AreYou Fish Food? Do They Know They Are?

[DemocracyInaction]

Let me throw out the followng quote...then think about it:

"Soon the nation was into a raucous era whose inheritors were Daniel Drew, Jay Gould, Jim Fisk, and others of that stripe, operating in 'a riot of individual materialism, under which,'as Theodore Roosevelt was to say, 'complete freedom for the individual turned out in practice to mean perfect freedom for the strong to wrong the weak'. The big fish ate the little fish, and once the little fish got scarce or learned to hide among the rocks, the big fish ate each other."

This quote is from Shelby Foote at the end of his 3 massive volumes on the Civil War. Those lines apply to more than the coming of the Gilded Age. I'm in my 60's. I've watched this "fan dance" of capitalism for decades. Whenever the average guy gets a few bucks ahead in his jeans, the vultures swoop down, beat the shit out of him, take those bucks and a few more and knock "average guy" back to the economic stone age.

In addition, the wealthy/powerful let small business build up just so far, kick the slats out from under them and gobble them up as their own or drive them out of business. Yes, we are "fish food" and all those average Joes of the Republican lunatic fringe better realize they, too, are "little fish" and go hide. And..a lot of "big fish" are about to be eaten alive, also.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. I'm wondering.... now that the GOP has destroyed our country....

... and no one is buying any of the mass quantities of China products American manufacturers have had them build, what will happen?

Will these American manufacturers that outsourced to China, India, Mexico, etc. go out of business?

What will happen with the outsourced American companies when the tax benefits in the Stim Bill for manufacturers that manufacture inside our country, go into effect?

Will everything stay the same as it is now, or will everything change?

[DemocracyInaction]

2. Sarah--"big fish" thinking

This isn't happening in a vacuum. Certain big fish are poised to gobble not only little fish but fellow big fish. There is always the striving in the capitalistic society to be "THE ONE". The one who eventually owns everything from goods and services to the very water you drink. We are just in one of those massive tutonic plate shifts that will eventually benefit even fewer at the top. Soon it will not be the top 1% it will be the top .5%.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

3. But that percentage and the amount of wealth it has held has been different throughout

history. I agree, I'd rather it all be fair. But there are differences throughout history. It was fairer before Reagan, for ex.

[DemocracyInaction]

7. Sarah--yes, there are always people more rich than others

..but what Shelby was referring to and Teddy Roosevelt had to deal with, was when it got so out of hand that we were headed for a dictatorship of wealth. Jay Gould came damn close to literally owning the entire US Treasury and, thus, the whole economic engine of the US. Teddy saw this big fish eating all the little fish and their fellow big fish and struck with the anti-monopoly and anti-trust laws. We have not enforced these laws from about Ronnie on, AND we have a more complicated thing going on now in that this is now international "big fish" and we don't know behind which reef they lurk. We little fish are now in even that much more danger than were the little fish that Teddy ended up giving some protection to.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

9. Yep. I understand. That's why regulation is important and why globalization so dangerous....

Because it blurs the corporations, and they can get away with even more.

I know that we're in more danger, but I believe that Obama is trying to do something. Maybe not everything, but something.

[Tumbulu]

6. In the textile world it was retailers who outsourced

and US manufacturers (who had spent lots of money cleaning up their environmental and labor acts) who were dumped. I think that other industries saw the same thing.

[sandnsea]

4. They build the aquarium

stock it with a few fish, put in the bait - wait until there's a frenzy - and then suck everything out of the tank.

If you're too small, they throw you out and then say the problem is all the flopping fish on the bank.

[WinkyDink]

5. I think the biggest fish speaks Mandarin.

[DemocracyInaction]

8. Winky--actually....

I think the Mandarin fish is suddenly doing a lot of flopping about looking for deeper water and if he starts sucking air, I think the red, white and blue fish could end up floating belly up.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

10. Yep. If no one is buying anything in the world, the factories in China die nt

[WinkyDink]

11. Oh, for sure, about the R,W,&B fish. I guess we should hope China gets $$ out of South America.