Benjaminsmess | In “Sissi,” the richest .0001 percent of the people in the empire have no physical or social contact with the subjects they’re supposed to be in charge of, except for a handful of blank-faced servants who rush off-camera as quickly as their legs can carry them.
Were there poor people in Austro-Hungary in the19th century? Was there hunger? Was almost everyone illiterate? Was there injustice? Did as many as half of newborns die before reaching the age of three? Did the royal family of Franz-Joseph tax the poor, and squeeze tradesmen, to underwrite their masked balls, their boar hunts and their psychosomatic ailments? Was Austro-Hungary the corrupt relic of Europe’s parasitic feudal past? Was Austro-Hungary, in fact, the reactionary cesspool of incestuous aristocracy and lese majesté that triggered World War I, annihilating a generation of young men and spawning the bad seed that became Adolf Hitler?
Well, probably. But who knows? From this movie, you couldn’t get a clue that there was carbon-based life anywhere in Austro-Hungary outside the castle — where every room was pretty and everyone was happy. And why shouldn’t they be happy? These folks had so much money and power that they never had to think about money. They were so high up the mountain, in the upper rooms of the tallest building in the empire that, even if they looked out and saw ordinary people, those people seemed like ants.
As I watched director Ernst Marischka’s idyll of good-old-days Austro-Hungary, it occurred to me that my very own countrymen have been working tirelessly, over the past 30 years, to turn America into the same movie. Indeed, Republican progress toward re-creating the court of Franz-Joseph in the land of the free is outright awesome. Although the U.S. has never really been a model of financial equality, we are now the second least-equal democracy on earth, just behind Switzerland. We stand on the brink of creating our very own crowned and castled upper crust, suitable for filming.
In the last 30 years, tax policy and spending priorities have made America a little more Austro-Hungarian every day. Our median household wealth, for instance, has dropped 36 percent just since 2007. In other words, most of us have lost a third of what we had just four years ago! Sixty percent of American households earn less than they earned in 1979, the year before Ronald Reagan (the Franz-Joseph of the GOP) told us it was “morning in America.” Today, more than 24 percent of U.S. households have no marketable assets. In other words, a quarter of us own, literally, nothing. This is the highest percentage ever recorded. Three decades of upward wealth redistribution, promoted by Republicans and enabled by Democrats, is creating a sea of silent peasants. We wash up against but never disturb the sound stage where Romy Schneider floats from ballroom to throne-room in organdy and petticoats, and has babies who magically appear without requiring her to even drop her lace knickers or suffer through childbirth.
Of course, if the future consigns most of us to peasanthood, a few of us will have to be the Romy Schneiders. So far, this is working out real good, too. Between 2006 and 2007, average income for the 400 richest Americans soared 31 percent — in one year! — from $263 million to $345 million. This was before Congress extended the Bush tax cuts for the aristocracy and showered them with even more welfare.
Were there poor people in Austro-Hungary in the19th century? Was there hunger? Was almost everyone illiterate? Was there injustice? Did as many as half of newborns die before reaching the age of three? Did the royal family of Franz-Joseph tax the poor, and squeeze tradesmen, to underwrite their masked balls, their boar hunts and their psychosomatic ailments? Was Austro-Hungary the corrupt relic of Europe’s parasitic feudal past? Was Austro-Hungary, in fact, the reactionary cesspool of incestuous aristocracy and lese majesté that triggered World War I, annihilating a generation of young men and spawning the bad seed that became Adolf Hitler?
Well, probably. But who knows? From this movie, you couldn’t get a clue that there was carbon-based life anywhere in Austro-Hungary outside the castle — where every room was pretty and everyone was happy. And why shouldn’t they be happy? These folks had so much money and power that they never had to think about money. They were so high up the mountain, in the upper rooms of the tallest building in the empire that, even if they looked out and saw ordinary people, those people seemed like ants.
As I watched director Ernst Marischka’s idyll of good-old-days Austro-Hungary, it occurred to me that my very own countrymen have been working tirelessly, over the past 30 years, to turn America into the same movie. Indeed, Republican progress toward re-creating the court of Franz-Joseph in the land of the free is outright awesome. Although the U.S. has never really been a model of financial equality, we are now the second least-equal democracy on earth, just behind Switzerland. We stand on the brink of creating our very own crowned and castled upper crust, suitable for filming.
In the last 30 years, tax policy and spending priorities have made America a little more Austro-Hungarian every day. Our median household wealth, for instance, has dropped 36 percent just since 2007. In other words, most of us have lost a third of what we had just four years ago! Sixty percent of American households earn less than they earned in 1979, the year before Ronald Reagan (the Franz-Joseph of the GOP) told us it was “morning in America.” Today, more than 24 percent of U.S. households have no marketable assets. In other words, a quarter of us own, literally, nothing. This is the highest percentage ever recorded. Three decades of upward wealth redistribution, promoted by Republicans and enabled by Democrats, is creating a sea of silent peasants. We wash up against but never disturb the sound stage where Romy Schneider floats from ballroom to throne-room in organdy and petticoats, and has babies who magically appear without requiring her to even drop her lace knickers or suffer through childbirth.
Of course, if the future consigns most of us to peasanthood, a few of us will have to be the Romy Schneiders. So far, this is working out real good, too. Between 2006 and 2007, average income for the 400 richest Americans soared 31 percent — in one year! — from $263 million to $345 million. This was before Congress extended the Bush tax cuts for the aristocracy and showered them with even more welfare.
4 comments:
If more people bought what they could afford to purchase and not that which they could borrow we'd be a lot better off.
We don't need economic growth we need economic stability.
We need to get rid of our stupid definition of economic growth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5DCwN28y8o
Yep. And the belief that it's important.
The bankster parasites "need" growth in order to continue extracting a profit. When they can no longer extract said profit, they'll no longer have any use from the silent herd of peasant consumers and then, well, er.....,
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