I just read that Canada’s hundred richest executives had made the average salary of most Canadians by noon on January third. Some had made it by the end of New Years day…and I’m certain there are thousands of wealthy folks around the world who zip past the “average salary” milepost before breakfast. Little factoids like that used to warm my heart…because I knew that some day the wretched excess of these people would awaken a mighty wind in the souls of the working people and they would rise up and eat the rich and stamp out evil and corruption and injustice everywhere. The poor would stay up all night and sew their own superhero costumes by the light of salvaged candles while singing hymns about the new world their children would inherit. Well, this particular delusion no longer sits in the corner of my mind, eating popcorn and watching the movie of my life. The rich will always be with us…just as the poor will always be with us. Nor are the extreme gaps between the very rich and the average earner anything new (although the fierce growth of the disparity since the 1980’s is really obscene). History tells us that the separations have always been huge…often incalculably (great word) greater than the ridiculous numbers that started this rant. I don’t know why the capitalist apologists bother about spreading the propaganda that these executives are “worth every penny” or that they contribute more or that “wealth generates jobs and builds the economy”. Please…not all true and it’s well past the point where we (the ordinary people) can bring it all down…No, they will do that themselves, probably by pushing the disparity gap to a breaking point. We all know the romantic stories about great wealth scavenged through some scheme or another, used to build the big family pile (Downton Abbey style)…and two generations later the profligate heir pisses it all away on horses and hookers and unbelievable stupidity. Alas, even that story has a happy ending when the filthy rich widow appears on the scene, marries the dumb-ass and after touching up his tarnished gilt edges…leads him to god and the mending of his stupid ways. Please…wealthy widow lady…stay home…let the dismal idiot fade away like a bad smell. We’d like to think that it’s not a pattern that repeats itself but it does. And we have tycoons today that buy and sell football teams…super yachts and city blocks with barely a thought. Do we care where those Russian oligarchs got their dough? Hell no. What about all those dot com billionaires living on the same street, each in a house the size of a city hotel. Did they have the area tested for earth quakes? How much time do they actually spend on those yachts? Do they go out with a fishing rod for an hour or two on a sunny day? Cruise around the harbour with a few pals catching some rays?
O.K. so I’m no longer holding my breath for the day that I hear that the entire yacht basin at Cannes went up in smoke…or that a whole flotilla of super yachts was last seen heading into the Bermuda Triangle. I still care that the huge disparities between rich and poor are connected…I still believe that for somebody to become that wealthy…many people have to become very poor. I still believe that extremes of poverty breed war and disease and death and an endless chain of misery…so therefore it is also extreme wealth that breeds these things. I don’t believe we can eradicate either extreme…but I do believe that we have to wake up and understand that they need to be moderated…the extremes need to less extreme. Our culture expends quite a lot of energy and thought to fight poverty…we need spend at least as much energy and thought to fight the excesses of wealth.
It’s 2014 and my cultural heroes for this year are a small and terrible musical group from Russia. If they ever put out a record we should certainly buy it…but maybe not play it…even if you understand Russian. Besides, you already know what they’re saying. Pussy Riot…Damn! when they let those women out of jail they jumped right into Putie’s face…I wanted to climb through my T.V. screen and give them everything I had in my pockets.
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