This just in..We Live in a Philanthropic Social-Capitalistic Democracy!
There is a great editorial over at The World Socialist Website (thanks to Bill over at The Florida Soapbox for making me aware of it) entitled
The philanthropy of Warren Buffett
By David Walsh
here ia an excerpt:
That one solitary human being has nearly forty billion dollars to dispose of, with a good deal left over, is appalling in itself, at a time when 1.1 billion people, one-fifth of the world’s population, live on less than $1 a day and some 3 billion on less than $2. The planet’s three wealthiest individuals in 2005 (including Messrs. Buffett and Gates) had greater wealth than the combined gross domestic product of the world’s 48 poorest nations.
There is, in any event, something intrinsically degrading and demeaning about philanthropy. A society in need of philanthropists is one rooted in inequality, in which the deprivation of the many is supposedly addressed by the largesse of the few. No one can seriously suggest that social problems will be solved in this manner. Especially in America, where an aristocracy has taken shape before our eyes over the past decade and the Bush administration is taking blind, reckless measures to eliminate all restrictions on the accumulation of personal wealth.
Does anybody else besides me cringe everytime you hear the words philanthropy or charity? No? OK how about the words lords or serfs? ( only today they are called CEOs and employees)
We supposedly live in a democracy, well actually it's a republic because we "elect" "our" "representatives" (what does it mean when you have to put quatation marks around everything these days?) to speak for us. Anyway, we supposedly live in a "democracy" but we have this thing called capitalism (no quotation marks needed there) that is waiting at every turn to make a mockery of democracy.
Feudalism was replaced by capitalism roughly around the same time democracy entered the scene. But despite all the patriotic hoopla about spreading democracy, nothing has changed when it comes to the economic relationship between those that take it all and leave little for the rest of us.
We rely on the charitable gestures of supremely rich Americans more and more to put a band aid on social necessities while all of us together pay taxes to support a "war" and the military industry that profits from it. Not to mention the fact that the rich increasingly pay less taxes while the rest of us watch the national debt climb. If we even suggest these days that our tax dollars be channeled to social needs, we are called socialists seeking entitlements and costly government programs.
Well I think if you take a good look at the situation as it is, we all have it wrong.
Who is getting most of our tax dollars? The Military Industrial Complex. And, wait a minute, how are they funded? Through tax dollars. How about that for a costly government program? Then by definition they are the SOCIALISTS!
And the rest of us who are left to fend for ourselves in this "free market economy" for basic social needs? By definition we are the true CAPITALISTS!
I guess maybe I should be reading the Wall Street Journal and I'll send a link to Warren Buffet to check out The World Socialist Website.
Brian
posted by Wake Up America at 8:04 AM
0 comments
SIGN UP!
