“The rich are different than you and I,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald during the Golden Age of the 1920s. Nowadays, there is a second Golden Age, an age in which 1 percent of Americans hold one-third of the nation’s wealth, and inhale over one-quarter of the income – and these rich are not only different, they also are becoming more different every day,
During the first Golden Age, people were taught that the way to success was to save a rich man’s daughter from a runaway horse. Today, rich men’s daughters are rarely seen in horse-drawn carriages. And while there is the possibility of becoming rich by inventing and peddling an electronic widget or by being 71?2 feet tall and able to dribble a basketball, the common source of wealth is passage from generation to generation. This wealth is protected and enlarged through a dysfunctional – and marginally corrupt – U.S. tax system that protects and enhances the golden hoard.
American wealth today is especially pernicious because it is not truly recognized. With the exception of a handful of billionaires saving the poor of Africa via the media, or dingbats like Donald Trump, who feed on being noticed, wealth is largely invisible. During the days of F. Scott Fitzgerald, wealth was flaunted, admired, worshipped. Diamond Jim Brady ate only at Delmonico’s; J. Pierpoint Morgan sailed his yacht; and there were butlers, upstairs maids, chauffeurs and gardeners for all to see and to envy. Today, wealth is segregated in enclaves such as the Hamptons – places that 98 percent of Americans never see and do not recognize. And since wealth is not recognized, its privileges and excesses are enabled and enhanced.
Everyone has a washing machine and a TV and is convinced that they, too, have wealth. How sad. The American people struggle to keep parks or libraries open while assuming the cost of keeping wealth secure, of ensuring the prerogatives and advantages of class distinctions: Better schools, better housing, better transportation, better medicine, better justice. The rich are allowed to foul the world and forgiven the cost of replacement or repair. Worse, they are now allowed to transfer their losses to the nation’s balance sheets.
The rich use airwaves that belong to the people to convince listeners that the “Great American Dream” truly exists; they peddle the myth of tax cuts being beneficial – like convincing a bull that gelding makes him stronger and helps him live longer, while giving him the anesthesia of a warm stall and lots of hay.
For those who do not inherit, the chances of gaining wealth are smaller than they were a century ago. And it’s getting worse. The greater the distance between classes, the more reluctant the rich to contribute to the common good. They fear strong government, because strong government can deny them privileges and take some of their wealth for the common good. They complain about the gridlock in Washington, but in truth, that’s the way they like it. The Koch brothers of the country and the business and finance leaders who hold seminars to “discuss strategies to defeat environmental and financial regulation” outrageously influence Congress through campaign funding and lobbying.
The novelist Ayn Rand is the philosophical goddess of the rich. She wrote, “business has no moral obligations” and “altruism is a contemptibly evil idea” and “charity is to commit treason against self” and “to give money to universities is to support your own destroyers.” While her status as a flatulent gasbag is a given, she was correct in one prediction. She prophesized that, in order to secure their advantages, the rich would go on strike and refuse to produce or extend finance or run their factories. Consider, therefore, the collapse of 2008, when those “too big to fail” manipulated the government into increasing the share of the rich, who now flaunt their bonuses – while millions lost their jobs and unions are being emasculated by the day.
The circumstance that permits the use and influence of wealth by the few is through the tolerance of the many. If a man with the biggest boat takes all the fish in the lake, he does so only by tolerance of other fishermen.
If hard work were the prerequisite to wealth, Maine farmers and fishermen would all drive Lamborghinis.
If the Congress does not allow the infamous Bush tax cuts to disappear, the rich will have won again.
Devil’s Dictionary ?definition of the week
Christian: One who generously seeks to have his definition of morality enshrined in law.
Rodney Quinn, a former Maine secretary of state, lives in Gorham. He can be reached at rquinn@maine.rr.com.
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