Dakota Dickey – Module 5.3 The Wealth Inequality System and its Exploiters
Which statistic on wealth inequality in the US (discussed on p. 29) made the biggest impression on you? Explain why?
I think the main statistic that’s always so shocking is the wealth inequality. The super rich or the 1% own so much, far exceeding the rest of us combined it is almost unfathomable. This is a result of our world being won by the owning class. Our current century is dominated by the owner or the capitalist, whereas in the last 100 years starting at the end of WW1 the struggle between the worker and the owner really shined. The worker stood up; in the form of Communist thought, which was put into practice by the Russians though the Russian Revolution many don’t know but during that revolution the US did support the other army not the Communists. This struggle did not only manifest in the Russian society but also the Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese and a few others around the world. Over and over in these wars mainly being fought due to the class struggle as well as fighting exploitation by the owning classes. We now find ourselves in a world where this war for class struggle has all but gone away. Those countries besides North Korea have all either switched to our system here in the US or altered their Communist system to be borderline indistinguishable from our capitalist system. In the end this wealth inequality is a result of the owner class winning the war of the last century. Now we find ourselves in a world dominated completely by the owner, whose winners the 1% now have more than everyone, they won. That’s the most shocking thing to me.
What could be some of the implications of living in a society that has such huge wealth inequalities? Do you see this dynamic getting played out in everyday life in our society? How so? Example?
Chattel slavery came back into this world due mainly in part to the sugar industry. The owners in the 1800s saw insane profits due to the almost free labor plus a world wide addiction to the white gold of sugar. Now in this current age of human society we find not world wide ownership of humans, but a world wide ownership of human time. We have traded a slavery system for a time wage slavery system. This plays out in most of our lives today, we here going to college to become something more than a server or a construction worker (unskilled labor) but we still have to go and find work somewhere, inturn we are trading our time in 2 ways 1. To continue trading our time to make some small amount of money to pay for things we need and 2. To trade our time to train in this system to be able to make more money with our time. While the owners donate to the schools to help us, help us in what you may ask. Help us be better workers for the system of owners, so they have more skilled workers to do their bidding more efficiently. In turn the owners are rewarded by the society for donating to school, but also benefit in receiving more skilled laborers that they can pay a slight bit more and receive a far greater labor output.
