Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Inequality? We Need a New Word

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, February 13, 2012

Inequality? We Need a New Word

Click here to access article by Saskia Sassen from The Occupied Wall Street Journal.

Creative financial engineering by financial gurus serving the One Percent resulted in widespread problems for both financial institutions and ordinary people. Only the former were rescued by government intervention.

The brutality of eviction, of losing the little material security one has, did not factor into the calculations of our financially creative class, who many now consider a criminal corporate elite. The fact that neighborhoods and communities would be destroyed, shops shuttered and businesses folded, municipal governments and social programs slashed and literally trillions of dollars wiped from the national books did not—and does not—factor in.

Financial engineers exist to serve capitalists, the One Percent, not the 99 Percent. They did that and created a disaster for our economy. However, the One Percent is richer than ever. If you are going to accept a system that does what it is designed to do, you are a fool if you merely criticize it, and not insist that the system needs to be changed.