degringolade

Overall, getting back into the groove. Work is strange, I am seriously thinking that everyone has spring fever. People are going a little crazy and nerves are getting frayed. I am becoming a control rod, spending more time calming people down and playing ground control.

Sat outside again last night, got a half hour or so in the late afternoon sun, shining out of the west. I have to do some homely little things over the weekend. Front door screen has to go back up, need to scrub down again, but this is all in the do-able.

MIKE:

It makes a good story that the elite have gotten greedier, but the entertainment value of the story drops radically if the non-elite characters have demanded and insisted that their elites get greedier. This leaves the bottom 20% standing alone in the cold and while they are left standing there, everybody points toward the elites as they walk by.

If you think it is hard to get the top 2% to change their ways, imagine how hard it is to get the next 78% to change. On the other hand, maybe it is true that “we the people” are already great, and the elites are trying to destroy us. Sound reasonable? No, it is not so simple unfortunately. The elites may be greedy, but they are not blind or delusional. If the elites are removed, what will remain is a big group of greedy people who are also delusional, mixed with a much smaller number of very poor people.

JOHN:
I think where you and I differ is only in our description of the elites. Like it or not buckaroo, you and I are/were card carrying members of the elite. I left early out of disgust and a need to raise some sons, you retired, but we were both of the class that set things up the way things are. We are both still reaping the spoils of a system that was set up for folks like us to suck the gravy and the rest of them could "suck it".

Look, the lower classes aren't going to give up their mass market status symbols and the American dream until the top 25% first make the change. This will require an economic and cultural change of huge (or yuge if you are the Donald), proportions. And it probably won't even come close to working. The elite are not the problem because they are more or less greedy than the proles, not the elites are the problem because if this is going to work at all, they have to lead the way out of the mess.

Look, the starter gets the loss. That is the way it goes in baseball, that is the way that it goes in life. The elite made a conscious decision to buy into a system and then jack the system to reap a considerably more than fair share of the pie and leave the others dick all. The numbers don't lie. The wealth of the country is too concentrated in the top twenty-five percent to draw any other conclusion.

The elite must lead us out, they must be taxed heavily, they must consume less, and they must figure out how we can do with less as a culture and as individuals. They must give up their privileges and their perquisites willingly or the proles, when they rise, will do it in a much more unsavory manner