Those who have, have far too much, and those who do not have, are more & more doomed to lead brutal lives of want & deprivation.
The imbalance is unbelievable, unrivaled in the history of mankind. It is not that the poor have less than they used to have -- having nothing can not be much diminished, zero equals zero equals zero -- but those who have, have so much more than anyone before them ever, ever, ever had.
Who can conceive of billions of dollars -- and yet some people have access to billions of dollars. Never before, in all of mankind's history, has anyone had that much control over that many people through the sheer power of money to control people -- to buy people's time, to buy people's life. In a sense, not Napoleon, or Alexander, or Hitler, or Stalin -- none of those tyrants could control as many people as billionaires control through money.
Yes, a billionaire controls people -- he dictates what they will build -- boats, or clothes, mansions or gardens. A billionaire can affect the lives of millions of people. In his factories, people can be exploited, annihilated. In his mansions, in his hotels, in his casinos, in his drug empire, in his clothes empire, in his country estate, in his villa, in his whatever, he dictates, controls. He is absolute monarch over several billion dollars and all which that controls.
You get the picture, and to the extent that many of us wield 50,000 dollars, or a 100,000 dollars or a million dollars, we live the life of kings: we have many things done for us by others.
But the poor amongst us are living desperate lives, lives that are more meager and brutal than the lives of those who preceded them. Comparisons are almost impossible. How can I, who have never been poor, compare the poor and desperate lives of people a thousand years ago and people today? To an extent, I am not qualified, and yet it does not take too great a leap of imagination to begin to imagine.
Today we have "urban poor, people who live within a city and have no income. For most of mankind's history, nine out of ten people lived on farms, so, even though you were poor, you could still eat what you were able to grow. You could live in what you could build. But most urban poor do not know how to grow food, do not know how to build even the most primitive shelter.
Also, for generations, your family always lived next door to you, supported you in hard times. We live lonely lives: in most cases, early on we are ripped away from all family.
I will not continue. A few have too much; too many have too little. To quote Noam Chomsky, a lucid, insightful writer, nowadays we have the exploitation of the restless many by the prosperous few. Far too few have far too much, and the restless many are being cruelly exploited.
Copyright © 2004 Henry Morgenstein