Attitudes of the Rich toward the Poor and Working Poor
The study of
poverty throughout history in different societies shows that this is man-made
and it can be limited if not eliminated completely assuming there is the
political will to do so. However, the hierarchical social structure, the
political economy and the privileged socioeconomic and political elites are not
interested in eliminating poverty any more than they are interested in social
justice. It is politically acceptable as it is profitable for capitalists
worldwide and the state that sustains state-supported capitalism to perpetuate
the existing social and economic structure. The result is that this system is
responsible for keeping half of the world’s population living on less than
$2.50 per day, and more than 80% of the world’s population living in nations
where income gaps are becoming wider.
These facts
about living standards are contrary to what the apologists of capitalism are
preaching about a better life under capitalism and democracy. Pressed on this
issue by the realities of inequality becoming wider despite the phenomenal expansion
of capital, one standard answer is that there is no alternative to the existing
system, again implying the condition of social inequality has always existed so
it must always exist. If within capitalism exists the illegal narcotics and
human trade, and everything from guns and gasoline to cigarettes and
counterfeit watches, does this make the “shadow economy” (black market) natural
as well? Is it natural for the world’s largest banks, from HSBC to Wells Fargo
among many others to engage in money laundering for hundreds of billions of
dollars for narco-traffickers among others moving capital around the world
illegally? Because they are the back bone of capitalism, banks have fines
imposed upon them and that is the extent of it, while the unemployed youth stealing
from a small shop goes to prison for five years. We are indeed living a 21st
century version of Victor Hugo’s Jean-Valjean hunted down for decades because
of stealing a loaf of bread to feed a hungry child.
It is ironic
that the poorest 40% of the world’s poor own less than 5% of the world’s wealth
amounting to a total of $73 trillion. In other words, 40% of the world’s
population has less money than the market cap than just ten US multinational
corporations. The irony is that governments, the media and of course businesses,
and consultants constantly remind the public that we need more of the same
regardless of the potential explosive social, economic and political
consequences that accompany gross inequality. In short, accept the political
economy and social structure rooted in social injustice as you would faith in
God you must not question and only obey. The faithful are rewarded in the
afterlife if they remain obsequious to religion, and so it will be for the world’s
poor if they just hold on to the hope of rewards to come, assuming they keep
the faith and support of capitalism and its institutions. For skeptics refusing
to accept capitalism that has the majority of the people in the world living on
the margins, the answer is that it is the fault of the individual and not the
system.
“America is full of slackers and deadbeats who
won’t work!“ This was
the title of a recently published article in the online business news program MarketWatch.
Arguing that the real US unemployment rate is actually over 35% instead
of 5.5%, the article blames not the capitalist system for generating
unemployment and uneven development on the social and geographic scales, but 93
million people for not working. The article mentions that the contracting
economic cycle that started in 2008 resulted in a sharp rise of structural
unemployment. However, it blames the American people for their anti-work
attitudes and not the absence of jobs in the market. This is not much different
than the attitude of the apologists of capitalism in the 19th
century when there was child labor, forced labor in the form of “workhouse or
spike” and debtors’ prisons. Interestingly, bankers and governments of the EU in
our time entertain the exact same attitudes about the southern European
countries that have been under austerity from 2010 to the present as reflected
in the MarketWatch article about US workers.
Blaming the
college graduate who cannot find work in her field, the middle age man who is
told he is too old to be competitive, the auto factory worker whose factory
closed is typical of how media, businesses, and government, all integral part
of the dominant culture, see the problem in the gap between the rich and the
rest of society. This is not just in the US which is the Mecca of capitalism
but around the world. Such attitudes have deep historical roots, though it is
true that throughout the evolving history of capitalism the social fabric has
evolve and conditions are better today than they were in the nascent phase of
the market economy.
Life expectancy
and the quality of life between rich and poor differed as much today as it did
300 years ago, as Fernand Braudel points out in his classic work Capitalism
and Material Life 1400-1800. This separate demography for the rich is
lost in the scale of our averages. In the Beauvaisis in the middle of the
seventeenth century over a third of the children died every twelve months; only
58% reached their fifteenth year; people died on average at the age of twenty.”
Peasants reached old age in physical appearance and deterioration by the age of
forty owing to lack of proper diet and the subsistence life. On average the
rich lived at least ten years longer than the poor and would have lived a great
deal longer if they did not engage in excesses. Baudel is correct that the
relativism in the rich-poor gap not just at the beginning of the capitalist
world economy in comparison with our epoch, but even today between the US and
Nigeria, for example makes a big difference. In other words, not just the
poverty line demarcation but actual material life, to quote Braudel, makes a
difference in the poverty of a New Yorker vs. a peasant in Kenya or one in the
Philippines. However, the same relativist
argument does not hold true of the rich no matter where they live on earth, nor
of the attitudes they entertain toward the poor.
Throughout
history, the attitudes of rich people toward the poor were never characterized
by a willingness to change the system that causes gross social inequality. Kindness
and compassion toward the poor are sentiments rarely associated with the rich,
but rather by a sense of aloofness at best, contempt at worst. Studies of
attitudes of the rich toward the poor generally indicate a disdain of the
former toward the latter, despite claims of living in a democracy that somehow
entails “equality” when all around us there is nothing but inequality. Despite
the obligatory rhetoric of political correctness in the age of mass politics
and mass communication, the structure that sustains inequality remains. As long
as officials, businesses, the media and private citizens say and write the
politically correct thing, there is no need to change the root causes of social
injustice in society. . (See Larry Bartels, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age).
The worldview of
the rich is based on paternalistic attitudes and differs sharply from that of
the rest of the population that has no privileges in society and its
institutions, presumably based on equality for all. The attitudes of the rich
toward the poor have historical roots in the early Industrial Revolution when
the Protestant work ethic became an integral part of explaining why a few were
blessed with wealth and the many, presumably unworthy sinners that God does not
favor, were destined to a life of meager living. Although historically religion
molded the attitudes of the masses toward the rich, in our modern era of mass
communications secular ideologies have played a dominant role in manipulating
public opinion.
The ideological
justification for the rich appropriating wealth because the political economy
promotes it is something we find concealed behind the rhetoric of individual
competition. But how much competition was there at the time that Adam Smith was
writing or even today, when the state has always been the pillar of support for
businesses, and in all cases if such support is no longer the system will
collapse. The myth of “free competition” is constantly contradicted by the role
of the state in the marketplace.
To elevate
themselves above the masses of the poor, the bourgeoisie attribute to
themselves ambition and a keen sense of business savvy combined with a diligent
work ethic. This is all in theory. Naturally, the classical liberal view that
prevails across the world today is a Western construct that many in the Western
and non-Western world have challenged. An integral part of the Western colonial
legacy passed on to Africa as well as other parts of the non-Western World, the
classical liberal ideology and value system rooted in materialism and
individualism is among the exports along with commodities and services. The
ugly reality is that capitalism prevails by force, direct or indirect, subtle
or obtrusive, at home and especially in distant lands where markets, raw
materials and cheap labor are the goals of the imperialist. (see Chinweizu, The
West and the Rest of Us).
The value system
of individualism imbedded in the capitalist ethics is at the core of the Western
Euro-centric world and diametrically opposed to collectivism of non-Western
cultures. The same value system also clashes with Christian communitarian
ethics within the Catholic Church reformers and especially with Liberation
Theology coming mostly from Latin American intellectuals and politicians after
the Cuban Revolution. The attempt to view Catholicism through the plight of the
poor as Jesus Christ experienced according to the New Testament posed a
frightening prospect for conservative and liberals alike because it entailed a
challenge to the social structure and elites that the Church protected by
distracting the masses with the promise of spiritual salvation. The last thing
that the political and financial elites want is a segment of the institutional
structure, in this case the church, projecting the image that communities can
have a conscience and social responsibility, contrary to classical liberal
ideology. Of course, it is not at all
the case that communities lack conscience and social responsibility, but that
the hegemonic cultural values of atomism prevail over any collectivist mode of
thinking.
Desensitized
toward the poor and their wretchedness, the rich are aloof of the masses in society
in general. One reason for the aloofness is their belief that society belongs
to them while the poor merely serve, at best, and take up space, at worst.
These attitudes prevailed in 19th century England, as much as in
early 20th century US, as they do today among the wealthy throughout
the world. The policy that the rich have advocated toward the poor has always
been one of government adopting punitive measures against the poor and to
protect the rich against the poor whose socioeconomic condition could drive
them to criminal activity. After all, the wealthy have always argued that the
poor are the burdensome parasites of society and government must not raise taxes
to sustain them in life.
This is a theme
that a number of European and American novelists explored in the 19th
and 20th century. It is also something we see in sociological
studies that are more scientific from the classic work by Henry Mayhew London
Labour and the London Poor, until contemporary studies based on
extensive empirical research of the laboring poor from North America to China,
from Brazil to India. While before the age of mass politics and democracy there
was no need to go through the motions of democracy and equality, today with all
the talk of freedom and equality one must pay lip service to social justice
because it is the politically correct thing to do, while essentially engaging
in practices not much different than robber barons of 19th century
factories and coal mines.
Capturing the
spirit of materialism, the lifelong preoccupation of amassing wealth as a
cultural phenomenon, Jules Henry made the following argument in the mid-1960s
amid the Vietnam War when both Japan and Western Europe had fully recovered
from the effects of WWII and adapted the American cultural values of devoting
one’s life to wealth accumulation as a way of life. “I am
much concerned with our national character in a culture increasingly feeling
the effects of almost 150 years of lopsided preoccupation with amassing wealth
and raising its standard of living…When we realize that the rest of the world
has the same orientation, a study of what has happened to the American national
character may give some insight in what to expect in other parts of the world
…”Jules Henry, Culture Against Man
While Jules Henry
took the long view making broad sociological observations about the diffusion
of American culture, it is only the hegemonic culture and values that have
prevailed around the world, not America’s sub-cultures and values that reflect
various minority groups from African-American to native-America, from ethnic
minorities to religious ones. The only exception is the commercialization of
sub-culture co-opted by the hegemonic culture and becoming an integral part of
the mainstream. In other words, everything from music and mode of dress to
dance and art that reflects the subculture becomes co-opted and part of the
hegemonic culture once it is commercialized. Therefore, the hegemonic culture
always has the greatest influence even if it not a reflection of the broader
masses of a nation, presenting itself as all-inclusive of sub-cultures.
As Antonio Gramsci, (Prison Notebooks) argued,
it is not the case of a national culture, but of the hegemonic culture under
the social structure that determines the value system in society. The hegemonic
culture and values in the US can be found just as easily in Paris and Rio de
Janeiro, in Moscow and Mexico City where there are a few wealthy people
enjoying the status of privileged elites and influencing society’s destiny. Cultural
diffusion is largely in the domain of the hegemonic culture of core countries
within the world capitalist system and not sub-cultures. Needless to say, a
billionaire in New York, let us say Michael Bloomberg naturally enjoys not only
economic influence in New York but throughout the US and much of the world.
This is because Bloomberg molds public opinion by owning media outlets, whereas
all of the workers and middle class people combined in New York do not have the
influence of this one man who was also former mayor of the city.
In 2014, the
world’s 80 richest people had more wealth than 3.5 billion people on the
planet, reflecting the extreme socioeconomic inequality that capitalism has
been perpetuating after centuries of promising to make everyone rich and not
just a handful of people. According to the researchers compiling these
statistics, by the end of 2015, the wealthiest one percent of the people will
own more wealth than 99% of the world’s population. Amid such enormous wealth concentration,
the problem for the wealthy, the governments whose policies account for
accumulation of wealth, and the apologists of this political economy is to
convince 99% of the world’s population that capitalism is the solution and
poverty the fault of the individual lacking the “proper character traits and
mental capacity”. Besides political
ideology of classical Liberalism, neo-liberalism, conservatism, Libertarianism,
and varieties of right wing and centrist and center-leftist ideologies,
religion is also used to justify the political economy of inequality.
The extraordinary
thing about the rich is their disdain for the poor is only matched by the
admiration the poor entertain for the wealthy. According to a Pew
Research survey, those with the greatest financial security are
convinced that the poor have it easy because they receive government benefits
without providing anything in return to society. Again, we see the theme of the
poor as parasites because of the few crumbs they collect in a debilitated
welfare state, rather than the rich enjoying the benefits of a corporate
welfare system. Furthermore, the wealthy insist that government cannot and must
not do more to help the poor who are simply a burden on the budget, thus on the
public debt. They do not mention that $2.5 trillion is currently held outside
the US by corporations and individual refusing to repatriate the money because
they are evading taxes. Nor do they mention the tax loopholes in off-shore
accounts and illegal transactions that result in massive drain of income for
the state.
Billionaire real
estate investor Jeff Greene stated on CNBC that the press misquoted him about
his disdain of the poor. "What I said was, 'the global
equalization of wages and technology, which is growing at an exponential pace,
has killed so many millions of jobs in America and other Western economies and
it's going to kill them at an even faster pace going forward.' I said, 'we have
our work cut out if we want to build a real economy, an inclusive economy that
I grew up in, that I want to see for all Americans.'"
This attitude of
contempt for the poor and the working poor is not just an American phenomenon,
but a global one, reflecting the values of our civilization that sees nothing
more in life as valuable than wealth accumulation at any cost to social justice.
Do the super rich and the politicians
who pursue policies maintaining a system of social injustice have any moral,
social or political responsibility for those dying of poverty around the world
because of capital accumulation and concentration? The answer is absolutely not
because they blame the individual and not the system that maintains an unjust
society. When we consider that there are millionaire and even billionaire
politicians across the world, then it becomes even more understandable why the
disdain toward the middle and lower classes.
In the “The
World As I See It”, Albert Einstein writes: “I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help
humanity forward, even in the most devoted worker in this cause…Money only
appeals to selfishness and always tempts its owners irresistibly to abuse it.
Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus or Gandhi with the money-bags of Carnegie?”
A product of the Age of Reason with profound confidence in the rationalist
tradition, something his contemporary Sigmund Freud did not share, Einstein
pointed out the obvious about the sickening affect of wealth in human beings,
to say nothing of the misery it causes those who lack it because it is
concentrated.
A child will die
of hunger by the time it takes the average person to finish reading this
sentence. If state-directed corporate welfare capitalism is to squeeze more out
of labor and further erode middle-class living standards, it necessarily
entails that poverty will increase and the rich-poor gap widen. This is in
contrast to what the apologists of the non-existent “free market” economy are
promising as they continue to espouse even greater wealth concentration despite
one percent of the world’s richest people owing more than half of the world’s
wealth.
One could argue that this is a reflection of the capitalist value
system and more specifically the callous attitude of the rich toward the poor
as a reflection of America’s culture just as F. Scott Fitzgerald describes in
the Great Gatsby. However, values were not very different a century before F.
Scott Fitzgerald when Alexis de Tocqueville was gathering material for his book
about American society.
“As in the ages of equality no man is compelled to
lend assistance to his fellow-men, and none has any right to expect much
support from them, everyone is at once independent and powerless… His
independence fells him with self-reliance and pride among his equals; his
debility makes him feel from time to time his want for some outward assistance,
which he cannot expect from any of them because they are impotent and
unsympathizing.” (Alexis de
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, II, 786)
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