Thursday, March 16, 2017

Socialism for the Rich

In the April 2017 issue of Sojourners, Jim Wallis has one of his finest editorials titled "Robin Hood in Reverse."  Or "Socialism for the Rich."  Wallis begins:

"The richest eight people [mostly rich white Americans] in the world, according to an Oxfam report this January, own more wealth between them than the poorest 50 percent of humanity---3.6 billion people. . . . simply grotesque."

What has happened since the 2008 crash?  "To put it bluntly, the class of the people who had the most to do with causing the crisis ended up benefiting the most from it."

Is there a measure of white privilege?  White privilege comes in large part from free land (Indian Removal) and free labor (slavery and sharecropping); or the fruits of centuries of white ethnocentrism and oppression, not primarily because of white hard work or brilliance.

"As the Pew Research Center documented in 2014, the median white household in the U.S. is 13 times wealthier than the median black household and 10 times wealthier than the median Latino household."

Currently, the redistribution is to the rich;  instead, biblically, the redistribution should be towards the poor.  The rich control the political and economic systems and they write the laws to favor them.

"Unfortunately, Congress seems committed to passing large tax cuts that will again disproportionately benefit the wealthy, . . . . One of the greatest political hypocrites of the modern political era will be to watch President Donal Trump, the self-heralded champion of the common person, become the great implementer of these massive tax cuts for wealthy people like him."

 True, but socialism for the rich began well before Trump.

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