Money, Everything is about Money Ch. 02

What if we did this or what if we did that? What would happen then?

I can just see and hear these old, Caucasian, billionaire men talking over lunch, over dinner, over drinks, in their homes, on vacation, on the golf course, on a plane, in their cars, and at the office about us, the middle class. What makes us, ordinary people, blue collar and white collar low paying employees, comparatively speaking to their huge salaries, so interesting? With us their never ending topic of conversation, why are they so focused on us when they are living their lives so large?

When they can fly here, sail there, and go everywhere while doing this, that, and everything, what do we have that they want? We are the American middle class, the most powerful, most influential, and the richest group of people, comparatively speaking again, in the world. The reason why we are such a topic of conversation is because there are so very many of us. They can't do without us. They can't do what they do and can't accumulate all that the wealth they have without them legally stealing us blind.

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"What if we tricked them and tempted them by soliciting them to apply for credit cards. What if we gave credit cards to anyone and everyone, especially the very young, those poor students in college, who desperately wanted one? What if we allowed them to charge whatever they wanted and thought they needed after advertising our products to make them all believe that they wanted this and needed that? What would happen then?"

Supported and protected by congress, those public servants we put in office to enact legislation that benefits them and their rich friends, and signed into banking law by the President of the United States, that's what the banks did. Without even dare printing in fine print what credit cards will really cost us, until recently when President Obama passed the fair banking laws, they gave us all credit cards. Plowing us all under with huge amounts of unsecured debt, they allowed all of us to charge whatever we wanted. Life is good.

Yet, if putting us all into debt wasn't enough, after we bailed out the banks and the insurance companies, and when we all could least afford it, the ungrateful banks tripled our interest rates. Even those customers who paid their credit card bills on time and who didn't over extend themselves, found themselves paying ridiculous amounts of interest and bank fees. Tell me, which lobbyist is watching out for our rights? Who do we have in our corner or in our pocket to protect us all from them?

* * * * *

"What if we gave mortgages to anyone who wanted one? No matter if they lived in Massachusetts or California, no matter if they could afford to pay their monthly mortgage or not, what if everyone in America, no matter what their credit worthiness and solvency was, could buy a house? What would happen then?"

Too late to correct what happened, we all know what happened then after the banks failed and the economy was flushed down the toilet for the sake of a few men stealing billions of dollars from the middle class in credit default swap scams. With mortgage ads on TV and radio, every bank, every mortgage broker, and every flimflam man preyed on good, hardworking, innocent people who had a dream of taking a slice of American pie and owning their own home. How dare they? Now that we know who they all are, now that we know who was responsible and why they did all that they did, why aren't they in jail?

With our jails filled with young, angry, black men instead of old, Caucasian, greedy men, the real thieving bastards in our society, it seems that the only people who go to jail for stealing pennies are poor black people. Yet, when an old, Caucasian man stills millions and even billions of dollars, a modern day Jesse James, he's revered, respected, and rewarded. They write books about what he did and make movies about his life. What's wrong with this picture? What's wrong with America? Why must I sit here and write this shit when everyone should be espousing it while protesting it?

Truth be told, Wall Street's derivative brokers bet that we couldn't afford our mortgages and that the banks would have to foreclose on them, ergo the credit default swap scam. Truth be told, those with the authority to give us credit didn't want all of us to pay our mortgages back. They didn't want us to own homes, they just wanted us to default. They just wanted our money.

Everything was fine and everyone was happy, that is, until the fine print took hold when we lost our jobs in a bad economy. Then, with the fine print enacted, the adjustable interest rate skyrocketed, and the banks foreclosed on our houses without having to renegotiate their loan. Now, suddenly, life isn't so good. Now, suddenly, life is very bad, the worst it's ever been.

Our parents were so much better off back then than we are now. At least they had a good paying job with benefits. At least they had unions protecting them. At least they had retirement benefits. At least they still believed in good over evil and the good, old United States of America. At least they lived a good life.

"God bless America. No, it's time for God to bless me. God? Please don't bless America with another thing. They've been blessed enough. It's time you blessed me God. It's time you blessed the middle class."

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"With a few well place ads by anonymous foundations, what if we dissipated and eradicated the unions and destroyed the manufacturing base by sending all manufacturing jobs out of the country and overseas to Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, India, South America, and China? What if by taking advantage of third world, cheap labor rates, practically nothing was made in the United States. What if jobs that paid no benefits and a fraction of the wages we once paid for the same work, imagine how much more money we'd have for ourselves. With more money for us and less money for all of them, what would happen then?"

Can you just picture these assholes sitting around a big table in a plush office while playing their what if games with your future, your children's future, and your grandchildren's future? For the sake of them making billions of dollars now, while the rest of us earn less than what our parents earned and less than what we need to pay our rent, mortgage, bills, healthcare, gas, and food, according to them, that's what they did. Greed is good according to the 'haves', while according to the 'have nots' poverty is not good.

With the mega-rich living the life of luxury while the rest of us barely survive, is this what America has become, the land of the superrich and the home of homelessness, along with the starvation of the poor. Those mega-millionaires and wealthy celebrities, perhaps to sooth their guilt, make an orchestrated appearance to pass out Thanksgiving dinners for the press coverage. What happens the rest of the year when there are no other good deeds to report? Forced to live in neighborhoods of high poverty and high crime, we're just another statistic.

No matter if they're Democrats, Republicans, Independents, of Libertarians, with fair trade laws enacted by congress and signed into law by then president of the United States, Ronald Reagan, our jobs disappearing overseas is exactly what happened. All of our major and most beloved companies from Nike to Reebok, to Ralph Lauren, Dell, Apple, GM, Ford, and everyone who used to have a factory in America, opened one in Mexico, Hong Kong, and Bangladesh. Fair for who?

How dare they do that to us, the American worker? How dare they do that to me and to you? How dare they pull the wool over our eyes by lying to us in telling us that the fair trade laws were good for us when they weren't? Fair trade laws weren't good for me or for you. The fair trade laws were nothing more than a corporate tax shelter game with these mega-corporations played when opening their factories for business overseas.

After giving them our hard work in exchange for low paying, unrewarding jobs, and our financial support in buying their products that made these billion dollar corporations who they are today, we deserve better and fairer treatment than that. With them expecting out loyalty, where is there loyalty in laying off people who had worked for them for 20 and 30 years? With not even a thank you, an apology, or a reason why, they were gone while we were left having to buy inferior goods with labels that read, made in Japan, made in Taiwan, made in Mexico, India, Brazil, Sri Lanka, and now China. It's as if all of America has turned into a giant Flint Michigan. We may as all live in an abandoned building in Detroit for what anyone in our government would care.

What used to be all made in America was made in Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, and India. Now everything imported in this country has a label made in China. Where are our labels that read made in the USA? Even the clothes that clothed our athletes from the last Olympics were made in China. Are you kidding me? How embarrassing is that? Whose bright idea was that? A way for Ralph Lauren to make more money than he can possibly spend in ten lifetimes, just the audacity for them to think that they'd get away with making the clothes of our Olympians in China is testimony to how little they think about our intelligence.

What happened to look for the union label when we were buying clothes that were made in America? What happened to Sam Walton proudly proclaiming on TV that everything he sold in his Wal-Mart stores is made in America? I'll tell you what happened. He died and left his children the business. Now, tell me this, why aren't the Walton's standing in front of a TV camera telling everyone that everything they sell is made in China?

That tells me that they aren't proud of their products. That tells me that they aren't proud of what they sell. That tells me that they don't give a shit what they've done to this country in prostituting themselves to take advantage of sweatshops and not existent child labor laws for them to take advantage of cheap labor overseas. How dare they peddle their inferior products to us?

I bet when the Walton's go to the store to buy things, they don't shop at Wal-Mart. I bet when the Walton's buy all that they want and all that they need, they don't buy things made in China. I bet they buy what they want and need from only the best stores, stores that have quality goods made by experienced crafts people instead of by children working long hours in Hong Kong and Bangladesh.

How dare our country allow our corporations to get away with abandoning the American worker in favor of making cheap, inferior products overseas? If this is such a global economy, then we need to take lessons from Russia, China, Korea, Arabia, and Japan who closes their doors to foreigners taking over their country in the way that foreigners have destroyed this country. They don't allow other countries to import as many goods and services as we allow other countries to import goods and services into our country. How is that fair trade?

While selling these cheap goods via Wal-Mart and Amazon, with tax laws in their favor and tax shelters that hide their mega profits, how dare these companies pay little or no taxes on all that they earn overseas? How is that fair to any of us who have to pay double the tax rate than someone who earns more than one hundred times the amount that we earn? How dare our government allow them to shelter their income in the Cayman Islands and Bimini and dozens of other countries who favor foreign investments while our government disfavors and disenfranchises the American worker? How dare they take the money out of the country that we need and should have to support our families?

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"What if we took over companies and bought up all of the competition to have only one major bank, one massive insurance company, one store to buy food, clothing and whatever else anyone needed, and one hugely profitable oil company? What would happen then?"

...And forty years later, almost there now, that's exactly what they did. With one, big bank eating up all of the smaller banks and allowed to make big mergers with one another while skirting the monopoly laws put in place in 1938, everything was good for big business but bad for the middle class. With one, big bank allowed to charge whatever fees they want, along with a go fuck yourself attitude, we don't want your business and we don't need your business, we have Bank of America representing 'In God We Trust' for the entire United States.

After all the lies, after congress and supreme court justices were paid in full, and the smoke and mirrors cleared from mega mergers, JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Citibank were the big winners. Without all the fanfare of one big bank buying another big bank, after the dust settled, Metlife, Prudential, Sallie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG were reborn to pay more mega-million dollar bonuses to their employees who nearly destroyed our economy. In the United States, Wal-Mart and Exxon-Mobil stand alone as giants in their industries. Except for Chevron, Conoco Phillips, Kroger and Target, they have no real competition enough for any of them to not only lower their prices but also to hire workers to work at a decent wage.

I ask you this, where's the fair trade when these companies stand alone and have little or no competition? What happened to monopoly laws put in place in 1938 to protect us, the middle class American from big business? What happened to the fair trade market that not only allows but also encourages Exxon charges whatever they so desire for a gallon of gas and banks charge as much in fees as the IRS charges us in taxes? They must think we're all stupid and we are all stupid for continuing to buy their gas instead of boycotting their gas and we are stupid for not boycotting them. What would Exxon do with their gas if Americans stopped buying their gas? Sell if overseas? Sure some of it. Instead, no doubt, following the rules of supply and demand that they so freely tout, Exxon would be forced to lower their prices.

When they say that the reason why the price of a gallon of gas is higher because less people are buying gas, I can understand that. That actually makes sense to me. Yet, then when they take the flipside of the argument and say that the reason why the price of a gallon of gas is higher is because more people are buying gas, huh? Scratching my head, I don't get it.

"What? Seriously? Are you kidding me? Which is it? Either it's one or the other. Pick one and stick with that but it can't be both. We're not that stupid, are we? We are."

* * * * *

"What if instead of creating more jobs to handle the new global business and the multi-national economies we'd have by opening our factories overseas, we laid off millions of American workers instead? What if instead of hiring people who'd expect to be paid fair, decent, and much higher wages, we gave everyone who help make us who we are today, the fuck you finger, and we created computers to do the jobs of people? What if instead of paying a person to answer the phone, we had a computer answer the phone? What if instead of paying someone to pump gas, we had computerized gas pumps? What if, instead of hiring more cashiers at the supermarket, we hired less cashiers and had automated checkout? A win/win for us, while customers checkout their own groceries, they use their credit cards to charge food. What if instead of hiring more tellers, even though banks are making record profits and paying their top executives tens of millions of dollars, we give our customers the finger again and install even more ATM machines?"

...And that's exactly what big business did to put you and me and millions of other people like us out of work. Are you angry yet? No? Why not? If you are angry, what do you plan to do about it? I hope that arsenal of guns that you have hidden in your house is not the solution to your economic problems. Instead maybe you should run for political office. Only, with politics a contagious disease, if you won the election, for you to accomplish anything at all, you'd have to be just as dirty as everyone else is in Washington.

"God bless me, God, and not America."

* * * * *

"What if we outsourced all the American labor to third world countries and the only jobs left in the United States were low paying, part-time service jobs that didn't offer any benefits or overtime? What would happen then?"

"Welcome to McDonalds. How many I take your order? Welcome to Burger King. How many I take your order? Welcome to Arby's, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Starbucks, and Dunkin Donuts, how the fuck may we take your fucking orders, you assholes? Because in the way that we don't want to be working here earning minimum wage, we don't want to be serving any of you who have real jobs and who are stealing our money and our futures?

"I hope you like your food and beverages with all boogers I put in them. Eat up. Enjoy."

Fuck us all and they did. Not yet done fucking me, with the approval of our bought and paid for 'public servants', big businesses in the name of profits and shareholder returns are still fucking all of us up the ass by not hiring anyone! Why should they hire anyone when those employees that they have are forced to do the work of two workers? Why should they hire anyone when the employees that they have, scared to death of losing their lousy jobs, work harder and faster? Why should they hire anyone when they are making do with the people they have?

Are you angry yet? If not, you should be. If not, why not? I'm angry and I'm just a dumb, ditsy, blonde writer. I'm mad as Hell and I won't take it anymore, and you shouldn't take it anymore either.

To be continued...