One of the biggest lies perpetuated by the oligarchy is that everyone benefits when the wealthy get even wealthier, even obscenely so. This Matt Wuerker cartoon rightly pricks that bubble.
Mano Singham
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One of the biggest lies perpetuated by the oligarchy is that everyone benefits when the wealthy get even wealthier, even obscenely so. This Matt Wuerker cartoon rightly pricks that bubble.
The problem isn’t the tide, it’s the waves that get progressively stronger. The wealthy own bigger and bigger boats that can weather the storm, but those in the smaller boats eventually can’t and drown.
Matt Weurker actually understates the problem. Because of the twin financial crashes in 2000 and 2008, most of those little boats would be broken down wrecks, and many of the little people would be swimming boatless, and being harassed by sharks.
I’m going to go ahead and say you’re both understating it. In fact, the little boats are what props up the big boat. The more weight on top, the more the little boats are pushed down and the people start drowning. It has nothing to do with the tide, at all.
The problem is really that “trickle down” isn’t a rising tide. Tides rise from the bottom up, not top down.
You know what a true rising tide would be? A strong welfare state. Universal health care. Universal basic income. You lift the floor, not the ceiling.
Which the greedy fuckers will never do.
That comic doesn’t work really. The circumstances for the people in the small boats hasn’t changed at all, whereas things have been getting worse for them.
The comic may not be entirely accurate but it still shows what most people are ready to see about this issue in this small a format. Show people drowning and the 1% boat rising up above the water on a tide of corpses and no one will listen.
We need something like The Lorax but showing the way sucking all the money out of an economy causes the whole thing to get fragile and collapse. Capitalism requires regulation or it commits suicide. Maybe it could be sold to the right as “financial discipline” or something. I have my doubts that anything can get through to them though. Anyone willing to bemoan the deficit while debating whether or not to pay bills they’ve already incurred is either too ignorant or too dishonest to join the conversation at that level.
This is a version of trickle down economics, which has been refuted since decades. I’m surprised that this is still a topic.