Kimmio - cute cartoon. What really struck me was the scene of jitterbugging. I couldn't do it then. And I'm quite sure I wouldn't survive it now.
Now - the basis of great wealth is capitalism which is supposedly founded in competition. Christianity is not. So we start with a contradiction. (Yes, I know people compete in tennis, horse-races.... But competing against others for wealth - and power - is another matter.) Our local billionaire has his own church (named after the family). He has been, to say the least, unsupportive of medicare, climate control, social programmes in general. He uses his political influence to get government grants - all that stuff. But, oh, he keeps his church open in summer for us proletariat, and pays for a Rev. DD every Sunday. Nothing but the best - with special music.
For get the theories. Capitalism has brought enormous suffering, starvation, sub-survival pay, war and death, massive displacement, and climate damage to the whole world. The destruction of native peoples in the Americas was largely the product of capitalist wealth - it wanted the mineral resources of native peoples - and it wanted the forests and lands for financial speculation.
Today, you need to be a billionaire to have serious political influence. You can't control who gets elected without very, very big money. That's why parties always assign their most prominent politicians to being the bagmen who go to the billionaires to see what they want in return for money. That's why there is so little progress on climate change. That's why there's no investigation ( or media news) about tax havens. That's why Canadian troops are in eastern Europe. That's why Canadians died in Afghanistan.
The middle class have very, very little political clout. Fifty years ago, a millionaire was on the low edge of wealthy. It takes rather more than that now.
To be upper class you need to have power - financial and political - and power has always been within the reach of just one or two percent of the population.
Class also suggests that the upper class have a sense of themselves as an upper class - a sense of being those superior to others, almost in a racial sense, and a sense of privilege. And, yes, some work their way up to that - but not many. More common are the Rockefellers who have been inheriting upper class status since, at least, the nineteenth century.
Even the dumb sons get to the top. I can think of a couple who dropped out of university, and one who got through university only because daddy paid a little extra.l (A lot extra. For that matter, how do you think a dolt like George Bush Jr. ever got into an an MBA programme - much less passing it?) Anyway, all three of the ones I know now run huge corporations - not bad for college drop-outs. Oh, did I mention Daddy owned the corporations?
We have produced an upper class which now owns us. It owns governments. It decides on taxes, wars, trade agreements....
Trump is something of rebel within that group. But he's still in that group.
Despite a small number of exceptions, it's a class that cares nothing for the rest of us. That's why wealth has been steadily drifting from most of us to the upper class.
And the churches? They played the same kiss-up games in the rising days of aristocrats.
P.S. Oh, someone mentioned the scandalous salaries paid to civil service CEOs. In fact, they come nothing close to the upper CEOs. As well, they are usually more competent. A little history here. In World War 1, management of the war economy was largely up to the private CEOs. And it was a disaster. In 1939, it was placed in the hands of civil servants - and was amazingly successful. In fact, for years after the war, private corporations used to send their rising stars to study the civil service in Ottawa. (Today, of course, the common line put out is that civil servants are incompetent. That's because the upper classes don't want the government to interfere with their looting of the economy.
and a job. I feel rich. But I am not on paper - yet I am. And being close to homeless a year or so ago - that was rough! I didn't really mention it here - the close to homeless part (maybe I did) but a couple of people knew what I was going through.
