Billionaire(ism): It's a mental illness

More and more people, in more and more countries, are giving the middle finger to Capitalism as usual, to "survival of the fittest" economics, to the status quo, to the Institutions, the "experts", growing Corporate power.

The income gap in this country is growing by a very disturbing algorithm. It's getting worse by the minute. With every new billionaire we have more and more money that is concentrated in the hands of one person. That money will not be circulated throughout the economy the way it would if that billion were dispersed in the hands of 100,000 people. Our government is brokering this astounding redistribution of wealth. The filthy rich are getting filthier at the expense of the rest of us. The government now works for the wealthy and for corporations because corporations have the power to pull the levers of government policy. Corporations can determine whether we send troops to war.

No individual, or family can possibly have personal needs (or wildest dreams) that could eat up a billion. That’s an obscene amount of money. It’s about as ridiculous as owning 500 pet dogs, or having size 35 feet, or a stretch limo that is the length of a football field. Yet, so many people choose to keep a billion....and try to make it 2 billion. It's nothing more than an ego trip, a greed trip, a thoughtless trip. We didn't let Ebeneezer Scrooge get away with it...even (he) saw the error in his lack of thinking/feeling. There are a lot of "Tiny Tim's" out there and yet we'd rather design a country that coddles and indulges multi billionaires.

If there is one thing our government has demonstrated consistently over the last four decades (at least) it is that it works hardest and most predictably for the interests of the rich and powerful. It’s a cruel joke on the rest of us to ponder the fact that it’s our country’s highest priority to make certain that the richest Americans among us have as little impediment as possible to their becoming exponentially richer. Only a sliver of the population can afford the ante to get into the game. That’s not what America was supposed to be about. Our Founders promised us that our secession from England was about forming a more perfect Union; one that was “of, by, and for the people”. It says it right there in the Constitution, right next to the lie about “all men being created equal”.

Yes, the U.S. of A. stacks the deck for the obscenely wealthy. It stacks the deck in favor of those who don’t need it. It does this, in part, by lowering their tax burden whenever possible and creating a system where the rich and powerful have a grotesquely disproportionate influence on who gets elected. In reality, our policies and laws are sold to the highest bidder. It allows the rich to influence elections and policy of all shapes and sizes. Thus, the system always stays rigged in their favor. Politicians are courting the contributions of the rich so vigorously that they become the agents for the rich and powerful; the spokesman for the rich and powerful. Yes, our “elected” officials work for a handful of rich people and rich corporations. What chance does the average citizen have of being listened to in the face of this high stakes bribery scheme? And, the worst is yet to come.

There is something extremely alarming about a country where 3 individuals have more collective wealth than the bottom half of American citizens. Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, and Bill Gates have more combined wealth than 160 million Americans. How sustainable is that? How healthy is that for a democracy? Its an income disparity that is so grotesque that it seems like a theme found in a George Orwell novel. And, like global warming, this problem is on a course of destruction while we virtually ignore it. I find it offensive that two of these three men consider themselves to be philanthropists. Their personal wealth is growing as reliably as the polar ice caps are melting and we allow them to anoint themselves as philanthropists. In a country that is 70% Christian can we imagine “Jesus” tolerating a man with 80 billion dollars calling himself a philanthropist. Would a slave owner who set 1% of his slaves free be called an abolitionist?

Imagine if 10% of your fellow men and women and children were starving and you are giving the “thumbs up” as you watch countless crates and boxes of food and beverage being delivered to your giant warehouse; enough food to feed tens of millions, and still leave you with enough food for you and your family for a thousand lifetimes (even if you all indulge yourself). To give that “thumbs up” in that context you have to be totally disconnected from those human beings with whom you share this planet. The indifference to their condition brings incredible consequences. I’m not even sure animals in the wild hoard food from other animals with this much greed and apathy. Yes, even a lion has more compassion for a starving lion.

There should be a level of social responsibility that is expected of everyone in a civilization. If I walk past a man who is drowning without offering assistance it is true that I didn’t drown him (I am free and clear in the eyes of the law) but the indifference to the drowning is an act of breathtaking inhumanity and psychopathy.

Many of these billionaires only have concern (and time) for people with whom they vacation in the Hamptons. Or, maybe their main concern is for their pet cat. In an act of callousness that rivals the Nazis, Karl Lagerfeld left 300 million dollars to his cat after his death. The man designed clothes that only 400 people in the world could afford. I would say that the only part of Karl that had any real, human, transcendent value died long, long ago, if it ever existed at all.

All you billionaires out there (even the self defined “philanthropists” among you)......Just tell me how you can stay a billionaire? You have to be incredibly thoughtless, heartless, greedy, and totally lacking in empathy if you have a billion dollars for more than the time it takes you to give enough of it away so that you no longer have a billion dollars; yes, so that you have no more than 999 million dollars. Is that asking too much, David Geffen, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Donald Trump, Dr. Dre?, the Koch brothers, Shel Adelman, Steve Wynn, and yes, even you Oprah. I'll put it in the simplest (and most sarcastic) terms possible. Would you rather make life much easier for hard working families who need some help or would you rather buy your 3rd yacht, your 7th Sessna, your 5th tennis court, 8th vacation home, your 3rd wife, your 4th remote island? Would you be willing to live in a mansion that is 10% smaller in order to eliminate the intense levels of human grief and despair of others? No, that concept has no chance of being understood or accepted. A snowball has a better chance surviving in hell. I don’t know where the line of sanity should be drawn. For the sake of this discussion I drew it at 1 billion. One BILLION!

I don’t know of ANY billionaires who have given ANY measurable amount of their wealth away. Not Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, etc.. I know this because those men (who make tens of millions of dollars each day) still have in excess of 70 or 80 billion worth of personal wealth. Tomorrow it will be 100 billion, a few weeks later, 150 billion, and so on. It always works out that way somehow. Losing their respective status among the elite rich would be worse than quadriplegia. They are addicts. They want to be uber rich and take credit for being uber philanthropic. Maybe we should give them handicapped parking permits, too. I’m sure they think they deserve them.

Bill Gates recently gave 1 billion to fight the Corona virus. Does he need to save all the rest of his billions for a rainy day? Is he worried that he is being too loose with his money and before he knows it he will be down to 75 billion? Does he need to save the rest to repave his 18 tennis courts? Good, innocent, hard working people and families are suffering NOW. Its long past time to start thinking that that extra 10 billion you have under the mattress could be saving lives (and dreams). Give it away! Keep a billion for your insatiable indulgences and give all the rest of it to people and causes that need it desperately. How about just using all your excessive bags of cash to make children happy; send the ones who were born into poverty to Disneyland. Please feel free to use your imagination to help put a smile on as many suffering people as possible. It’s that simple. Or, you could just hoard it all and focus on yourself.

The Flint water system with its lead infected water lines is (still) not repaired. It’s been almost a decade now. If the people living in those communities were white and had voting power do you think it would still be unfit for human consumption? Innocent children in those poor communities have experienced irreversible brain damage simply by trusting and drinking the civic water supply. (That’s another horrid American story). The estimated cost to fix this entire problem and restore non toxic water is $240 million. Our government is working tirelessly to lower taxes to the wealthy so there is no money left to deliver safe drinking water to a poor, black community that was poisoned trusting it’s elected officials. Do you think they have anything to offer politicians to get their attention?

Why aren’t multi billionaires tripping over themselves to give a microscopic percentage of their wealth to keep kids from being poisoned? Tax cuts for the rich are more important to our government than insuring that poor kids have safe drinking water. Breathtaking! These are kids whose lives are already severely challenged. If Jeff Bezos sprinkler system went out he’d probably have half the cities employees working around the clock to fix it. They’d give them police escorts (at our expense). That’s the way things work in the great U. S. Of A..

It’s a privilege to be able to help so many people without getting your hands dirty or compromising your lifestyle in the slightest. It would take a phone call, that’s all. With the tinniest amount of quid pro quo skills you could probably get them to change the name of the town from Flint to your name. We know how much that excites you. How about Geffen, Michigan, or Bezos, Michigan. What kind of a citizen with this colossal wealth wouldn’t see this as an opportunity if not a responsibility? If there is a Jesus (70% of Americans say there is) and he came back to earth in 2021 he would never stop shaming these personifications of greed and heartlessness. It might actually be the first time that Jesus threw punches.

It’s obviously asking for too much to ask any of these kingpins to live on a paltry 1 billion dollars. If you can’t live on 1 billion then find another planet where you can indulge yourself beyond a human scale.

I applaud the entrepreneurial spirit and genius/cunning (mixed with greed and ruthlessness in most cases) required to earn a billion. However, many of those billionaires were not "American" in the way they earned their billions. They love to exploit capitalism (and Christianity) but they aren’t even willing to play by those capricious “rules”. They are less “American” and more like thugs and gangsters. Bill Gates had many lawsuits over violating anti trust laws, most notably “United States vs. Microsoft in 2001”. Microsoft lost that case.

Howard Schulz of Starbucks was notorious for trying to make sure that no other coffee businesses could even exist. Competition doesn’t suit these people. In that way they are carbon copies of how Donald Trump makes his money. Bullying, intimidation, breaking laws, etc.; You know, the same ruthlessness we used to exterminate the Native Americans and to enslave blacks for 250 years. We do it without blinking an eye. Yes, you billionaires have a mental illness. Its a variation of the type of mental illness that motivated Adolf Hitler. It’s a (take over the world and leave dead bodies in your wake) kind of game. It’s a zero sum game. It’s a form of imperialism. It’s as All American as baseball. Think about it

In 2008, Starbucks settled an antitrust lawsuit in Seattle that charged it with passing out samples of its drinks in front of rival coffee shops and strong-arming landlords into not leasing space to competitors. Yes, the king of the 8 dollar cup of coffee wants to rig the deck. Don’t play poker with any of these guys.

Howie didn't just want you to buy (his) coffee; he wanted to make sure you couldn't buy anyone else's. That is not competition, that is an attempt at monopoly. Monopolies are as un-American as the KGB, but many in blind pursuit are more than willing to utilize totalitarian tactics to obtain wealth, “American” values be damned. The perfunctory American flag lapel pin is the ultimate act of hypocrisy. Those billionaires: When the piñata breaks they want to get ALL the candy. How do you build a civilization around that mentality. The Mafia is more respectable.

Trump is a great example of a billionaire in this country. We can only imagine how he attains wealth. We know that he likes to peddle in fake universities and he likes to not pay many of the people he employs. He likes to intimidate and threaten and con and bribe. Jeff Bezos is another example. He pays his employees extremely low wages and he is currently in a frenzy over trying to replace as many of them as he can by automating the whole Amazon business model. Imagine that your legacy will be that you helped to eliminate a huge swath of the American work force. That and sending packages in boxes a day faster than the competition.

The richest man in the world is not someone who cured cancer or solved a great societal challenge. It is not the man who invented electricity or built the railroads or invented the polio vaccine. It is a man who puts toasters in boxes and ships them out a little faster than the next guy. That’s this guys contribution to the world. By contrast, Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine in 1955 and saved countless millions from a life spent with a severe disability. He made no profit from it. That’s the kind of American who captures my vision of what it is to be a great American.

Go ahead, make your billion if that’s what you crave, but do you really need to hold onto all that wealth? How does a barista at Starbuck’s survive on $9.50/hr. before tips? Howard Schultz will tell you it’s not his problem. He believes in the “Market”. Yes, when he is not violating anti-trust laws and trying to cheat the market.

If you are so pitiful a citizen of the world that you are holding onto a billion dollars when you have the rarefied ability (and privilege) to improve the lives of millions and eliminate human suffering on a colossal level, then you should be banished to an island somewhere, the way lepers were generations ago. We would prefer your gene pool not be mixed with those of us who care about our neighbors and the welfare of the country as a whole. Yes, you should be cast off on an island somewhere with the other billionaires...you are unfit to sit at our table. To get off the island you should have to take courses in empathy, compassion, and thoughtfulness. If you are among the 70% in this country who claim to be Christian you should be forced to do a book report on The New Testament; the biography of the life of Christ. Let me give you a hint and tell you that your entire life is an insult to the person you claim to worship. You are spitting in his eye day after greedy day. Stop the charade of going to church.
Stop thinking so highly of yourselves. We will get along just fine without your online shopping network, or your media conglomerate, your Frappuccino’s, or your graphically attractive smartphones. Giant hotels in Vegas? We have way more of those commodities than we ever needed or asked for. We don’t need faster internet, we need compassion and empathy and altruism. We will accept no substitutes. I’d much rather see 200,000 mom and pop coffee shops that are run and owned by proud local business owners than 200,000 “one size fits all” big box coffee colossus clones where one fat cat controls every store with homogenous repetitiveness. Its like bringing a T Rex to a dog park and wondering who will be left standing. Where has all the America gone?

The hottest place in hell will always have a few empty bunks available for a billionaire.

For what it's worth I've never been more dismayed and discouraged over the greed and selfishness and corruption and heartlessness that abounds in this country. We aren't "great", don't fool yourself... A great country doesn't sit idly while tens of millions of families are living in poverty. This isn’t a country. This is a place where selfish people all live independently and with no connection to or thought for their neighbors. If this is a Christian nation I want no part of it. A Christian nation wouldn’t allow its richest citizens to skip out on paying taxes and to shield their money in offshore bank accounts. These people want the benefits of exploiting America but none of the responsibilities. Give me a drug dealer any day over these pseudo Americans.

Denmark, Sweden, Finland...those countries care about their citizens..they care about all of them; they care about educating them; they care about family leave, and vacations, and health care. They won’t accept that a family can lose their house if someone living in it gets a serious illness. They care even about the ever elusive emotion of happiness. Imagine a country that truly cares about everyone's happiness and well being. That sounds a lot more like a “Christian” country to me. This country of ours largely cares about lowering taxes....There is a political party that is galvanized by that one issue. It doesn’t make you an “American” just because you wear a lapel flag pin. It doesn’t make you a Christian because you hold the Bible up in the air. That’s fraudulent… “pomp and circumstance signifying nothing”.

Those Scandinavian countries don't even get any Sunshine. It's overcast and rainy most of the time. They don't have palm trees, or the richest agricultural conditions on Earth...they don't have Kim Kardashian or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They don't have Lebron James. They have every reason to be depressed...but they're not. By virtually all measurable indices these countries rank higher than America in annual objective rankings. Yes, even in happiness (without the benefit of sunshine). Check it out...check out poverty in those countries (you'll need a magnifying glass), on the other hand, the United States has the second highest poverty rate for kids 18 and under among the 35 developed countries (23% of 18 and under kids in America live in poverty). This would bring the wrath of the Jesus from the New Testament. He’d call for a flood to cleanse the earth of the poison and perversion.

Check out the brilliance of the education systems in the Scandinavian countries. Finland ranks #1 in the world, the United States ranks 18th. Tell me....when did 34th and 18th (out of 35) make you “great”? In the world I grew up in that would make you pitiful, pathetic. Hint: It’s going to get much worse. Count on it.

In this age of digitalization and automation there is a shelf life to a country that lives by the mantra “every man for himself”. The French Revolution was born from just such an indifference to the common man. If we allow a few T Rex to roam freely among normal humans then our survival as a country is on the clock.

Yes, imagine a country that truly cares about everyone's happiness.

We aren't living in one of them.

My opinions.

Food for Thought....