The New Feudalism
Jun. 14th, 2008 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
webfarmerBarbara Ehrenreich (author of "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America") notes what I've been seeing a lot of in my personal travels (Cape Cod, Hawaii, San Luis Obispo): All the nice places being taken over by the fiscally loaded and often socially disconnected.
Which ties in to a comment by Steve Fraser (author of "Wall Street: America's Dream Palace") who commented on Moyer's show that consumerist culture was privatizing people. Making them selfish and inward looking and defining self-worth and liberty in terms of what you buy and not what you do socially and/or politically. Another one of his essays here: "In the Last Gilded Age, People Stood Up to Greed -- Why Aren’t We?" - Alternet.org
This Land is Their Land - The Nation -11 Jun 08
"I witnessed this kind of deterioration up close in Key West, Florida, where I first went in 1986, attracted not only by the turquoise waters and frangipani-scented nights but by the fluid, egalitarian social scene. At a typical party you might find literary stars like Alison Lurie, Annie Dillard and Robert Stone, along with commercial fishermen, waitresses and men who risked their lives diving for treasure (once a major blue-collar occupation).
Then, at some point in the '90s, the rich started pouring in.
You'd see them on the small planes coming down from Miami--taut-skinned, linen-clad and impatient. They drove house prices into the seven-figure range. They encouraged restaurants to charge upward of $30 for an entree. They tore down working-class tiki bars to make room for their waterfront 'condotels.'"
"Once they've made (or inherited) their fortunes, the rich can bid up the price of goods that ordinary people also need--housing, for example. Gentrification is dispersing the urban poor into overcrowded suburban ranch houses, while billionaires' horse farms displace rural Americans into trailer homes. Similarly, the rich can easily fork over annual tuitions of $50,000 and up, which has helped make college education a privilege of the upper classes.
There are other ways, too, that the rich are robbing the rest of us of beauty and pleasure. As the bleachers in stadiums and arenas are cleared to make way for skybox 'suites' costing more than $100,000 for a season, going out to a ballgame has become prohibitively expensive for the average family. At the other end of the cultural spectrum, superrich collectors have driven up the price of artworks, leading museums to charge ever rising prices for admission."
This Land Is Ted's Land - Progressive Farmer
"The colorful, controversial media billionaire and environmentalist [Ted Turner] now owns 1.7 million acres, mostly ranchland, in the U.S. He owns more land than any other individual in the U.S. His 2,600-plus square miles would cover more than half the state of Connecticut.
And the buying, which began in earnest 13 years ago, isn't over. In the past year alone, Turner has purchased roughly 320,000 acres in Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota."
Which ties in to a comment by Steve Fraser (author of "Wall Street: America's Dream Palace") who commented on Moyer's show that consumerist culture was privatizing people. Making them selfish and inward looking and defining self-worth and liberty in terms of what you buy and not what you do socially and/or politically. Another one of his essays here: "In the Last Gilded Age, People Stood Up to Greed -- Why Aren’t We?" - Alternet.org
This Land is Their Land - The Nation -11 Jun 08
"I witnessed this kind of deterioration up close in Key West, Florida, where I first went in 1986, attracted not only by the turquoise waters and frangipani-scented nights but by the fluid, egalitarian social scene. At a typical party you might find literary stars like Alison Lurie, Annie Dillard and Robert Stone, along with commercial fishermen, waitresses and men who risked their lives diving for treasure (once a major blue-collar occupation).
Then, at some point in the '90s, the rich started pouring in.
You'd see them on the small planes coming down from Miami--taut-skinned, linen-clad and impatient. They drove house prices into the seven-figure range. They encouraged restaurants to charge upward of $30 for an entree. They tore down working-class tiki bars to make room for their waterfront 'condotels.'"
"Once they've made (or inherited) their fortunes, the rich can bid up the price of goods that ordinary people also need--housing, for example. Gentrification is dispersing the urban poor into overcrowded suburban ranch houses, while billionaires' horse farms displace rural Americans into trailer homes. Similarly, the rich can easily fork over annual tuitions of $50,000 and up, which has helped make college education a privilege of the upper classes.
There are other ways, too, that the rich are robbing the rest of us of beauty and pleasure. As the bleachers in stadiums and arenas are cleared to make way for skybox 'suites' costing more than $100,000 for a season, going out to a ballgame has become prohibitively expensive for the average family. At the other end of the cultural spectrum, superrich collectors have driven up the price of artworks, leading museums to charge ever rising prices for admission."
This Land Is Ted's Land - Progressive Farmer
"The colorful, controversial media billionaire and environmentalist [Ted Turner] now owns 1.7 million acres, mostly ranchland, in the U.S. He owns more land than any other individual in the U.S. His 2,600-plus square miles would cover more than half the state of Connecticut.
And the buying, which began in earnest 13 years ago, isn't over. In the past year alone, Turner has purchased roughly 320,000 acres in Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota."
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Date: 2008-06-15 05:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-17 05:27 am (UTC)You might also find the works of David Cay Johnston ("Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich and Cheat Everyone Else) and Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele ("America: Who Really Pays the Taxes?") for two off the top of my bald head.
Another two authors and associated books that might be of interest would be David C. Korten ("When Corporations Ruled the World") and Doug Henwood ("After the New Economy"). All FWIW.
As you probably know from my previous posts, I think about 90% of these issues of distribution can be dealt with directly via the use of democratic worker-owner cooperatives such as those of the Mondragon, Spain type. US examples being the Arizmendi Bakery (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/10/10/EBGNG26PPL1.DTL) of SF and the Casa Nueva (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5378/is_200003/ai_n21455378) of Athens, OH.
That's the only way to ensure the long run survival of a middle class focused society and not a further slipping into this New Feudalism (as I like to call it). Highly income differentiated societies will always have a hard time finding a political common ground. The struggle then becomes one of democratic politics (voters) vs. increasingly concentrated economic power. Usually the concentrated economic power is going ot win that one.
I don't see labor unions as being a very viable counterbalancing force contrary to the occasional win here and there. They are better than nothing but sometimes not a lot better these days.
I'm sure your experience in the former Soviet Union (and elsewhere) seriously informs you on many of these political economic issues.