Fiscal inequality: Godzilla vs. Ants
That’s what America really looks like. That’s how it looks to elected officials who scramble for campaign cash. Oh, they know you’re down there. Every few years they get out a microscope and reach down to pet your tiny, tiny head. But mostly everything you say just fades into a faint whine, drowned out by the basso profundo rumble of the 1%. Horton may have cared about the Whos, but Horton is not the kind of elephant you find in politics.
That’s how America looks to corporations and organizations who are piloted by these Godzillas of the 1%. Why should they be bothered if their massive strides should squash a few ants in passing? What difference does it make if their corporate colony gets its ants from China, or Cambodia, or wherever is cheap this week, rather than American ants? The 1% measure value by wealth, and the ants don’t have any. You put all the ants together, and they still can’t match even the beetles that live at the 90% mark. Actually, ants are bit of an exaggeration. You know those tiny black ants that try to invade your kitchen in the spring? Compared to the fiscal titans of the 1%, you’re not that big. Think more along the lines of dust mite.
The top one percent have 38% of stock. They control 62% of the interest in private business. Expand that to the top 10% — those hamsters at the big guy’s feet — and you have more than 80% of stock, more than 80% of bonds, trusts, and every other fiscal instrument. Over 75% of the non-residential real estate. You know what’s really scary? Even within the one percent things are heavily weighted toward a very few in the top 1% of the 1%. I’d draw them, but the image wouldn’t fit on the screen.
The “ownership society” exists. You’re just not part of it.
There’s only one place where the ants are supposed to be as tall as the giants — in the ballot box. That’s where the average person should be able to generate pressure that keeps this from being a nation of, by, and for Godzilla. Of course, it’s not quite that simple.
When Onepercentus rex and friends control the message that the ants hear on their radios and see on their TVs, it’s easy to get confused. When the beetles of the legislature determine that the only way to get fresh food for the giants is by taking it from the ants, it’s easy to feel as if being stepped on might be a relief.