Fanon: Les damnés de la terre

From Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth (1961)

http://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/fanon/conclusion.htm

[....]

Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions.

Comrades, have we not other work to do than to create a third Europe? The West saw itself as a spiritual adventure. It is in the name of the spirit, in the name of the spirit of Europe, that Europe has made her encroachments, that she has justified her crimes and legitimized the slavery in which she holds four-fifths of humanity.

Yes, the European spirit has strange roots. All European thought has unfolded in places which were increasingly more deserted and more encircled by precipices; and thus it was that the custom grew up in those places of very seldom meeting man.

A permanent dialogue with oneself and an increasingly obscene narcissism never ceased to prepare the way for a half delirious state, where intellectual work became suffering and the reality was not at all that of a living man, working and creating himself, but rather words, different combinations of words, and the tensions springing from the meanings contained in words. Yet some Europeans were found to urge the European workers to shatter this narcissism and to break with this un-reality.

But in general the workers of Europe have not replied to these calls; for the workers believe, too, that they are part of the prodigious adventure of the European spirit.

All the elements of a solution to the great problems of humanity have, at different times, existed in European thought. But Europeans have not carried out in practice the mission which fell to them, which consisted of bringing their whole weight to bear violently upon these elements, of modifying their arrangement and their nature, of changing them and, finally, of bringing the problem of mankind to an infinitely higher plane.

Today, we are present at the stasis of Europe. Comrades, let us flee from this motionless movement where gradually dialectic is changing into the logic of equilibrium. Let us reconsider the question of mankind. Let us reconsider the question of cerebral reality and of the cerebral mass of all humanity, whose connexions must be increased, whose channels must be diversified and whose messages must be re-humanized.

Come, brothers, we have far too much work to do for us to play the game of rear-guard. Europe has done what she set out to do and on the whole she has done it well; let us stop blaming her, but let us say to her firmly that she should not make such a song and dance about it. We have no more to fear; so let us stop envying her.

The Third World today faces Europe like a colossal mass whose aim should be to try to resolve the problems to which Europe has not been able to find the answers.

But let us be clear: what matters is to stop talking about output, and intensification, and the rhythm of work.

No, there is no question of a return to Nature. It is simply a very concrete question of not dragging men towards mutilation, of not imposing upon the brain rhythms which very quickly obliterate it and wreck it. The pretext of catching up must not be used to push man around, to tear him away from himself or from his privacy, to break and kill him.

No, we do not want to catch up with anyone. What we want to do is to go forward all the time, night and day, in the company of Man, in the company of all men. The caravan should not be stretched out, for in that case each line will hardly see those who precede it; and men who no longer recognize each other meet less and less together, and talk to each other less and less.

It is a question of the Third World starting a new history of Man, a history which will have regard to the sometimes prodigious theses which Europe has put forward, but which will also not forget Europe’s crimes, of which the most horrible was committed in the heart of man, and consisted of the pathological tearing apart of his functions and the crumbling away of his unity. And in the framework of the collectivity there were the differentiations, the stratification and the bloodthirsty tensions fed by classes; and finally, on the immense scale of humanity, there were racial hatreds, slavery, exploitation and above all the bloodless genocide which consisted in the setting aside of fifteen thousand millions of men.

So, comrades, let us not pay tribute to Europe by creating states, institutions and societies which draw their inspiration from her.

Humanity is waiting for something other from us than such an imitation, which would be almost an obscene caricature.

If we want to turn Africa into a new Europe, and America into a new Europe, then let us leave the destiny of our countries to Europeans. They will know how to do it better than the most gifted among us.

But if we want humanity to advance a step farther, if we want to bring it up to a different level than that which Europe has shown it, then we must invent and we must make discoveries.

If we wish to live up to our peoples’ expectations, we must seek the response elsewhere than in Europe.

Moreover, if we wish to reply to the expectations of the people of Europe, it is no good sending them back a reflection, even an ideal reflection, of their society and their thought with which from time to time they feel immeasurably sickened.

For Europe, for ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must turn over a new leaf, we must work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new man.

The Idea of Communism

From The Idea of Communism, edited by Costas Douzinas and Slavoj Žižek, (London and New York: Verso, 2010), pp. vii-x:

The long night of the left is drawing to a close. The defeat, denunciations and despair of the 1980s and 1990s, the triumphalist 'end of history', the unipolar world of American hegemony -- are all fast becoming old news. In Europe, in the year 2000, Jurgen Habermas and Ulrich Beck enthused about the European Union and its common currency, prophesying that it would become the model for the future of humanity. How different the reality is today! The Union is no longer a model but a dysfunctional organization of fanatical right-wing governments and supine social democrats imposing unprecedented austerity measures, unemployment and poverty on working people in order to return to 'fiscal discipline'.

All pretence of social solidarity and justice, always an exaggerated assertion of the EU, has been abandoned. The 2008 'bail-out' of banks to the tune of over one trillion dollars socialized the losses of neo-liberal casino capitalism, asking the multitude to pay for the speculation of hedge funds, derivative markets and an economic system based on consumption and debt. Socialism for the banks, capitalism for the poor became the modus vivendi of the 2000s. People around the world learnt, to paraphrase Brecht, that you go to prison if you fiddle your benefit payments, but receive huge bonuses if you bankrupt a bank.

At the beginning of the second decade of the new century, the post-Cold War complacency is over. The economic crisis has matured into a full-fledged political crisis which is de-legitimizing political systems and distancing people from capitalist ideology. New antagonisms and struggles are developing over the defence of the welfare state in the West, the programmatic exclusion of large groups of people from economic activity and political participation, and ecological fears. A new militancy evident at the beginning of the new decade in, amongst other places, Greece, France, India and Thailand is introducing wide sections of the population and, critically, young people to ideas of resistance, rebellion and emancipation. If 1989 was the inaugural year of the new world order, 2001 announced its decline, and the collapse of the banking system in 2008 marked the beginning of a return to full-blown history. If that was our 'new world order', it is the shortest the world has ever seen.

The return of history has led to a renewed interest in radical ideas and politics. The twenty-first century left can finally leave behind the introspection, contrition and penance that followed the fall of the Soviet Union. The left which aligned itself with 'actually existing socialism' has disappeared or turned into a historical curiosity. New forms of radical militancy and mobilization have marked the return to politics. In Latin America, the different new lefts of Bolivia, Venezeula and Brazil are developing unprecedented and imaginative national paths to socialism. In the United States, the election of Barack Obama was a symbolic moment hailed throughout the world as a sign of historical progress. In India, China and Africa, dissent, resistance and rebellion have replaced the somnolent and fearful 1990s.

In this context, the conference 'The Idea of Communism', organized by the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities in March 2009, had huge political importance. When we first planned it, in the summer of 2008, we expected only a limited audience and booked a room capable of holding 180. But when, in early 2009, we opened for registration, the interest was such that we had twice to move to larger rooms, eventually ending in the main auditorium at the Institute of Education accommodating 900 people, with an adjacent video-link room holding another 300. [....]

[....] The key question addressed then, is whether 'communism' is still the name to be used to designate radical emancipatory projects. The conference participants, although coming from different perspectives and projects, shared the thesis that one should remain faithful to the name 'communism'. It is a name that can not only express the Idea which guides radical activity, but can also help expose the catastrophes of the twentieth century, including those of the left.

By de-demonizing the signifier 'communism' -- by asserting in Alain Badiou's felicitous words that 'from Plato onwards, Communism is the only political Idea worthy of a philosopher' -- the conference opened the way for a reactivation of the strong link between radical philosophy and politics. [....]

Left theory has always been linked with political practice. Thinking in action is the left's key weapon. At this critical turning point, where all bets on the outcome of the crisis are off and the best and worst stand in close proximity, the idea of communism has the potential to revitalize theoretical thinking and reverse the de-politicizing tendency of late capitalism.

[....] Without any particular priority, these were the shared premises that brought most people together.

1. Recent politics has attempted to ban and foreclose conflict. The idea of communism confronts widespread de-politicization by inducing new political subjectivities and returning to a popular voluntarism.

2. 'Communism' is the idea of radical philosophy and politics. As the precondition of radical action, communism must be thought today by taking its distance from statism and economism and becoming informed by the political experiences of the twenty-first century.

3. Neo-liberal capitalist exploitation and domination takes the form of new enclosures of the commons (language and communication, intellectual property, genetic material, natural resources and forms of governance). Communism, by returning to the concept of the 'common', confronts capitalist privatizations with a view to building a new commonwealth.

4. Communism aims to bring about freedom and equality. Freedom cannot flourish without equality and equality does not exist without freedom.

As Slavoj Žižek suggested during the closing session, we have to start again and again and beginnings are always the hardest. But it may be that the beginning has already happened, and it is now a question of fidelity to that beginning. This then is the task ahead.

Costas Douzinas and Slavoj Žižek

WORKERS, WEAR RED TO SHOW SOLIDARITY

In a time of change

From Žižek's On Belief (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 32-33:

"Today, in a time of continuous rapid changes, from the 'digital revolution' to the retreat of old social forms, thought is more than ever exposed to the temptation of 'losing its nerve,' of precociously abandoning the old conceptual coordinates. The media constantly bombard us with the need to abandon the 'old paradigms': if we are to survive, we have to change our most fundamental notions of what constitutes personal identity, society, environment, etc. New Age wisdom claims that we are entering a new 'post-human' era; postmodern political thought tells us that we are entering post-industrial societies, in which the old categories of labor, collectivity, class, etc., are theoretical zombies, no longer applicable to the dynamics of modernization. The Third Way ideology and political practice is effectively THE model of this defeat, of this inability to recognize how the New is here to enable the Old to survive. Against this temptation, one should rather follow the unsurpassed model of Pascal and ask the difficult question: how are we to remain faithful to the Old in the new conditions? ONLY in this way can we generate something effectively New."

Florida University Student Harassed

FIU activist faces harassment

http://socialistworker.org/2011/02/16/fiu-activist-faces-harassment

Report: Victor Agosto Brizuela

Florida International University needs to issue an apology to a Palestine solidarity activist who faced intimidation for speaking up, writes Victor Agosto Brizuela.

February 16, 2011

WHEN CAN asking a question at a public forum at a university get you in trouble? When you're a Palestinian student, the speaker is an Israeli official, and the university is Florida International University (FIU).

"Mnar has the strength of 10 men," said an Egyptian-American demonstrator at a recent south Florida Egyptian solidarity rally. She was talking about Mnar Muhareb, a 22-year-old senior at FIU in Miami.

Mnar, a Palestinian-American, has been a relentless fighter for Palestine since she began attending pro-Palestine rallies at the age of nine. If she's not busy organizing events as president of Students for Justice in Palestine at FIU, she's leading chants at demonstrations.

Last November, FIU and the consulate general of Israel co-sponsored a campus event entitled "Mission to Haiti: Israel's Relief Efforts After the Earthquake." The event was open to the public, so Mnar decided to attend. She wanted to hear what Israeli Ambassador Danny Biran had to say regarding Israel's humanitarian efforts in Haiti.

No one could be faulted for believing that Muhareb, who stands exactly five feet tall, literally has the "strength of 10 men" after witnessing the conduct of Ambassador Biran and Mnar's treatment by FIU campus security after she arrived at the lecture.

As soon as Mnar and her sister (who was wearing a hijab) sat down, security officers immediately flanked them on both sides. Two more officers positioned themselves directly behind the sisters. "Every time we bent down, the officers watched any movement...which was amusing for a while because it was unusual, and we were not doing anything," Mnar recalls.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

AFTER THE lecture ended and the question-and-answer session began, Mnar patiently waited in line for her turn. Once she reached the front of the line, she introduced herself as the "president of Students for Justice in Palestine." Almost immediately, "it was like the room took a breath," she says.

Suddenly, all of the people behind her in line were gone and replaced by security officers. A then-nervous Mnar proceeded to commend Israel's humanitarian efforts in Haiti before moving on to Israeli domestic policy. "I also like the sayings you used--'Do unto others as you would want done unto you' and 'Love thy neighbor'--and with that in mind, I would like to ask you when you will put forth the effort you have in Haiti into Palestine?" she asked.

In response, Biran began hurling abusive language at her. Mnar, meanwhile, was terrified at the sound of a Taser repeatedly buzzing behind her. "Oh my God, I'm going to get Tased, and no one is going to care," she recounted thinking to herself.

Muhareb was once shot at by IDF soldiers as she helped a young boy get through a hole in the separation wall between the West Bank and Israel. The boy needed vital medical attention after being badly beaten by IDF soldiers the day before. However, she says, this experience at FIU made her "the most afraid" she has ever been in her life, and she is still visibly shaken whenever she talks about the incident.

"We help the Palestinians as much as we can, but they don't want aid, they want weapons," is the last thing she heard Biran say.

"So Operation Cast Lead was aid?" replied Mnar.

Apparently, that was the last straw. Campus security "escorted" Mnar out of the event. Mnar's sister was also kicked out. She told Mnar that a member of FIU Shalom (the pro-Israel organization on campus) called her a "terrorist" and a "Hamas supporter." "I don't even like Hamas," she told Mnar.

Still shocked by what had just happened, Mnar began handing out fliers to people standing outside of the auditorium. Soon after, the same campus security that removed her from the event watched as an Israeli government supporter ripped up SJP fliers and threw the pieces at Mnar's face. Clearly, FIU security is more concerned with the safety of the Israeli government's image than it is with the safety of its own students.

Several students, confused about what they had just seen, asked Mnar about Operation Cast Lead and took fliers. "I'm glad at least some curiosity sparked for the audience," she says.

Last week, after several attempts to seek redress for what happened, Mnar was told by the chief of campus security that she could not file a complaint because she had "no witnesses," in spite of the fact that this was a public event featuring a high-profile Israeli public official and that it was attended by members of FIU's administration and faculty. She was also told that FIU campus security does not carry Tasers--but that if they did, they would not be used on students.

FIU President Mark Rosenberg, FIU campus security and Ambassador Biran should publicly apologize to Mnar for violating her right to free speech, for violating her right to attend the event and for creating a hostile learning environment. She should also be allowed to press charges, and FIU should launch a full investigation into this incident. Students at FIU should feel safe to ask any questions they want to ask at FIU-sponsored political events.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

What you can do

Email FIU president Mark Rosenberg [1] to tell him that FIU should not allow politically motivated intimidation of its students on campus, that FIU owes Mnar an apology for the mistreatment she endured at the hands of FIU security, and that FIU should launch an investigation into this incident.

The "Becoming-Rent-of-Profit"

As usual, Žižek was way ahead of everyone else. If you remember, he predicted some time ago that Obama would behave like a conservative president. So why can't liberals in the USA take the plunge and become true leftists?

"Home Sweet Wall Street"

Posted on Feb 16, 2011

By Robert Scheer

A most dastardly deed occurred last Friday when the Obama administration issued a 29-page policy statement totally abandoning the federal government’s time-honored role in helping Americans achieve the goal of homeownership. Instead of punishing the banks that sabotaged the American ideal of a nation of stakeholders by “securitizing” our homesteads into poker chips to be gambled away in the Wall Street casino, Barack Obama now proposes to turn over the entire mortgage industry to those same banks.

The proposal, originated by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, involves nothing less than a total “winding down” of the 80-year-old federal housing program, setting instead a new goal of a two-tiered America in which the masses are content to be mere renters of the American Dream. Such a deal for a country where, as the report concedes, “Half of all renters spend more than a third of their income on housing, and a quarter spend more than half.”

[....]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/home_sweet_wall_street_20110216/

USA Income/Wealth Gap

Nine Pictures of the Extreme Income/Wealth Gap
Dave Johnson | Monday 14 February 2011
Published on Truthout (http://www.truth-out.org)

Many people don’t understand our country’s problem of concentration of income and wealth because they don’t see it. People just don't understand how much wealth there is at the top now. The wealth at the top is so extreme that it is beyond most people’s ability to comprehend.

If people understood just how concentrated wealth has become in our country and the effect is has on our politics [....] and our people, they would demand our politicians do something about it.

How Much Is A Billion?

Some Wall Street types (and others) make over a billion dollars a year – each year. How much is a billion dollars? How can you visualize an amount of money so high? Here is one way to think about it: The median income in the US is around $50,000, meaning half of us make less and half of us make more. If you make $50,000 a year, and don’t spend a single penny of it, it will take you 20,000 years to save a billion dollars. . . . (Please come back and read the rest of this after you have recovered.)

What Do People Do With SO Much?

What do people do with all that money? Good question. After you own a stable of politicians who will cut your taxes, there are still a few more things you can buy. Let’s see what $1 billion will buy.

Cars

This is a Maybach. Most people don’t even know there is something called a Maybach. The one in the picture, the Landaulet model, costs $1 million. (Rush Limbaugh, who has 5 homes in Palm Beach, drives a cheaper Maybach 57 S -- but makes up for it by owning 6 of them.)

Your $1 billion will only buy you a thousand Maybach Landaulets.

[....]

Luxury Hotels

This is the Mardan Palace Hotel in Turkey, Burj Al Arab in Dubai.

Here is a photo gallery of some other expensive hotels, where people pay $20-30,000 per night. Yes, there are people who pay that much. Remember to send me a postcard!

A billion dollars will buy you a $20,000 room every night for 137 years.

Yachts

Le Grand Bleu - $90 million.

Some people spend as much as $200 million or more on yachts.

You can buy ten $100 million yachts with a billion dollars.

Private Jets

Of course, there are private jets. There are approx. 15,000 private jets registered in the US according to NBAA. (Note: See the IPS High-Flyers study.)

This is a Gulfstream G550. You can pick one up for around $40 million, depending. Maybe $60 million top-of-the-line.

Your billion will buy you 25 of these.

Private Islands

If the rabble are getting you down you can always escape to a private island.

This one is going for only $24.5 million – castle included. You can only buy 40 of these with your billion.

Mansions

This modest home (it actually is, for the neighborhood it is in) is offered right now at only about $8 million. I ride my bike past it on my regular exercise route, while I think about how the top tax rate used to be high enough to have good courts, schools & roads [....] and we didn't even have deficits.

I ride there but that neighborhood is not like my neighborhood at all. While there is one family in that house, I live closer to the nearby soup kitchen that serves hundreds of families. One family in a huge estate and hundreds at a soup kitchen roughly matches the ratio of wealth concentration described below.

Here are a few nearby homes up for sale.

You can buy 125 houses like this one with your billion.

Luxury Items

Here is an article about ten watches that are more expensive than a Ferrari.

The one in this picture costs more than $5 million. You can buy 200 of these with your billion.

Medieval Castles

Just for fun, this is Derneburg Castle. Do you remember the big oil-price runup a few years ago that too the price of a gallon at the pump up towards $5? One speculator who helped make that happen got a huge bonus paid with government bailout money. He owns this castle. He has filled it with rare art. You can’t go in and see any of the rare art.

Click here to see the layout in an aerial view. That’s as close as you're going to get, peasant.

Let's Go Shopping

So you say to yourself, "I want me some of that. I’d like to place the following order, please."

• One Maybach Landaulet for $1 million to drive around in. (Actually to be driven around in.)
• One $100 million yacht for when I want to get seasick.
• One Gulfstream G550 private jet for $40 million.
• One private island for $24.5 million (castle included) for when I want to escape the masses.
• One $8 million estate for when I have to go ashore and mingle with the masses (but not too close.)
• One $5 million watch so I can have one.
• Total: $178.5 million.

My change after paying with a billion-dollar bill is a meager $821.5 million left over. I might be hard up for cash after my spending spree, but I can still stay in a $20,000 room every night for 112 and 1/2 years.

So, as you see, $1 billion is more than enough to really live it up. People today are amassing multiples of billions, paying very little in taxes and using it in ways that harm the rest of us.

How Extreme Is The Concentration?

Now you have a way to visualize just how much money is concentrated at the very top. And the concentration is increasing. The top 1% took in 23.5% of all of the country’s income in 2007. In 1979 they only took in 8.9%.

It is concentrating at the expense of the rest of us. Between 1979 and 2008, the top 5% of American families saw their real incomes increase 73%, according to Census data. Over the same period, the lowest-income fifth (20% of us) saw a decrease in real income of 4.1%. The rest were just stagnant or saw very little increase. This is why people are borrowing more and more, falling further and further behind. (From the Working Group on Extreme Inequality)

Income VS Wealth

There are a few people who make hundreds of millions of income in a single year. Some people make more than $1 billion in a year But that is in a single year. If you make vast sums every year, after a while it starts to add up. (And then there is the story of inherited wealth, passed down and growing for generation after generation...)

Top 1% owns more than 90% of us combined. "In 2007, the latest year for which figures are available from the Federal Reserve Board, the richest 1% of U.S. households owned 33.8% of the nation’s private wealth. That’s more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent." (Also from the Working Group on Extreme Inequality)

400 people have as much wealth as half of our population. The combined net worth of the Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans in 2007: $1.5 trillion. The combined net worth of the poorest 50% of American households: $1.6 trillion.

[....]

Worse Than Egypt

In fact our country's concentration of wealth is worse than Egypt. Richard Eskow writes,

Imagine: A government run by and for the rich and powerful. Leaders who lecture others about "sacrifice" and deficits while cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy. A system so corrupt that rich executives can break the law without fear of being punished. Increasing poverty and hardship even as the stock market rises. And now, a nation caught between a broken political system and a populist movement that could be hijacked by religious extremists at any moment.

Here's the reality: Income inequality is actually greater in the United States than it is in Egypt. Politicians here have close financial ties to big corporations, both personally and through their campaigns. Corporate lawbreakers often do go unpunished. Poverty and unemployment statistics for US minorities are surprisingly similar to Egypt's.

The Harmful Effect on The Rest Of Us

This concentration is having a harmful effect on the rest of us, and even on the wealthy. When income becomes so concentrated people who would otherwise think they are well off look up the ladder, see vastly more wealth accumulating, and think they are not doing all that well after all. This leads to dissatisfaction and risk-taking, in an effort to get even more. And this risk-taking is what leads to financial collapse.

Aside from the resultant risk of financial collapse, the effect of so much in the hands of so few is also bad psychologically. People need to feel they earned that they have earned what they have, and develop theories about why they have so much when others do not. Bizzare and cruel explanations like Ayn Rand's psychopathic theories about "producers" and "parasites" take hold. Regular people become little more than commodities, blamed for their misery ("personal responsibility") as they become ever poorer.

Teddy Roosevelt, speaking to the educators about "False Standards Resulting From Swollen Fortunes," warned that while teachers believe their ideals to be worth sacrifice and so do non-renumerative work for the good of others, seeing great wealth makes people think that obtaining wealth is itself a lofty ideal,

The chief harm done by men of swollen fortune to the community is not the harm that the demagogue is apt to depict as springing from their actions, but the effect that their success sets up a false standard, and serves as a bad example to the rest of us. If we do not ourselves attach an exaggerated importance to the rich man who is distinguished only by his riches, this rich man would have a most insignificant influence over us.

Societies that are more equal do better. In the book The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate Pickett make the case that great inequality harms us physically as well as spiritually, and the these harmful effects show up across society. The book examines social relations, mental health, drug use, physical health, life expectancy, violence, social mobility and other effects and show how inequality worsens each.

Influence Buying

There is a problem of the effect on our democracy from the influence that extreme, concentrated wealth buys. In the book Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson make the case that the anti-democracy changes we have seen in America since the late 1970s that led to intense concentration of wealth and income are the intentional result of an organized campaign by the wealthy and businesses to use their wealth to, well, buy even more wealth.

The secretive Koch Brothers are said to have a net worth of $21.5 billion each and are particularly influential. They financed the Tea Party movement and along with big corporations and other billionaires they financed the massive assault of TV ads in the midterm elections that helped change the makeup of the Congress. And now Congress is paying them back,

Nine of the 12 new Republicans on the panel signed a pledge distributed by a Koch-founded advocacy group — Americans for Prosperity — to oppose the Obama administration's proposal to regulate greenhouse gases. Of the six GOP freshman lawmakers on the panel, five benefited from the group's separate advertising and grassroots activity during the 2010 campaign.

... Republicans on the committee have launched an agenda of the sort long backed by the Koch brothers. A top early goal: restricting the reach of the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the Kochs' core energy businesses.

We Must Address This

We owe it to ourselves to come to grips with this problem. [....] We owe it to future generations to use a temporary wealth tax to pay off the debt.

Resources

The Working Group on Extreme Inequality explains why inequality matters in many more ways, and is well worth clicking through to study. They also have a page of resources for study with links to other organizations. Also, spend some time at Too Much, A commentary on excess and inequality because it is "Dedicated to the notion that our world would be considerably more caring, prosperous, and democratic if we narrowed the vast gap that divides our wealthy from everyone else." The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a Poverty and Income area of research with good resources. The Center for Economic and Policy Research has a research section on Inequality and Poverty.

Source URL: http://www.truth-out.org/nine-pictures-of-the-extreme-incomewealth-gap67743