From The Robber Baron Archives-Let Them Eat Cake- The Billionaires That Is

From The Robber Baron Archives-Let Them Eat Cake- The Billionaires That Is

Seth Garth

One thing that I can say for myself, that I am proud of is that whatever the vagaries, the successes and failures of my life I have stayed political and socially very close to my roots (economically has been an up and down affair although right now I can at least claim that unlike too many of my fellow citizens I could raise five hundred dollars in ready cash fi an emergency came up- a low bar but an alarming one for those who are in that situation). I grew up dirt poor, maybe that is overstating the case in the Adamsville Housing Authority apartments. Make no mistake that back in the 1950s as now is nothing but the dreaded dead-end projects that everybody draws a crooked breath and so fear at the mention of the term. My poor bedraggled father who finally many years too late I acknowledged did the best he could had been an uneducated Kentucky coalminer, Hazard of labor legend and song, transplanted north by another set of vagaries, World War II. Last hired, first fired always looking for work to feed five hungry mouths he never got far, and we didn’t as kids either except we had “wanting habits” that is wanting what other kids got by just being kids.

But enough  of that because today I want to rail as usual against the feckless billionaires, their hangers-on millionaires and in turn their hangers-on making hundreds of thousands of dollars, hell maybe a million but that number does not have the cachet it had when I was growing up and thinking about my wanting habits. Not the 99% which is wrong or else we would have gotten rid of these gouging profit-takers long ago but something like 33% which is very different proposition and something even those on the left have not seriously bargained with when thinking about programs and organizing. Or about confronting in class warfare or if it came to it other kinds of warfare.       

Normally when I rail against the billionaires I am arguing for something like expropriation or nationalization for the greater social good, warts and all. Generally, not about steep tax hikes for these bums since they all have fleets of tax accountants who can, who have whittled that increase down to nothing or maybe giving these guys a tax return, who knows with creative number-crunching. But it is a start, a start promoted by Senator Bernie Sanders as usual and a cohort of fellow presidential candidates, Democratic candidates to be sure. That my friends reflects the times, the dangerous times we live and while I have not been a partisan of presidential politics to get things done the defense of the Republic seems to be at stake and so rather than mourn, and scream it is time to organize the resistance and defend our precious republican values which have taken a beating of late. Give Bernie a look, a long look, please. He speaks for those wanting habits and those who don’t have the fiver hundred ready in an emergency.