Over the weekend we watched The Blind Side. It is beyond question a feelgood movie. Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy are as impressive on film as they were in Michael Lewis' book. And because Hollywood has done its thing (although not too aggressively) you kinda need to have read the book which (being by hard edged Michael Lewis) is , er, more hard edged than the movie.
BUT, what hit me most is that the poor part of Memphis, Tennessee was a lot like Arusha Tanzania. Not the bit where Graceland is. The bit where the poor black people live. When we were in Arusha we did some home visits with health care volunteers to HIV patients/families. I have to say it was far less depressing than seeing Memphis 2010. The world's richest country has people living in almost as much poverty as Tanzania! You may say the almost is a big gap - and i say PHOOEY. I say you look at poor America and try to tell me Capitalism is a success and I will laugh in your face.
You may say socialism has failed. And I will laugh in your face. Socialism has never been shown to have failed the way Capitalism has. The Soviet Union failed. But only an idiot compares the Soviet system to actual socialism. Besides we all know it failed because it could not both keep up a military hardware competition with the USA and feed the population. And that was because of America's borrowing power. Winning that battle was the birth of the US deficit. But nowadays people are seriously questioning if America can actually sustain that deficit.
The lovely, delicious and sexy irony of that is that the last few trillion of deficit has been created by bailing out the banks who are the jewel of capitalism's crown.
Almost as deliciois is that it is analysts in the same bailed out banking system that question whether governments are spending/borrowing too much!!! It's like something Dogbert could have created (actually he probably did).
Capitalism has told us that it works because only the fittest and smartest survive. By the laws of capitalism there would be no Goldmans no AIG no Citi. So the lions of capitalism managed to suspend their onw laws for their own benefit for a while... Interestingly they still want to apply those laws to the poor souls who cannot pay their mortgages!
Now that is irony in spades. Citi, who should have been foreclosed on in 2007-08, was bailed out but doesnt want to allow any form of grace to its borrowers...
So in Memphis, and just about every other city in America you have people living in about the same squalor as in parts of Africa, and that is meant to show us the success of capitalism.
Really?
Of course what capitalism has created is plutonomy. The top 1% richest people in America control 95% of the wealth. Which is like Pareto on steroids!
The proponents will tell you that the American dream works because anyone can lever themselves up out of the squalor and achieve riches. Yeah right. It is aspiring to do just that which leads so many poor black Americans to arm themselves with automatic weapons and sell drugs. In the slums of memphis if you cannot claw your way out by playing sport (Gladiators anyone?) then your next best chance is by becoming a drug dealer.
The plutocrats the plutonomists are poor students of history. They don;t even understand the recent lessons of Reagonomics and the fall of the Soviets. They certainly don't understand the Roman lessons.
When the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; then the rich build bigger walls around their communities and pay more armed guards to patrol them.
Eventually the vast numbers of armed guards stop being the servants and become the masters.
Go and read your Gibbon and maybe you will learn how to spell Praetorian.
Enjoy!
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