As America Sinks, The Rich Owns All The Lifeboats

Okay I'm going with the metaphor above:

Imagine that the good ole USA is the good ship "America" and heading for a gigantic iceberg. The course is an analogy for the direction history is taking us and the iceberg the problems we can see ahead. The Board of Directors of the cruise line (the .001%ers) are aboard for the great cruise. They're informed that an iceberg has been spotted. Do they change course? Nope. These men see a great opportunity for great wealth. Instead everyone aboard watches as orders are given for the ships safe to be emptied and all the wealth put in lifeboats and transferred to other ships. With all that done, they order that all the gold fixtures be stripped and loaded into lifeboats! Soon they're stealing anything of value they can get off the doomed ship...And the "America" is doomed. Not because the liner is heading for the iceberg, but because the ship's masters decided the situation offered them an opportunity to get immensely rich. They'd rather hit the iceberg, get rich, get away in the lifeboats. and let all the poor suckers drown than change course. Their calculations show they will be wealthier in doing so...Meanwhile the rest of the passengers are being fed increasingly wild rumors, excuses, and outright lies to explain the situation. Some passengers and crew are stupid enough to help yank all the valuables and pile them in the lifeboats - certain that the powers that be know best how to run the ship, certain that they will be given a seat on the lifeboat...Meanwhile the conspirators are all forming a salvage company to get rich on what's left after the collison.

The little story above isn't perfect but it does offer a way to see what's happening today. About 1980 we started to head for an iceberg. The post WWII boom was certainly over. Where once the victorious USA owned 60% of the manufacturing capacity in the world, a dollar that reigned supreme, enough oil to fuel mammoth growth, and a workforce that continually provided prodigious growth in productivity (profits to be divied up for all); suddenly America had to face a new reality. OIL was no longer domestically produced in large enough quantities and America lived and died on sucking down massive quantities of the liquid gold. Immense wealth had to be transfered to nations that were essentially still living in the Middle Ages in exchange for the black gold they floated on. Formerly huge investment banks had been concerned with organizing capital to finance new industries, build bridges, invest a nation's wealth for the future. with the rise of the petro dollar, a new system was born, bankers who took the $$$ from the Arab shieks & kings and then found a safe place to invest these $$$ for their new masters.

Well, these type of bankers weren't totally new. Since the flood of Aztec & Inca gold into Europe international banking had existed on a certain scale, and during great wars these bankers transfered huge sums from nation to nation. After the rise of the petrodollar though the scale jumped an order of magnitude. Before these exchanges though tended to be tied to national interests and reined in by the nations that harbored them. Oil money though jump started a new brand of banking where nation building, real investment in factories - bridges - railroads was replaced by a new style of banking. Where once investment & commodities banking were seen as seperate, now EVERYTHING became a commodity to be traded and any national interests were completely dismissed (even ridiculed). Profit at any cost became holy.

In America this new breed of speculative banker saw only the lure of the gold within easy reach. Once great industrialists and robber baron bankers at least took great pride in building nations. Rockefellers and Carnegie worked with a J P Morgan to build a new nation, the Royal Bank and Royal Stock Exchange worked to build across 2/5ths of the world, and the Kaiser watched as German banks industrialized that nation in a mere twenty years! These new bankers though had a vision where nothing and no one could control them, and they had the power to make this come true. By threatening to move capitalout of a nation they essentially became the owners of that nation. No national government could dare try to rein in their excesses under threat of seeing all moveable wealth disappear and go to another country. Soon these bankers were no longer subject to nation states, but instead became the masters! Here in the USA these financiers OWN our government because they alone are allowed to control our capital and that of others who have chosen to invest here (like the Arab oil monarchs and the communist Chinese).

Over the last 30 years these few men have decided that America is NOT the best place to invest. Even though the American workers are still the most productive in the world and offer the certainty of immense profits, these men use their power to transfer wealth to bully and bribe the rest of the world. Americans insist that the wealth created be shared equitably, that the pursuit of profit does not destroy our air and water, that in return for our labors we have a small guarantee of an old age pension, we are insuranced against injury while working, and have earned a share in the profits our hard work has created. For the very few who control the capital though this will not do! It decreases the their share of the profits and thereby decreases exponentially the $$$ available to them to use as they desire. When faced with a clamor for the equitable distribution of wealth among ALL those who help create it, these few men decide they will move the capital WE HAVE CREATED overseas.

So these men choose NOT to invest in America, but instead look for better "investment opportunities" abroad. They take their briefcases and travel across the world. They stop in Mexico, or China, or Indonesia and say "the Americans want us to pay them for their hard work , the Americans want a share of the wealth they create, the Americans tell us that we cannot defile their air and water. What do YOU tell us?" On cue the answer comes, the inevitable answer. "We promise you a government that will give you anything you ask! We promise you a work force that is desperate to work and willing to accept any work conditions in return for starvation wages! You can dump anything into our air and our water! We will give you ANYTHING if you take the wealth that was created in America and invest it here!" With those promises the wealth of America has been drained by the few to increase their wealth at the expense of those who worked to create it. Factories, down to the last paperclip and lathe, have been shipped abroad even though they created monstrous wealth HERE. Because of this the wealth of those who can transfer their capital - or the capital they CONTROL - overseas have made vast fortunes while the rest of us have watched as our ship slowly sinks...

And just as the men in steering my metaphorical ship must keep the passengers and crew hoodwinked, these few men must come up with a narrative to explain their looting of America. For thirty years we have been fed every lie and excuse, fallen for every scandalous rumor, and allowed ourselves to be turned against one another as they fill the lifeboats with our wealth and row way! Many of us have hitched ourselves to those men, make excuses for them, delude ourselves into thinking we are still on the best cruise ship in the world, and scurry around to do their bidding.

(Next: Part Two, or "How To keep the Imbeciles in Steerage Happy!")