Banana Republic
Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times:
In my reporting, I regularly travel to banana republics notorious for their inequality. In some of these plutocracies, the richest 1 percent of the population gobbles up 20 percent of the national pie.
But guess what? You no longer need to travel to distant and dangerous countries to observe such rapacious inequality. We now have it right here at home — and in the aftermath of Tuesday’s election, it may get worse.
The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.
Why do Americans stand for this kind of thing? Because of propaganda, of course. Echidne described it very well the other day:
Imagine a large number of people getting together and paying for the flour, sugar, eggs, cream, strawberries and so on to bake a gigantic celebration cake. Imagine, then, the finished cake and notice how most of the people are asked to share one thin slice while a small number hog all the rest of the cake. What happens next?
The cake hoggers (standing with 99% of the cake behind their backs) essentially tell the vast masses that someone else is trying to steal their thin piece! That’s how right-wing populism works. It’s those immigrants! It’s those blacks! It’s those upppity wimminz! It’s those fags! They are the ones you need to fight to keep that thin cake sliver.
Not the people with most of the cake. This I have never understood. But that’s how it goes.
The next stage is for the disgruntled masses to say that they will never ever again pay for any of the eggs or the sugar or the flour or the cream because that cake goes to the undeserving wimminz, blacks, illegal aliens, gays and so on.
So they don’t want to have a government. Without the government they will be worse off but that doesn’t enter the story. The story, after all, is orchestrated by that small number who are right now digging into the cake with their bare hands, smearing the cake all over the walls and laughing at the rest of us.
Here’s the thing: if we’re going to be a banana republic, then I think we should have the appropriate visual cues. I want our leaders to wear gold braid and giant epaulets and all that stuff. It would satisfy my desire for cognitive consonance.
10 Responses to “Banana Republic”
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votermom says:
I think we’re more of a high fructose corn syrup republic.
November 8th, 2010 at 7:26 pm EST -
sister of ye says:
I bet Obama would look smashing in epaulets. But since we’re doing costuming, can we make it a musical, too, like Evita?
I mean, if we had to do a casting call to make sure our politicos can sing, at least we’d know they were qualified at something.
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myiq2xu says:
I want our leaders to wear gold braid and giant epaulets and all that stuff.
I bet Barack would like that.
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K.A. says:
I want our leaders to wear gold braid and giant epaulets and all that stuff. It would satisfy my desire for cognitive consonance.
Ha!
I think this is also relevant:
http://www.good.is/post/americ.....has-money/
If you’ll notice, the bottom 40% of wealth owners are not even visible on the graph!
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quixote says:
“high fructose corn syrup republic”
Perfect. Way too true.
You can live on bananas if you have to. HFCS? Not so much.
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Three Wickets says:
The left-right thing seems to be competing with the class thing. Here’s Elizabeth Wurtzel in the Guardian sounding elitist. What do we think about Richard Florida, the marketing shill who came up with the term creative class. Isn’t the whole concept of the creative class sexist. Richard and Elizabeth, both big Obama fans. Who would have guessed.
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AngryPunkPixie says:
comparing America in it’s current state to an island ruled by a dictatorship……not the best idea.
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Jeff says:
Epaulets? I’m STILL holding out for the Obelisk.
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cellocat says:
We stand for it partly because we’re addicted to our admiration of perceived winners, and we never want to stand up for losers, even if they’re us. That would be too uncool.
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julia says:
People still believe in the American Dream, especially the part that says, ‘you, too, can get rich’. Amd they still do not believe that the government will use you and never ever intends to let you get rich. Or even stay in the middle class.
