Income inequality is a symptom, not the disease. People realize that now. They see the symptom erupting in all directions, but, at a visceral level, they can sense the deeper pathology at work in their lives. The disease is a lack of accountability, a failure of the responsible institutions, political and otherwise, to do their jobs as a check on the inebriate gluttony of the financial sector of the economy, abetted by its pet economists and its legions of fans in the business media, and the disease is also a political system so awash with the proceeds that it can’t a space to do anything about making whole the victims of this reckless pilferage.
Income inequality is the medical shorthand. The butcher’s bill will run to volumes.
A little further reading on how the United States got to where it is today.
Note the backhanded compliment paid to the New York Times, and how people missed the signs leading to this in the 90s because “a pack of ignoramuses decided to chase the president’s penis all over Washington.”
Not much to add to this, really, other than to note, once again, that there are people currently governing our country who look at what’s going on in the United States – ignorance, distractions, polarization in economic and cultural terms, belligerent stupidity – and think it’s a good thing worthy of emulation.
I know I keep going on about the cultivation of stupidity, but demented greed isn’t a civic virtue either.
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