The Triumph of Hope Over Self-Interest

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Mon Jan 13 05:28:06 PST 2003



>Michael Pollak wrote:
>
>>[A conservative explains]
>
>Ooops, sorry, hadn't noticed you'd done that already.
>
>Brooks may be a conservative, but I'm afraid he's mostly right about
>this argument. That Time poll, which has 39% of Americans either
>thinking they're in the top 1% or will be someday, is just as
>revealing as Brooks claims. It uncovers a fundamental fantasy about
>American life. Even though we've got the most unequal distribution
>of income in the rich world, the highest poverty levels, the
>greatest persistence of low-wage pay, and only moderate levels of
>mobility - that all doesn't matter. Most Americans just don't care.
>You could recite the facts over & over and it won't make a dent in
>that fundamental fantasy. I'll be damned if I can think what to do
>about it.
>
>Doug

The fact that "the top 1%" are "making incomes over $300,000 per year" while you are making only, say, $30,000 isn't in itself a reason enough for you to get mad as hell at the top 1%....unless you also know that the top 1% are making over $300,000 _because_ they exploit you and your fellow workers, _because_ the value that you produce have and will be making them richer, more powerful, more capable of exploiting and oppressing you further. Facts about income inequality are not that hard to come by even in the corporate mass media, not to mention the smaller liberal media. You can't find anything about exploitation (in the Marxist sense) of ordinary American workers in the corporate mass media, though (the smaller liberal media only faintly hint at it, once in a blue moon). If "exploitation" is mentioned _at all_, the word is invariably used in such a way that it only refers to super-exploitation of sweatshop workers in poor nations and other extreme cases. If anything, you, with your $30,000 income and bargain-hunting practice, will find yourself damned as among the chief exploiters of poor Third-World workers. Ideology turns the world upside down, with the exploited (American workers) portrayed as the exploiters, the exploiters (capitalists) portrayed as the "fortunate," the "hard-working," the "charitable," etc. -- Yoshie

* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list