Sitglitz: Money trumps democracy - America has the highest level of inequality of any of the advanced countries

in my travels over the years, i've always been acutely aware of the disparity between rich and poor in many of the countries i've visited... mexico was my first eye-opening experience in the early 70s and, despite the appearance of home depots and sam's clubs that have popped up like poisonous mushrooms after a rain, as of last october, i haven't seen that much change... the poor are still very poor and the rich are still staggeringly rich... i've seen the same story repeated to greater and lesser degrees all over latin america, the balkans (with a few exceptions), africa and, saddest of all, afghanistan...


i always thought that the poor in the u.s., although i know there are some whose circumstances are almost as extreme as in the poorest of third world countries, were poor at a level a bit more comfortable than, for instance, in mexico... i don't think that any more... in the last ten years, especially, i've seen my country slide inexorably toward third world standards with no end in sight...


joseph stiglitz is an acute observer and i offer this only as a way to keep the problem visible...

[T]he American dream is a myth. There is less equality of opportunity in the United States today than there is in Europe – or, indeed, in any advanced industrial country for which there are data.

This is one of the reasons that America has the highest level of inequality of any of the advanced countries – and its gap with the rest has been widening. In the “recovery” of 2009-2010, the top 1% of US income earners captured 93% of the income growth. Other inequality indicators – like wealth, health, and life expectancy – are as bad or even worse. The clear trend is one of concentration of income and wealth at the top, the hollowing out of the middle, and increasing poverty at the bottom.

It would be one thing if the high incomes of those at the top were the result of greater contributions to society, but the Great Recession showed otherwise: even bankers who had led the global economy, as well as their own firms, to the brink of ruin, received outsize bonuses.

A closer look at those at the top reveals a disproportionate role for rent-seeking: some have obtained their wealth by exercising monopoly power; others are CEOs who have taken advantage of deficiencies in corporate governance to extract for themselves an excessive share of corporate earnings; and still others have used political connections to benefit from government munificence – either excessively high prices for what the government buys (drugs), or excessively low prices for what the government sells (mineral rights).

Likewise, part of the wealth of those in finance comes from exploiting the poor, through predatory lending and abusive credit-card practices. Those at the top, in such cases, are enriched at the direct expense of those at the bottom.

i never cease to be amazed at the greed manifested by those at the top and completely baffled at their disregard or even outright contempt for any notion of the common good...

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Wall Street and our government are one and the same and are destroying the rest of us

robert scheer talking with amy goodman at democracy now about how the unfettered greed of our super-rich, elite overlords is destroying the very fabric of our society, particularly among those who have worked the hardest to carve their place in it and are the most vulnerable to economic shenanigans...

This is not a game. It’s not a political game. It’s not a mathematics game. They’re real human beings who invest their whole life putting shelter over their family, caring about their family. And when you go out in these communities—and I’ve done some of that—you know, it’s so depressing. You know, I mean, I talked to people in Riverside who cleaned office buildings, you know, in Long Beach and commuted to Riverside so their kids could live in a better neighborhood. And they bought this house, and they made the payments. They made the payments. They did everything they were supposed to do. And the neighborhood went into the toilet, and they lose everything. They lose everything. And that story is repeated millions of times in America.

And the guys who did it to us, they weren’t those vicious right-wingers. And, you know, it wasn’t all the people that we liberals like to attack. It was our friends. Let’s get that straight, you know? When I call this the Clinton bubble, you know, I mean it very seriously. It was our friends. It was people, you know, like the heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who claim to be liberal Democrats. But they were being rewarded with enormous bonuses. You know, enormous bonuses. They made out just as well as the people running Citigroup. These were not government agencies. These were actually traded on the stock market, but posing as government-supported agencies. And the fact of the matter is that the damage that was done to us was done by people who talk a very good game. You know, Robert Rubin contributed money to the Harlem dance group, you know? Jesse Jackson even supported the reversal of Glass-Steagall. There’s a whole chapter in my book, you know? The people who acted in a very bad way, in this book, were people who we would probably be more comfortable talking to, you know, over a drink somewhere than the others. So, you know, my book, you know, it’s called "How Reagan Democrats—Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street and Mugged Main Street." And the Clinton Democrats, who now control the Obama administration, are—you know, this is turning the henhouse over to the foxes. And I would say the record of Obama on this has been abysmal. He has been a frontman for Wall Street, and it is shocking.

my heart has always been solidly connected to issues of social justice and it pains me beyond words to see common, ordinary, decent, hard-working folks screwed over by those who are only interested in accumulating more money and power for themselves... but, sad to say, i see it everywhere... regardless of the country or the culture, billions of decent people are being used and manipulated by those who only want to enrich themselves and don't give a flying shit for the common good...

i visited a friend in macedonia this past weekend and he was showing me photos of the trip he and his wife took to bucharest, romania, to visit his wife's sister... among the photos were several of the palace built by former dictator nicolae ceauşescu... now, i knew ceauşescu was an ego-maniacal despot, but, even with that knowledge, the size and grandiosity of the palace was stunning, only the pentagon in the u.s. is larger... the palace was built with forced labor... all the premier artisans and craftsmen from around the country were rounded up and moved to bucharest and put to work on the project - without pay - just so dear leader could look around and say, "look how great i am and how much power i have"...


Ceauşescu Palace, Bucharest, Romania


View from Ceauşescu Palace, Bucharest, Romania

we tut-tut and cluck-cluck over that kind of person and that kind of excess but it's going on right under our noses in our very own country... but when it's one of our own, we just choose to look the other way...

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My country: "An environment where the pathological becomes the norm"

harsh assessment, but essentially irrefutable...

[I]n a society dominated by pathological values, if one can call them that, the existence of a small group of conscienceless people promoting a culture of greed and selfishness creates an environment where the pathological becomes the norm. In a society, such as the United States today, where the president can lie with impunity on matters of life and death, a pathological environment is created where lying becomes acceptable. Violence is acceptable. Greed is acceptable. It is part and parcel of the ideology of the American Dream, that anyone can be a success no matter who you have to hurt to do it. And, it is in what they must do to actually succeed that the seeds of pathology are sown. In that environment, people of conscience who are weak and easily influenced take on the characteristics of the pathological in order to survive and succeed. They see that their leaders lie and cheat, and they figure that if they want to get ahead, then they can lie and cheat as well.

[...]

Psychopathy is an adaptive life strategy that is extremely successful in American society, and thus has increased in the population. What is more, as a consequence of a society that is adaptive for psychopathy, many individuals who are NOT genetic psychopaths have similarly adapted, becoming "effective" psychopaths, or "secondary sociopaths." In other words, in a world of psychopaths, those who are not genetic psychopaths, are induced to behave like psychopaths simply to survive. When the rules are set up to make a society "adaptive" to psychopathy, it makes psychopaths of everyone.

so, what to do...?

Were that pathological influence removed from society by putting psychopaths into quarantine, by educating people of conscience on the signs of pathology, of what to look for and how to deal with manipulation, by changing the systems created by psychopaths; if through such methods we were able to remove this ponerogenic influence, then the other pole, that of conscience, would be the more influential of the two, and people would gravitate towards altruism and truth rather than selfishness and lies.

If we were able to remove the pathological influence, we might find that our conceptions of "human nature" are wrong and are weighted wrongly because we accept those who are genetically without conscience as "human". Remove them and their acts from the data set, remove their influence from society as a whole, and the higher qualities of human nature capable of conscience might find room for expression in ways that we have never dreamed possible.

interesting, but also disturbingly suggestive of police state tactics... a different KIND of police state, to be sure, but still a police state...

how do we recognize these aliens in our midst...?

There are a number of traits that we find in psychopaths: An obvious trait is the complete lack of conscience. They lack any sense of remorse or empathy with others. They can be extremely charming and are experts at using talk to charm and hypnotize their prey. They are also irresponsible. Nothing is ever their fault; someone else or the world at large is always to blame for all of their 'problems' or their mistakes. Martha Stout, in her book The Sociopath Next Door, identifies what she calls the pity ploy. Psychopaths use pity to manipulate. They convince you to give them one more chance, and to not tell anyone about what they have done. So another trait - and a very important one - is their ability to control the flow of information.

They are also incapable of deep emotions. In fact, when Hare, a Canadian psychologist who spent his career studying psychopathy, did brain scans on psychopaths while showing them two sets of words, one set of neutral words with no emotional associations and a second set with emotionally charged words, while different areas of the brain lit up in the non-psychopathic control group, in the psychopaths, both sets were processed in the same area of the brain, the area that deals with language. They did not have an immediate emotional reaction.

Our whole emotional life is a mystery to them, while at the same time providing a tremendous tool for them to manipulate us. Think of those moments when we are strongly affected by our emotions and how our ability to think is impaired. Now imagine that you were able to feign such emotion, remaining cool and calculating, while the person you were exchanging with was really trapped in an emotional cauldron. You could use tears or shouting to get what you wanted, while your victim was driven to despair by the emotions they were living.

They also seem to have no real conception of past or future, living entirely for their immediate needs and desires. Because of the barren quality of their inner life, they are often seeking new thrills, anything from feeling the power of manipulating others to engaging in illegal activities simply for the rush of adrenaline.

Another trait of the psychopath is what Łobaczewski calls their "special psychological knowledge" of normal people. They have studied us. They know us better than we know ourselves. They are experts in knowing how to push our buttons, to use our emotions against us. But beyond that, they even seem to have some sort of hypnotic power over us. When we begin to get caught up in the web of the psychopath, our ability to think deteriorates, gets muddied. They seem to cast some sort of spell over us. It is only later when we are no longer in their presence, out of their spell, that the clarity of thought returns and we find ourselves wondering how it was that we were unable to respond or counter what they were doing.

i think we all must admit that we have known and worked for these people... i've often been astounded - and i don't use that term lightly - at the dysfunction i've seen inside organizations of all types - public and private sector, large and small - dysfunction that, without any doubt, is strongly suggestive of psychopathy... a former colleague of mine from united airlines is currently undergoing a deliberate assault on his professionalism and, by extension, his character, by what i am sure is the very archetype of the social/organizational psychopath described above... i know i've certainly been exposed to my share...

a most interesting article...

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