2013 Meme: Topic # 12 -- poverty as an evil to combat?
Day 12: How can we reestablish poverty as an evil to be combated in US society?
Part of me wants to say by creating a Marvel comics (or whomever; I am not an aficionado, here) superhero aimed at that, with a movie series. Convert IronMan or something; those movies are snarky enough.
The last time there seemed to be such a (self-advertised) thing in the US was with master horse-trader Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had enough Keynesian slop money swilling around to spend vastly on guns and butter. I mean, WWII's economic boost -- huge employment, the government-bought war materiel then destroyed, to be bought again, but no destruction of the US's infrastructure -- well, there's nothing like that now, so that capitalist moment's window has closed. And with the reactionary blowback that Reagan and Thatcher helped ignite, Keynes is still excoriated now.
The philosophy of "I've got mine, Jack" while seeming to say that in true American individualist mythology, each person has the opportunity to pull him or herself up by her bootstraps, so fuck anyone who hasn't done so... it has its own built-in self-destruction, too, as in the current economic slump (did we ever quite call it a depression? how is it being referred to now?)... because if you got yours once, Jack, but now you're unemployed and fucked, or now you're drowned in debt and fucked, well, by your philosophy, that's YOUR fault, no one else's.
So... within the confines of capitalism, I don't see how poverty can ever become an evil to combat. It's the necessary corollary to wealth, as the recent effective graphic reveals.
Wealth Inequality in America infographic
Part of me wants to say by creating a Marvel comics (or whomever; I am not an aficionado, here) superhero aimed at that, with a movie series. Convert IronMan or something; those movies are snarky enough.
The last time there seemed to be such a (self-advertised) thing in the US was with master horse-trader Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had enough Keynesian slop money swilling around to spend vastly on guns and butter. I mean, WWII's economic boost -- huge employment, the government-bought war materiel then destroyed, to be bought again, but no destruction of the US's infrastructure -- well, there's nothing like that now, so that capitalist moment's window has closed. And with the reactionary blowback that Reagan and Thatcher helped ignite, Keynes is still excoriated now.
The philosophy of "I've got mine, Jack" while seeming to say that in true American individualist mythology, each person has the opportunity to pull him or herself up by her bootstraps, so fuck anyone who hasn't done so... it has its own built-in self-destruction, too, as in the current economic slump (did we ever quite call it a depression? how is it being referred to now?)... because if you got yours once, Jack, but now you're unemployed and fucked, or now you're drowned in debt and fucked, well, by your philosophy, that's YOUR fault, no one else's.
So... within the confines of capitalism, I don't see how poverty can ever become an evil to combat. It's the necessary corollary to wealth, as the recent effective graphic reveals.
Click to viewWealth Inequality in America infographic