The
Ticking Time Bomb of Inequality
(excerpts
from, “The
Middle and Working Class Manifesto”, by Pastor Paul J. Bern)
The civil
unrest and public protests and demonstrations throughout the Arab
world, plus parts of Europe and lately Russia, Crimea and the
Ukraine, will soon be arriving on our shores. This is a serious
development for our country because the lack of job opportunities,
plus extreme economic inequality due to a high concentration of
wealth being in the hands of far too few people, is turning the
entire world into a powder keg. America too has become a ticking time
bomb of inequality and lack of opportunity.
When I
began my writing career several years ago, I did so to pull the fire
alarm on some hearts and minds, such as when one wakes a slumbering
neighbor from an overnight house fire. I write to get people's
attention, to alert people everywhere to a clear and present danger
to our freedom, to shock the uncaring out of their apathy, and to
light a fire underneath the complacency of the willfully ignorant.
The rich, powerful, and politically well-connected, no less than the
top 1% of the US economic pie, have taken over 99% of that pie,
leaving the rest of us with the crumbs. And so I am here to alert you
that a Second American Revolution, a peaceful revolution aspiring to
non-violence, has already been launched. This 2nd American Revolution
will remain peaceful so long as “we the people” are not attacked
by law enforcement, the military, national guard troops or other
abusive authoritarians.
The
circumstances and situations that the middle and working classes in
the US and abroad find themselves in today amount to a series of
gross social injustices that demands a sharply focused and
well-coordinated response from the entire populace, a rebuttal and
decisive counterattack designed and intended to right, correct and
re-balance US political and economic power back into the hands of the
overwhelming majority of American citizens to whom it rightfully
belongs. There can be no doubt that class warfare has been declared
in the US, perpetrated by the wealthy against the middle and working
classes, carried out and implemented by the top 1% as a strategic
first strike against the remaining 99%. This has been done for the
sole express purpose of eliminating from society the constitutional
majority of working Americans, and it has been accomplished by the
complete and merciless liquidation of middle and working class wealth
due to the loss of our homes and retirement savings, the loss of our
standards of living and relative prosperity due to loss of income,
and even our health due to loss of health insurance. The end result
has been the largest transfer of wealth in all of human history. I
learned this through personal experience.
I was an IT
professional by trade with well over 20 years experience before being
sidelined due to a stroke and a couple of other medical issues in
2008. When I attempted to return to the job market in early 2010 I
discovered that it was just not possible, partly because of the
absolutely pathetic state of the US job market and partly because I
was already in my fifties. And so I found myself forced into early
retirement even though I wanted to return to work and be productive
again. Next, I tried to go back to school and learn a new trade only
to be told that I couldn't get a student loan because my credit score
wasn't high enough. I found myself temporarily stuck as a result,
unable to return to work and unable to retrain myself because of an
artificial economic barrier that I could not surmount. I could
probably return to the job market in a healthier economy, or get
vocational retraining, if the system wasn't broken. Instead, I find
myself depending on a government that I fear and mistrust for my
monthly sustenance.
There are
tens of millions of formerly middle class people just like me all
across the country who find themselves in circumstances similar to
mine to varying degrees of severity. Many have not been as fortunate
as me. They have lost jobs and even whole careers like I have, been
forced out into the street due to the epidemic of foreclosures
throughout the land, had their cars repossessed leaving them with no
way to get to work assuming that they are lucky enough to still have
jobs, and are hounded by collection agencies for debts great and
small. They have no access to health care except to show up at the
local emergency room with no way to pay the bill, putting them even
deeper into debt than they already are. They have watched their
pensions and their retirement savings evaporate due to market
manipulations by unscrupulous “financial managers” who earn
obscene bonuses whether they succeed or fail, and all at the expense
of their clients. Either that or they have spent their savings during
interminably lengthy periods of unemployment after their jobs were
downsized or out-sourced overseas to the third world, never to return
again. And their children, the ones lucky enough to be able to go to
college, are graduating with crushing student loan debts that will
take decades to repay if they can be repaid at all, depending on
whether they can find suitable work or not. What good is a four-year
degree if you wind up flipping hamburgers, stocking shelves, bagging
groceries or digging ditches?
Meanwhile,
the best jobs, the best educations, and the best incomes are reserved
for the wealthy and their families. The same goes for the best health
care, the nicest cars and boats and even airplanes (why bother with
flying business class?), not to mention the best retirement plans.
All of this and more are systematically being procured by the top 1%
economic bracket in the US at the expense of everybody else. It's
always steak for them and beans for the rest of us, and that is a
great social injustice if there ever was such a thing. And so
revolution, a peaceful revolution and a civil rights movement of “WE
THE PEOPLE” modeled after that of Rev. Dr. King, Jr., is now
underway and gaining momentum, and I am asking each of you to do what
you can to get involved in the retaking of our country from the elite
1%.
Social and
economic inequality, the symptom of which is rampant class warfare,
is a cancer growing within the body politic and social fabric of
America. Spearheaded by visionaries such as Mahatma Ghandi in the
1940's and 1950's, Rev Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1950's and
1960's – and more recently beginning in the 1990's by the release
of Nelson Mandela from incarceration in South Africa – race
relations, equal economic opportunity and social parity have come a
long way; of that there can be no doubt. But there is the remaining
issue of social and economic inequality that has been festering just
underneath the surface of the American political landscape, an
enforced and entrenched inequality that flows through the bloodstream
of the American middle and working classes like an invading disease.
This social disease of inequality has penetrated the corporate body
of middle America right down to the marrow, becoming so severe that
the very existence of the US middle and working classes is now
threatened. This same social and economic disease transcends race,
and it ranges across nationalities, ethnic groups, and diverse
cultures with no preference regarding age, gender, marital status,
religion, social or economic status, sexual orientation or anything
having to do with the background of the affected individual. The
social disease of inequality is not at all peculiar to America, but
rather it spans the entire globe and threatens to swallow up any and
all chance at opportunity for all peoples, crushing the dreams and
aspirations of untold billions.
If people
the world over – starting here in the US and later propagating
abroad – don't begin to organize and fight back against the rich,
powerful and politically well-connected oppressors who are holding us
all down as they squeeze the life out of each of us, we will all find
ourselves neutralized at best, and obliterated at worst, while an
ever-increasing percentage of the nation's wealth becomes ever more
concentrated into the hand of an elite select few, rendering the
remainder of us powerless and penniless. As time goes on, the ticking
time bomb of inequality is gradually but inexorably growing worse. As
it does, the plight of the American middle and working classes, and
especially that of the poor, gets progressively more desperate along
with it.
What can we
do to reverse our nation's disastrous course? Obviously, those of us
like myself can continue to write about the class war and our battle
for survival as we continue to disseminate the awful truth about
what's happening to our beloved country and its workers. But a
positive message starts with a clear statement of what we are for: A
fair economy that works for everyone, not just the rich and powerful.
An economy where everyone works and where full employment is more
important than record profits. An economy that promotes democracy,
not economic and political hostage taking. This is an economy that
operates from the moral basis proposed by Thomas Jefferson, who
wrote, "The care of human life and happiness is the first and
only legitimate object of good government."
Based on
Internal Revenue Service figures, if middle and upper middle class
families had maintained the same share of American productivity that
they held in 1980, they would be making an average of $12,500 more
per year. That bears repeating: $12,500 of your money every year to
the richest 1 percent, and $600 more to pay your share of their tax
cuts! Inequality in the U.S. doesn't get the attention it deserves.
Many of us brush it off, thinking, "So the rich get richer –
it's always been that way." Or we think: "I'm doing OK
myself – and I want to be really rich someday, too." Since our
economic system is based on individual freedom, most of us believe in
the inalienable right to make unlimited amounts of money. The thought
of taking back a greater share from innovative and industrious
business leaders is (shudder) "socialism." But it's not
that at all. Socialism is based on a collective economy similar to
communism, and it depends on a large governmental bureaucracy in
order to rule over the land and its people. In other words, socialism
relies on big government, whereas I am advocating exactly the
opposite. Furthermore, I am very much in favor of private ownership
and free enterprise whereas socialism excludes both. Enough said.
Fortune
magazine reported that the 500 largest U.S. companies cut a record
821,000 jobs in 2009 while their collective profits increased
threefold to a record $391 billion. According to Forbes magazine, the
top 20 private equity and hedge fund managers took an average of
$657.5 million in 2006. The salaries of these 20 people could have
paid for 25 police officers, 25 firefighters, and 50 teachers for
every one of the 3,000 counties in the United States. Instead we see
counties like Ashtabula in Ohio, which cut back its police force from
112 to 49, while a judge advises the residents to "get a gun"
to defend themselves. Actually, people have already begun doing just
that. As of this writing, there were 5 million handguns, rifles and
shotguns sold in April 2012 alone. Millions more have already been
purchased by patriotic Americans who love their country but despise
their government. We’re in a class war. It’s the corporations and
the very wealthiest against all the rest of us.
In 1962 the
wealthiest 1 percent of American households had 125 times the wealth
of the median household. Now it’s 190 times as much. From 1975 to
2010 median family income rose $42,936 to $49,777. That’s not quite
16 percent over 25 years, less than six-tenths of 1 percent per year.
Then came the crashes of 2001 and 2008 and the recessions that
followed. The crashes haven’t changed anything. Things have become
worse. From 1990 to 2005, adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage is
down 9 percent while production workers’ pay is up only 4.3 percent
over 15 years. At the same time, the rich get richer: Corporate
profits are up 106.7 percent. The S&P 500 is still up 141.4
percent since 1990. CEO compensation is up 282 percent. Call it
transfer of wealth. Or call it class warfare. If current trends
continue, the United States by 2043 will have the same income
inequality as Mexico. Countries with high levels of income inequality
are third-world countries. When a country is, or becomes, a
third-world country, the other thing people can do is run. To some
place richer and freer. Like America. But when America becomes
Mexico, where will you run to?
Beside loss
of income and loss of residence, there are two additional ways that
social and economic inequality are being enforced all across middle
America. First, for those old enough to retire, their pensions are
being systematically looted and/or confiscated by the top 1% tier of
US wealth. Simply put, the elderly are superfluous to capitalism.
With high rates of joblessness being the “new norm,” more and
more people are being made disposable. This leads to an efficient if
brutal logic: cutting old-age income and health care will make it
easier to scrap old, useless workers. In fact, this reality is
already coming to pass. I know all about this from personal
experience, as I described earlier.
The final
way that social and economic inequality is being maintained and
enforced is by an insidious and masterful plan to rob the US middle
and working classes of their ability to take care of themselves by
taking away their health insurance or vastly inflating the cost.
Consequently there is a greater concentration of wealth at the top of
the economic pyramid at the expense of everyone else, and the highest
level of health care as a result. Compare that to the fact that the
number of uninsured is in excess of 56 million as of mid-2012. There
are now nearly as many uninsured non-elderly people as those
receiving Medicaid or other public insurance such as Medicare and
military/veterans coverage.
The gaps in
our health care system affect people of all ages, races and
ethnicities, and income levels; however, those with the lowest income
face the greatest risk of being uninsured. Not having health
insurance makes a difference in people’s access to needed medical
care and their financial security. The barriers the uninsured face in
getting the care that they need means they are less likely to receive
preventive care, are more likely to be hospitalized for conditions
that could have been prevented, and are more likely to die in the
hospital than those with insurance. The financial impact can also be
severe. Uninsured families already struggle financially to meet basic
needs, and medical bills, even for minor problems, can quickly lead
to medical debt.
Where will
all of this inequality lead the American people, or at least the
overwhelming majority of the population? What do you get when you add
the lack of meaningful employment with the apparent inability for the
US economy to create new jobs because they are all being out-sourced
overseas? What do you get when you add the rapidly increasing
phenomena of middle and working class homelessness with the organized
theft of homes and cars due to foreclosure and repossession so they
can be resold again and again? And what do you get when you add the
economic elimination of retirement pensions and affordable health
insurance? What happens when a formerly comfortable – even
prosperous – segment of the US population is sent crashing downward
into poverty, a poverty from which there is little chance of escape
unless you win the lottery or some meaningless game show on TV?
Let me tell
you exactly what will occur. As more and more people become
disaffected and disenfranchised you will see increasing anger,
unrest, and overall dissatisfaction until this ticking time bomb of
inequality reaches a tipping point. Once this tipping point is
reached – and it is almost there right now – you have the perfect
recipe for civil unrest, rioting and demonstrating in the streets,
wildcat strikes and consumer boycotts, the spontaneous blocking of
major highways plus well-to-do subdivisions and wealthy
neighborhoods, the burning of government buildings and police
stations, the takeover of radio and television stations and the
looting of grocery and big-box stores. Look at the current civil
unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, Libya and Palestine, and
let's not forget about what happened in London and in Spain last
summer [2011-PB] and what has happened in Greece. And let's be sure
to include the twin civil wars in Syria and the Ukraine. Anyone who
thinks that this kind of social and economic upheaval – this high
degree of civil disobedience as a response to government repression –
can't happen here in the USA simply hasn't been paying attention to
current events.
Speaking as
a minister of the Gospel, human equality is Scriptural. “Our
desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard
pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your
plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will
supply what you need. Then there will be equality, as it is written,
'He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered
little did not have too little.'” (2 Corinthians 8: verses
13-15 NIV)
If we are
going to be successful in our people's revolution, we will have to do
so in a peaceful and orderly way. I think the best way to accomplish
this is to imitate Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by employing his
tactics of non-violent marches and protests. I would caution all of
you to not be confrontational and to never carry weapons, because
that is not my way, not is it God's. But more than just imitating
King, who I regard as one of the mentors of my youth, I want to make
the lack of jobs, affordable housing, vocational/professional
retraining and affordable medical care into 21st century civil rights
issues that will take up where Rev. Dr. King left off, reigniting the
twin flames of human equality and full employment into the bonfire
that this modern civil rights movement is destined to become. If he
were alive today, Dr. King would observe an America increasingly
divided into two distinct and unequal classes: the rich and powerful,
and the rest of us. He'd see bankers prospering as foreclosures
increase; insurance executives reaping profits as people die for lack
of health care; and the military-industrial-prison complex advocating
and perpetuating endless war (and enjoying the spoils) as the
underclass fights, suffers, and pays the costs. Rev. Dr. King
understood completely that the people must take charge if anything of
importance needs to come to pass. He also understood that civil
rights issues are really economic issues of enforced inequality.
Today in America the working and middle classes are finding
themselves relearning these lessons a generation after the King
assassination.
Under no
circumstances should we fear the inevitable end of the American
empire or the demise of free market capitalism, but instead we should
regard them as opportunities to build a better world for our kids and
grandkids. There are too many people sitting around muttering and
complaining about how bad things are, with much pessimism about the
future. We need to stop saying to ourselves, “OMG, we're totally
screwed”, and start looking around for ways to take charge of our
own situation. The days of waiting around for the government to act
are over and done with. It's time that “we the people” retook the
reins of power from the rich, powerful and well-connected who stole
them from us. After all, our Constitution says it is our country.
Some may
ask if there are any legal implications to this. Can protesting
against the system in a peaceful way get us/myself thrown into jail?
Let me just say quite plainly that there is no law against lawful
assembly, the organizing of workers and peaceful protest, all of
which are rights guaranteed under the first amendment to the US
Constitution. You have every right to take back your country and to
reclaim your former position as a productive member of the middle and
working classes provided that you refrain from engaging in acts of
violence (excluding matters of self-defense) and especially
vandalism. The US Constitution guarantees this freedom we all share.
The truth of the matter is that things here in the US have
deteriorated economically and politically to the point where
concerned Americans from all walks of life have no choice but to
begin protesting, demonstrating and marching for human equality
beginning with a fifteen dollar per hour minimum wage, free lifetime
health care and public education, ending the endless foreign wars
that we can't afford, for ending homelessness, poverty and crime, and
for full employment. But it is a sad reality today that we middle and
working class Americans, in solidarity with the poor, have none of
the above while every other developed country in the world already
has all of the above. Well, if our government isn't doing one
stinkin' thing to uphold those whom it governs, then we have a
government that has no purpose for existence. And a government that
has no useful purpose, or who has abused their authority by
oppressing or attacking the citizens instead of governing as is
currently the case, must be “altered or abolished” (according to
the US Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson) by “we the
people”.
We're not
about to sit by like sheep meekly waiting for slaughter. We must find
ways to hinder and obstruct the corporate state at every turn.
Nothing will change unless “we the people” begin to organize
radical acts of civil disobedience to disrupt our current political
system, upping the ante until this massive flim-flam operation known
as the US government is thoroughly exposed for the criminal
enterprise that it has become. We, the people, must take back our
government by peaceful revolution because it will never be given back
voluntarily. "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
will make violent revolution inevitable." – John F. Kennedy
Americans
of all backgrounds and colors regardless of social, religious,
marital or economic status have a right to be angry and dissatisfied
about the current sorry state of US affairs both domestically and
abroad. Therefore, it is our patriotic responsibility to do something
about it, to force the system to change. Thomas Jefferson wrote in
the Declaration of Independence in 1776, “We hold these truths
to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – That to
secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the Governed, 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.”
Instead of
racial oppression as was the case a generation or more ago, the civil
rights issues of today have to do with economic oppression that knows
no racial boundaries. But because this is the case, untold multitudes
of oppressed, besieged, disenfranchised, disillusioned and
exasperated Americans will rise up together as if on cue against the
incurably corrupt, basically unfair and irreparably polluted US
government. The fundamentally flawed and inherently biased and
discriminatory federal tax code must be replaced by any and all means
necessary, even if it means calling for an income tax boycott or a
general strike. The right to a livelihood and to earn a living wage,
to better economic opportunities through free higher education, to
low-cost universal health insurance and to home ownership, and to
have a life free from hunger, homelessness, violence and crime, and
the right to Internet access, are no longer privileges reserved for
the most affluent neighborhoods and families, they are basic human
rights that can be denied to no one. In fact the entire governmental
system, especially at the federal level, has become so decrepit due
to crushing debt from without and from deep-seated corruption from
within that trying to get anything done within the existing system is
a waste of the American people's time. So considerable civil
disobedience, organized protesting, sit-ins and demonstrating, with a
tasty touch of peaceful revolution conducted primarily on line and in
the streets, is indeed our responsibility as patriotic Americans.
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