One of the great and possibly deciding questions for the coming decades of this new century is how the rich and the ultra rich will evolve and behave - and how the desperately poor adjust to a new and no doubt harsher reality – the new reality being that the ultra rich will continue to acquire obscenely greater portions of the collective pie – while the poor cannot optimistically seek both protection and influence in a return to communist revolution or even collective bargaining, no matter how great their desperation or longing for nostalgic solace and solidarity.
Looking eastward, It seems highly unlikely the growing hundreds of millions of landless and jobless in China are ever going to band together again and demand reprints of Mao’s Little Red Book. Nor will they organize strike after strike, or gather in new Long Marches until they over-run the new Mandarins in Beijing. No, the central government has all the tanks, missiles and bombs it needs for putting down rebellions there, and all paid for with American dollars, and the new Mandarins have a firm stranglehold on food distribution as well.
Equally, on the windy steppes of Mother Russia are the tens of millions left behind in dire poverty by the insatiable and glitteringly ostentatious greed of the kleptocracy likely to cry for a sequel to Lenin’s October putsch and Stalin’s decimation of every group with any power, affluence or influence? Only the die-hard relics over the age of eighty there seem to have any lingering nostalgic dreams of socialist utopias and class revenge.
So what then will be the coming roles of the very rich and the very poor?
Perhaps some of the answers can be found in the examining of the different kinds of rich people – for there are vastly different types and behaviors – just as there are with the poor.
In America, for example, we can, as an aid to general understanding, divide the rich into two groups. Let us call them the Red States Rich or Red Rich for short, and the Blue States Rich, or the Blue Rich. The same can be done with the poor, Red Poor and Blue Poor. (These labels have more to do with mentality than geography – but geography decides voting trends.)
Let’s begin with the Blue Rich. The Blue Rich are exemplified by the likes of Bill Gates, Steven Jobs, Jeff Bazos. These are men, often born and raised in liberal Blue state areas, well educated in renowned colleges, heirs to no great fortunes or blue blood families, but basically self-made billionaires in young new-tech industries - men who also care about poverty, the environment, the big questions of the age and above all shaping a better future for the world and mitigating real problems.
The Blue Rich are fans of Obama, the Clintons, Oprah, vacationing in Tuscany, going back stage to say hello to Bono. They buy Segways and Priuses for their friends and junior family members. They support gay, minority and women’s rights and shudder at the thought of getting their information from Fox. They contribute to refugee relief and fighting cholera in Haiti as well as the global fight against malaria and polio. They espouse (..at least publicly..) the belief that we’re all in this together and we must think of future generations. The Blue Rich are softies and never speak of the need for tough love, steely realism or the dangers of greedy organized labor or the madness of social security “entitlements.”
For that we have the Red Rich, represented by Bushes down through the last four generations, the Coors family in Colorado, the oil-rich Hunts and Basses and Kochs of Texas. These family dynasties, built on old glamourless meat-and-potatoes industries, have shown little concern for health care iniquities, for the environment, for social justice and minority rights, or the least bit of sympathy for the down-trodden at home and especially abroad.
They and their ilk embrace a me-first and a the-government-can-get-out-of-my-way-unless-I-can-bribe-it-to-do-my-personal-bidding philosophy. They feel that as members of large families, with dozens of lazy dependents, incompetent nephews, dull-witted sons, grasping sons-in-law, leech-like brothers-in-law, vindictive ex-wives and demanding mistresses, that their obligation to their fellow man is being more than tested daily locally by the parasites in their own families. Charity begins at home and often dies there, is their experience.
Besides being weighed down and drained and demoralized (..the perfect word!) by blood-related moochers (as, of course, are most Blue State Rich), the Red State Rich are also often highly annoyed that they get so little credit from educated Blue State snobs for creating blue collar jobs and tenaciously keeping the wheels of industry turning.
“Why,” they complain, with a great deal of justification, “does a man like Steve Jobs get all the praise and publicity, while the men who dig for minerals and drill for oil get nothing but condemnation and scorn? Why is Apple sexy and Haliburton thought to reek of sulfur and Hades?” (Geez.. with obvious good reason, I would venture..)
“..and why are all things imported and exotic, decadent and perverse, atheist and profane, preferable to our good old-fashioned American Puritanism and fear of the foreign? For God’s sake, for the first two centuries of our existence America had been amply protected from contamination by our two great oceans, and now we find our soft underbelly being infiltrated by those leaf-blower-bearing beaners from below the border – and how many languid Latino landscapers and lettuce pickers do we need? If that damned Obama wants to start some kind of public works program why not build a new canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific right along our border with Mexico and make it a mile wide with banks a mile high? Along with that, if we can just stop those gays from living monogamous family lives, keep Spanish language signs from being displayed in our airports and motor vehicle bureaus, label Christmas nativity scenes as such and promote the teaching of Creationism in our schools – then we’ll be safe and thrive and remain masters of our own fates!”
Similarly the differences between the Red Poor and the Blue Poor reflect the aspirations of the poor to resemble the rich. The white rural poor aspire to resemble the Red State Rich, while the urban poor look to Obama and Oprah as examples to aspire to. But while the rural and the urban poor are different in many ways they do share one commonality – the fervent hope the Lord Jesus Christ will show them mercy and a life of plenty and pleasure in the next world. (If not him, then the Lottery.)
(We Liberals generally mock the rural whites for their fundamentalist religion – while forgiving black church-goers for their equal fervor – no doubt because we like their music better, black superstition being of a more joyous celebratory nature while white superstition seems so sour, repressed, vindictive and anemic.)
America is an astoundingly unusual country. It is perhaps the only country where the poor (whites) consistently and conservatively vote against their own interests. The rural white Red State residents’ intense dislike of interfering government, unions, collective bargaining, international cooperation or organizations like the United Nations – and especially do-gooder groups like Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, stems from a general and seething skepticism. Because their primary – indeed sole – interest is self, they cannot even minutely understand or believe that anyone else cares about anything else than the self. “They are liars, deceivers when they say they care!” is their sour response. “Nobody really cares. All they want is attention and praise for being do-gooders. Look at all those phonies in Hollywood with their gala benefits. And that damned Sean Penn in Haiti. You can bet he gets his bottled water first! Nobody ever helped me or gave me a thing!”
(..do we need to wonder why???)
The rich Red and the rural poor Red agree that government help is distant, ineffectual, unreliable, bureaucratic, and resembles the DMV at worst and the Post Office at best – and while the government used to be good at keeping the blacks down it now seems more concerned with keeping them alive.
“What’s in it for us?” they bellow when confronted with government social programs and altruistic organizations. Of course they choose to ignore Medicare, Social Security, Interstate Highways, pure food and drug laws, primary education. To hear them talk you’d think all they need to thrive and be happy is the Pentagon, Fox News and the NRA.
But now that so many millions of the rural state residents have lost their jobs perhaps we’ll be hearing less of “You big government liberals can try to pull the pink slip from my cold dead hand..” and more of “Maybe Karl Rove and Rupert Murdoch aren’t my best friends after all?”
As for the follies and the foibles of the Blue Poor? While the Red Poor hate taxes because they fear the government might take away too much should they ever come into money (..How? ..a generous settlement from the insurance company when the Lord Almighty blows away their trailer?) the minority Blue Poor have no such illusions nor fear of excessive taxation. They know they live in unattractive areas with no jobs and that will likely never have jobs, and they know they have no money to relocate to suburban areas where there might be jobs, nor do they have the funds to buy land in rural areas and return to the farming of their ancestors. Part of the reasons for the great migration to the north was their inability to buy sufficient land in the south or to farm without harassment. The Blue Poor feel trapped where they are and can see no viable alternatives. They feel boxed in, and, if not deliberately isolated by the white world, than at least marginalized and doomed to a subservient and second-rate life.
Would most of them vote for a black candidate merely for the color of his skin? Yes, no doubt. Just as many white voters thought and continue to believe that the pale ninny from the far north is a far wiser leader than a brainy black man ..and she shoots things!
Can this rough categorizing of Red and Blue rich and poor be applied internationally? To China, India, Russia, Brazil?
Of course it can, as every nation and nationality, every age has its Robin Hoods and Sheriff Johns, its Bill Gates and Al Capones, its Oprahs and its Silvio Berlusconis and Rupert Murdochs, its resentful rednecks and its snobby urban sophisticates. The future century will produce myriads of heroes and villains – and alas many many more victims of harsh and heartless economic inequality.
