A Plutocracy Dressed in Democracy's Clothing

There are those who would argue that a CEO couldn't possibly “earn” 300 times the average worker's pay. Just because you call it capitalism doesn't mean it isn't exploitative, or that it's somehow right, or that it's even capitalism. Just because you call them “share holders” doesn't mean they aren't a greedy aristocratic class.

When corporate profits and gross margins are used more for filling the coffers of the elite rather than reinvestment or compensating those whose labor helped to create the wealth in the first place, then that system is no better than medieval serfdom. You can call it capitalism, free market society, what ever you like so that you feel better about your exploitation of those whose work helped you on your rise to the top.

You sell us on the American dream, the idea that any of us could make it if we work hard enough. At one time this may have been true. But today, with the social mechanisms, which enable the middle class and poor to overcome their socioeconomic circumstances, being systematically marginalized, or dismantled altogether, the American dream is slipping away.

When poor and middle class students must take on overwhelmingly burdensome debt in order to achieve a higher education, or when they can't even afford basic and effective health care, a series of barriers is built. Barriers to keep the poor and middle class uneducated, and in poor health. When decent paying jobs are moved to other countries for lower wages, then the poor and middle class are forced to focus on meeting the basic needs of survival by working in low paying jobs rather than saving and perusing the mechanisms that allow for upward socioeconomic mobility. The poor and middle class in America are effectively becoming indentured servants with few options.

When you combine the socioeconomic barriers with a government that caters more and more to corporations and the individual's voice is dismissed or isn't even heard then conditions are ripe for civil unrest or even revolution.

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

This country's trend toward a plutocracy or oligarchy is alarming. This country is morphing into something that bears little resemblance to a democracy of the people and for the people. All the while these same plutocrats or oligarchs wrap themselves in a jingoistic package, waving the American flag yelling to the masses what a great country we live in and if you don't support their political agendas then you must be unpatriotic, or a socialists, or a communist. The problem is their political agendas benefit the plutocracy and only the plutocracy, not the masses. Their policies, their goals are the ones that are systematical tearing apart the mechanisms in this country that once allow for upward socioeconomic mobility.

Keeping the poor, uneducated, in poor health, and working in low paying jobs while dangling the carrot of the American dream which the plutocracy know fully well is unobtainable for most of the poor in this country, this is sick and twisted behavior of manipulative, self serving egomaniacs, bent on lust for excess and greed.