General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: If you are in the 1% you are nothing but an exploiter [View all]daredtowork
(3,732 posts)And Oligarchy means they use access to the government to secure rent-taking opportunities. This goes for Democrats as much as Republicans. The insiders vs. outsiders code enables the protection of the rent-seekers and paves the way for revolving door cushy jobs outside the Beltway because of their International "contacts". Even Chelsea Clinton got her first 100k consulting job out of grad school because of her "rolodex". I will always remember that because I had just left grad school with a useless degree at the time and couldn't even get a temp job for minimum wage office work.
After 2008 Wall Street foreclosed upon middle class property and forced people to rent back their homes. Now, however, people find it increasingly hard to find regular salaried jobs. "Lean" and "agile" companies want contract and project workers, shift workers, and gig jobs. People still have to shell out for rent and bills on a monthly basis, but the employment system will not deign to pay them on a monthly basis anymore because it's not expedient for them to do so. And they can get away with it as long as they can whine to the D.C. Powers That Be that they won't be "competitive" or "innovative" if they have to pay the little people. They can pay a few superstars for "game-changing" products or Intellectual Property acquisition 3D chess, but they don't pay for trivial matters like work.
This continues to go on simply because the people allow it. We have done nothing to curb celebrity windfall salaries. We have done nothing about the Beltway Lobbyist Revolving Door. We whine about the Third Way's "leveraged buy out" of the Democratic Party, but we don't actually stop them from gutting social programs or failing to allocate money towards rebuilding civic infrastructure. When we vote in "our" representatives, we need to take note of whether they are actually doing things to change the shape of the rentier economy. At this point this not only involves the forbidden word "redistribution" - I think this involves actively and visibly toppling the exploitative class and giving the people the satisfaction that justice is being done: before they decide a new French Revolution really is in order and get justice for themselves.