American Oligarchs

I read in Salon today that Sylvia Allegretto, at UC Berkeley, has done a calculation showing that six members of the Walton clan, heirs of Sam Walton, WalMart’s founding father, have a combined wealth of $69.7 billion. They worked hard to get that inheritance. They are job creators because of all that hard work. They also donate prodigiously to right wing political groups.

Oh. And that combined wealth is merely equivalent to that of the lowest 30% of all of their fellow Americans. Let me see now. The latest estimate of the US population is 311,800,000. 30% of that is … 93,540,000. So. On the basis of the ruling from our Supreme Court that giving cash in the political arena is equivalent to freedom of speech, we have 6 voters having the same impact as 93,540,000. Which is not quite true, naturally, because those lesser folk are unlikely to have the spare cash with which to buy off politicians. The upper folk obviously do.

Ain’t democracy grand?

I love freedom of speech. They tell me I will have a voice someday. Just as soon as I pay the appropriate amount.

Silly cynical me. This is America for goodness sake. We are all equal here.

Right?