Money And Power

The elite are doing what the elite do:

Step 1: Steal all the money you invested.
Step 2: Stop paying any taxes at all.
Step 3: Steal Social Security and Medicare.
Step 4: Force you to work for third world wages.

It is not about the elections. It is about the money.

Via Brilliant at Breakfast, we see the predators are threatening to turn on their own.

Even Goldman Sachs, Wall Street’s most profitable firm, is retrenching. Senior executives at Goldman have concluded they need to cut 10 percent, or $1 billion, of noncompensation expenses over the next 12 months, according to a person close to the matter who was not authorized to speak on the record. The big pullback will cause Goldman employees, who have already been ordered to cut costs, to re-examine every aspect of their business.

The firm, this person said, had not set final targets for layoffs, but Goldman was “certain” to shrink headcount in the coming months. Decisions on bonuses are still months away, but they are sure to come down as well if business does not pick up.

Now that the elite has stolen almost all the poor and middle class's money, they are just doing what comes naturally--going where the money is. The people who think of themselves as the elite are no longer as elite as they used to be. Income equality has moved truly elite status beyond the reach even of the mildly wealthy. Megan McArdle's class is no more safe from the elite's predations than the middle class was.

If the elite are not stopped they will not stop. They have operated under both Democratic and Republican presidents without impediment. They have brought down the economy and not only have they not suffered for their theft, Americans handed them more money. All the while we have sat and let them bleed us dry, immobilized by the fear they created and which they assiduously foster at all times. We let them blackmail and frighten us into acquiescence.

What are we so afraid of? Power is a verb, not a noun. It is action, and if we do not act we do not have any power.

They want to hold abortion over our head? Go ahead and outlaw it. They'll finally have a fight on their hands, the last thing they want. They have been extremely successful slowly bleeding it to death while we sat and watched. Why would they change now?

They want to dangle gay rights before us like a carrot on a stick? Any Democrat who treats civil rights as a bargaining chip is just screwing with us anyway.

Are they going to threaten to start more wars? Done by both parties.

Cut taxes on the rich? Done by both parties.

Cut or threaten to cut the safety net? Done by both parties.

Anything that makes the elite money is done by both parties. Everything else is a sideshow to keep us busy.

In the end we have no idea if we are making the right decisions. There is too much outside our control. The only thing we can control is ourselves and what we do. The only thing we can do is follow our conscience and make the right, the moral, decision.

We seldom know the full effects of our actions and we seldom know if the decisions we make are important or unimportant. All we can do is treat every decision as if it is important and follow our conscience.

Our greatest power is the human heart.