Christmas: Wealth Flows Up Not Down

Even the first governments redistributed wealth: in Mesopotamia and Egypt, the people who worked the land were not the ones who accumulated the surplus wealth produced (wealth above subsistence). The governments--and the priests--extracted the wealth for their own enjoyment. As a rationale for doing so, they "protected" society and maintained order.

It still works that way. In the US, approximately half of all discretionary funds are spent on "security," and much of the proceeds go to a small elite, who run or own large corporations especially created to profit from the business of "security." Their friends in the financial sector arrange to siphon off perhaps half of the rest of the surplus wealth created. How do they do it: by buying off the powers-that-be.

My conservative Venezuelan uncle used to explain that American oil-men preferred to work with the dictatorship (of which my family had been a prosperous part), because they didn't have to buy off as many people as they do in a "democracy."

True democracy hasn't been possible since societies emerged from hunting and gathering. With agriculture, with empires, with armies, with currency, some people always find ways to steal everyone else's surplus wealth: in hunting and gathering societies there was no surplus, or it was small enough to be given away. That's why the indigenous Americans of the Northwest, practiced the potlatch: surplus riches were distributed at potlatch parties, so no one would become obscenely wealthy.

In the US today, some people are obscenely wealthy, like Mitt Romney. What we need is something like the potlatch, so that surplus wealth can benefit everyone, not just a tiny few.

When the Roman Empire held sway, there was a highly compensated bureaucracy, but an even wealthier Senatorial class--as well as impoverished plebeians and slaves, the latter doing most of the work. Julius Caesar was heavily in debt until he conquered Gaul; then he became the wealthiest Roman of all.

Long before the western Roman Empire fell in 476, men with swords and armor carried off most of the wealth. The Huns, highly successful for a time in pillaging both Empires; paid no taxes to Attila, but then their king only led them to the spoil; they shared it with him, of course, and his share was mind-boggling.

Now, we have a tax and financial system that ingeniously insures that a tiny percentage of the population carries off most of the surplus wealth. The elites work hard to siphon off government's rewards and society's spoils: like buying off Pennsylvania's government so that they could gain eminent domain over fracking sites: the people are powerless to stop them. Money to the Defense complex and most other government "services" are also huge sources of profit--for a few.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year: you have been so generous to the 1%: it is better to give than to receive.