“Follow the Money” Is a Little Bit Different Than “Who Benefits?”

Note: This post was, inadvertently, sent only to paid subscribers. It was meant to be sent to all subscribers and so I'm reposting it. Sorry for the duplicate for you paid subscribers.

There are ‘tests’ I try to use when following a story, coming up with a projection, trying to understand those who run the world, or simply thinking about how badly we fared as a human species trying to work out a reasonable agreement with the planet we live on.

One of those tests is ‘follow the money’ and it works pretty well on how Americans came to be followers instead of leaders

In my lifetime, we went from our government running surpluses to falling $trillions behind, abandoning the world’s largest producer to become its largest consumer and move from single-earner households to families pooling their resources to keep food on the table.

In a single lifetime? How is that possible?

When those of us who remember those times die off (and we are going), there will be no memory left behind, and the written history will be called ‘fake news’ or ‘alternative history.’

In my younger days, a graduated income tax that topped out at 92% sufficed to run the government, hospitals provided care instead of profits, doctors made house-calls, school teachers were well paid and students learned. The party in power called upon ‘the loyal opposition’ to help them enact laws (which they did), while lobbyists explained their case, but no money changed hands.

Business was great, most everyone got along and we had millionaires instead of billionaires.

So what went so terribly wrong?

It’s actually pretty simple. Millionaires looked for a way to take it all and found one. Bribery and fraud took over the government, but they called it innovation and lobbying, knowing full well that language counts and who controls the language counts most. It was all on the up-and-up, heads we win and tails you lose.

The Congress voted itself a law that made it legal for lobbyists to contribute to political campaigns and the Supreme Court doubled down, finding that corporations were actually citizens and could contribute as well. No one knows who said it, but “I’ll believe a corporation is a person when the State of Texas executes one” was a favored bumper-sticker.

The common man knew, but then the common man always knows. The French Revolution is the best example of that.

In a single decade, America became an plutocracy…or perhaps it always was

Going back to those founders we are so fond of, they were the ‘landed gentry’ of their times, slave-owners as well and the government they so generously gave us was at its own throat from the beginning. They invented the ‘three separate but equal branches of government’ concept to keep it from killing itself too quickly.

Only landowners could vote, they said, and by “all men are created equal,” they meant white men with wealth. Black slaves, native Indians, immigrants and women might look elsewhere, they weren’t in the deal. The Founders wrote magnificent documents and a constitution that was (and is) the envy of the world, but it was never meant for all of us. Those were not the placid times of observing one’s plantation from horseback, they were frightfully divisive, leading to a Civil War (the bloodiest we ever fought) and have returned to divisiveness today.

Having said that, they did the best that they could with the circumstances given them at the time. What they did was incredibly marvelous, a beacon to the world, but included a genocide against our native population, another 85 years of slavery and was covered in pimples from the get-go.

And it’s the plutocracy “who benefits,” whipping the horses from millions to billions, continuing to snooker a declining American middle class on fairness

Fairness-wise, take your pick, from the crappy and outrageously expensive health care we Americans accept, to the homeless piling up on the streets of our cities. Our plutocracy doesn’t concern itself with that, their yachts are built in Europe and their earnings sheltered in Bahamian tax-free zones. Thus far, pitchforks and barricades are as novel an idea as flying commercial class.

And, while there was once a Sam Walton, Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos at the head of these behemoths, their kin and their kin’s kin are now placidly raking in more that can be humanly spent for contributing absolutely nothing to the game at hand. And you can only call it a game. It is beyond all other explanation.

So, it’s possible, worldwide, to look at possibilities and pretty accurately predict outcomes by asking “who benefits?”

Will Putin go nuclear? Probably not, it wouldn’t save him. He’ll try to bargain a retirement in some safe zone. Will Xi attack Taiwan? Not likely, the cost would be too great in the loss of exports to America and he wouldn’t fancy a Ukraine quagmire. His hands are full at home at the moment. Will BREXIT remain in place? All the benefits are in Europe and, sooner or later, London will come to recognize that and ask to re-enter.

The Big One. Will humanity save itself from extinction?

On the basis of the “follow the money” and “who benefits” theory, I think not. Follow the money, at the moment, is very solidly in the hands of the oil cartels, which doesn’t auger well for the environment. Money also dominates politics and no one currently in politics will survive to witness the end games, so they’ll take what they can get to do nothing.

As for “who benefits,” it seems the environment that sustains human life on this glorious blue marble would be the sole winner if a concentrated effort was at hand. A single winner in this short-term circumstance with long-term consequences isn’t much of a bet, so we’ll most likely follow the dinosaurs.

But it’s an interesting way to judge what’s past and forecast what’s likely to come.