And So It Goes

And now the plutocrats shade the discussion, fan the anger, and shape the direction. Instead of the abandoned and near-abandoned private sector lower and middle class workers (see last post) finding some solidarity with their public sector brethren, the tried and true strategy of divide and conquer manifests, for those private sector workers are carted out to express their disgust with the “outrageously generous” benefits of the public sector.

Those benefits are sometimes overly generous or poorly funded and in need of adjustment or at least increased funding from the participants, but the discussion rarely stops there. It goes on to why should they have those pensions and benefits at all, “because we in the private sector don’t, all we have are 401k’s that we can barely afford to contribute anything to, and what little we do has gone down in value because of the stock market, and health insurance is outrageous, and we don’t get many holidays, and we don’t get more than 2 weeks vacation and can’t afford to be away from work that long anyway or to do much even if we could.”

Watch as the discussion morphs from better participant funding, delayed or somewhat reduced benefits, etc., to doing away with the benefits nearly entirely. At that point, the transformation will then be complete, and plutocrats will have achieved the victory they have sought.

Public sector benefits are poorly, and often unsustainably, funded. For several reasons. One is that many poor or even corrupt investment decisions have been made, and moneys squandered or lost, and the general legalized larceny of Wall Street has only exacerbated the problem several fold. A second is that a generally weakened or even anemic private sector of the lower and middle classes (the producers) have little to contribute—real wages have gone down for over 40 years. A third is the near-complete lack of public responsibility and facing reality from both elected officials and their constituents. But a fourth is that those with wealth, the very top 1% (and often even just .1%) have not only not paid their share, they have driven wealth upward to themselves by various mechanisms and then incredibly decided to then pay even less. They have effectively helped to defund government.

But you will hear little of all that. You will only hear intra-class vitriol as private sector workers, many of whom are in a state of exhausted desperation, scream at their public sector brothers and sisters. Scream that things are unsustainable, which is true. Scream that they can’t afford to fund things anymore, which is also true. But essentially scream as well that if they are miserable, everyone else on their level should be too.

And the plutocrats laugh on their way to victory and inverted totalitarianism.