were all lottery winners at birth. They were born in the United States of America whereas they could as easily have been born to Inuit families somewhere north of north. John D.’s fortune might have been severely handicapped if the closest oil he could have put his hands on were Canadian shale oil reserves. And that’s just luck by geography.
Ever use a dollar bill?
Of course you have. So have Gates, Buffett, Winfrey, and Rockefeller.
Consider the dollar bill for a moment or so.
A promissary note backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government.
Dollar bills are contracts. Use these and we promise they’ll be worth something. The U.S. government, Gates, Buffett, Winfrey, and Rockefeller were partners to the same contract whenever a dollar bill changed hands.
Every dollar bill in the bank is a contract with the American people. It’s not individual’s money. All a dollar bill is is a contract backed by the American people.
Self-made billionaires.
Sure, pal. And there’s a bridge in Brooklyn you might want to buy.
It’s a social contract and it’s reaffirmed every time a greenback goes from one paw to another.
Put it this way, the US military is behind every buck in Buffett’s bank. Every greenback he owns is supported by the most socialistic organization in the American government, the Army.
Now what’s all this got to do with anything?
American billionaires haven’t amassed their sizable fortunes by themselves. They’ve worked within the American system of government. They’ve played it well. They’ve won the game. If U.S. law had said all computer codes were classified information, Bill Gates would probably be pushing pills for some pharmaceutical conglomerate or other corporate pirate. If Warren Buffett didn’t know his way around the tax code, he’d probably be just another nice rich guy. They worked the system as they met it. They knew the rules of the house and they played them.
But now the game isn’t working for the vast majority of people playing it. Over the last couple of decades the rules of the game have been changed to screw almost everyone in the United States while at the same time enriching those at the very top of the economic ladder. The rich get to eat bon-bons while the teenage GIs who hold the rifles that protect all the money collect food stamps to feed their own children.
Now those who may have played the game too well cry when anyone suggests changing the rules again. They protest that they made their money all by themselves. They don’t see any reason to give those kids holding the guns enough to feed their families. Have the rich become too stupid to keep a hold on what they consider to be their own money? Don’t they know that if they give a little they won’t lose it all? Haven’t they ever heard the Wall Street expression, pigs get fed but hogs get slaughtered?
The American financial system exists because of the will of the American people. The American people decide the rules of the game. It’s time to change the rules of the game. It’s time to give the wealthiest a haircut and once again spread the wealth.
Too many of the richest among us have become far too stupid.