Injustice Served

 

Photo by John Moeses Bauan on Unsplash

"There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire. If you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just sit there and complain — do something to make more money yourself.”

“They say that if you give your children too much, they don’t get the joy out of work. They just want the unearned things to keep falling from the sky.” Gina Rinehart (BrainyQuotes.com)

(That, from a woman for whom $18 billion fell from the sky.) [1]

The world’s richest woman and the universe’s worst poet [2], Australian mining heiress Gina Rinehart, in 2012 told the Sydney Mining Club that Australian miners were “too expensive.” She thinks they should work for two dollars a day, like African workers. Notice that she wants to bring everyone’s wages down to those of African miners, and not to help elevate those African miners to the realm of her Australian workers. You might remember Ms. Rinehart from an earlier statement, in which she wrote, “If you’re jealous of those with more money… spend less time drinking or smoking and socializing and more time working.” Similar to her reluctance to assist in a more equal economy, she wants workers to spend more hours at their labors, thus increasing the profits of the parasitic Plunderbund.

She claims superpowers by pointing to her 24/7 work hours as an example for all of us. She calls upon us common folk to work hard, invest and reinvest our meager wages, to find our own way to pleonexia — the greed that knows no limits. The lady does not, however, explain how we are to save funds for that investment on the wages she would like the rich to pay. Neither does she enlighten us as to what we are to do about the loss of retirement and investment funds, by those of us who did work 24/7, to pay executive bonuses to people who drove their companies into near-bankruptcy and caused a worldwide recession.

I’ve seen a pattern in the attitudes among the uber-rich toward the working class: the more money they inherit, the more they claim to have made their fortunes through hard work. Isn’t it interesting that most of those who actually — you know — worked for their money share an empathy for the plight of the working class?

Of course, there exist parasites at both ends of the economic spectrum. I once provided an acquaintance with a key to my apartment and the use of my computer and printer to aid him in his job search. His unemployment compensation neared an end and he had fallen on his savings to survive. Food stamps and the kindness of friends and associates saved him from homelessness. He spent his time while I worked to print out Drudge Reports, listen to Rush Limbaugh rants, and write letters to the editor in which he lambasted liberals for their welfare mentality. The only evidence I saw of a job search lay in a stream of letters to his former employer, in which he pleaded for his old job. The very wealthy are not alone in their willingness to leech from those who provide them. But the very wealthy possess the resources to persuade millions of workers to invest in the fallacy of trickle-down economics with their labors and their votes.

A Facebook friend and fellow blogger writes that we should refrain from name-calling when we discuss the crimes of right-wing extremists and their effective propaganda machine, but I disagree. I only regret that the legions of lawyers available to the right-wing rich render me unable to call the greediest of them and the sheer stupidity of their ditto heads by appropriate names. That, and the fact that the English language does not provide words worthy of their lack of common morality.

Ethan Couch, a Tarrant County, Texas teen got drunk, killed four people in an auto accident and was sentenced to ten years of probation after the teen’s lawyers pleaded that his father’s wealth instilled in him a lack of personal responsibility and a psychological condition called “Affluenza.” [1] The boy will spend time in a $450,000 per year luxury rehabilitation center in Southern California. [2]

Shaun Goodman also got drunk and led police in a high-speed chase through the streets of Olympia, Washington. He wrecked his $70,000 Ferrari by smashing it into two cars and a house. Yes, a house. While he waited for the trial for his seventh DUI arrest, a judge signed an order permitting Goodman to attend the 2013 Super Bowl game in New York. He is now serving a one-year work-release sentence, leaving behind a simple and unanswered question: has justice been served? [3]

Those two cases might lead one to wonder whether we have a two-tiered justice system, or if an exchange of money in plain, brown envelopes might have aided the decisions. I am working hard to quiet the cynical voice that urges me to opine the latter.

While the American inheritance-class wealthy deny they are engaged in class warfare, Ms. Rinehart and her fellow plunderers encourage it [6]. They have the the power, but the working class the numbers. The Story is in how that balance affects the future

Citations:

[1] https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/18b-cash-pile-lets-rinehart-play-both-sides-of-energy-transition-20221205-p5c3tq
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/everyone-is-laughing-at-australias-richest-persons-ode-to-mining-2012-2
[3] https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/ethan-couch-affluenza-10-years-since-deadly-drunk-driving-crash/287-a8ea72a1-592e-49dd-a097-fd1bb80e237e
[4] https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-texas-teen-drunk-driving-probation-affluenza-20131212-story.html
[5] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/man-arrested-on-suspicion-of-eighth-dui-after-seattle-hit-and-run/
[6] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-05/rinehart-says-aussie-workers-overpaid-unproductive/4243866

Suggested Reading:

Shipley, David K. The Working Poor: Invisible in America, Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.
Bregman, Rutger. Utopia for Realists. Back Bay Books, 2016.
Correspondents of the New York Times, Class Matters. Times Books, 2005.
Desmond, Matthew, Poverty By America. Crown, 2023

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