The Super-rich Want an Empire. Americans Want Their Middle-Class Values Back

The Grand Canyon is a fitting metaphor for America’s great divide between the haves and the have-nots.

But it’s not sustainable and by that I don’t mean the rich can’t keep getting richer, but the breadth and width of that divide has unlimited vistas at the top and a dying society trickling along at the bottom, unable to quench the thirst of its needs.

Too poetic for you? Not really.  It’s the non-fiction story of American collapse.

The super-rich gaze out at an America that stuns the imagination, from a shared perspective that seldom looks down. The sheer size of their wealth means their children and grandchildren will never need to work, never be required to contribute. How do you suppose that scenario will play out as we approach a conflict between those who are uninterested and, worse yet, uninvolved in a growing sub-society of fellow-Americans who are destined to merely scratch out a living.

For the past half-century, presidents addressing “my fellow Americans” gazed from the top of Grand-Canyon-America and ignored the slowly dying river of humanity at their feet. Eighty percent of the citizens you now address from the podium, Mr. President, are no longer your fellows.

There is no argument left to make and no apparent solution (but you know I will suggest one).

Oligarchy is securely in the saddle across the world’s leading nations

It will come as no surprise that my readership is quite small, but it shares a smattering of interest outside America, in Europe, the Middle East, Britain and even China. What these nations have in common, along with ours, is oligarchy. Wars having become too expensive and destructive for the sources of wealth, the weapon of choice among rich nations today is money.

Those obstacles we once bombed into submission as recently as Iraq and Afghanistan, oligarchies simply buy. Money is a neutron bomb, a force that destroys the embarrassment of homeless and jobless, while leaving the buildings intact. Oh sure, we still rattle the sabers of war from time to time, but the business of conquering is not what it once was.

Mr. Putin is only now learning that lesson

The Ukrainian war cannot be won and will not end because the Russian people tire of it. Putin will be defeated because Russian oligarchs will not allow their riches to drain away in avoidable sanctions, along with a threat to their version of surveillance capitalism.

The costs of all that messy destruction of buildings and infrastructure will fall on NATO nations as they welcome a new member. While that may enrage Putin (presuming he survives) it is more than welcome to Russian oligarchs, who now value a newfound taste for the rule of law, because it will sustain their wealth, free their yachts and unburden their London properties.

Trust me on this, the power of Eisenhower’s dreaded military-industrial complex is over

It was a neat way for the American oligarchs to siphon off 42% of those government budgets since WWII, but it’s so twentieth century in concept and leaves too much expensive mess behind. The rich don’t really mind killing the children of the poor, but the bloom is off its profitability. Add to that the cost of occupying a nation that hates your guts. That’s as much reason as any for the loss of British Empire. It was just too damned expensive to maintain.

So, to return to what 80% of the not-so-rich Americans want

It’s pretty straightforward. They want guns and the homeless off the streets, better schools for their kids, affordable housing and a return to union employment so they can rejoin the middle class. Other things as well, but those are the four legs of the stool.

And they just might get it, as the super-rich see the money to be made in building a production instead of consumer based society. We all have Nikes now and everyone (who’s willing) is already paying a big price to wear a Tommy Hilfiger tee shirt.

But getting guns off the streets provides nearly 400 million weapons to sell to the less advanced of the planet and the homeless are terrible for real estate values. Plus the fact that entry-level housing is very profitable and a method by which to grab the money students will have when government pays their student debt. That’s a paydown that hurts the wealthy not at all.

Unions, which businesses have never liked, are endlessly profitable for the rich

How’s that again? Unions raise wages, right? And that raises prices, so business can’t complain. But union wages have this generally unrecognized benefit in that they open up an enormous (and enormously profitable) market for struggling Americans who need everything from a new car to a sofa or a fridge. Things they can now afford, made by Union America and owned (wouldn’t you guess?) by the super rich. Think Elon Musk and the Walton family, if you can bear to.

So that’s my answer for the super-rich who want an empire and the Americans who want their middle-class values back

Everyone is a winner, we all get what we want and the only thing left to fix is our broken government. But the super-rich broke it and, if they care enough to do their very best, they can unbreak it. After all, it too runs on money and all we have to do is redirect the moneyed crowd’s vision of that Grand Canyon.

Look down for a moment, Elon and Jeff. There’s a million fortunes in that river at the bottom.