Want to Be a Millionaire?

If there were a quadrillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000,000) in the economy and it were split evenly across 400 million citizens, each would hold two and a half million dollars. (I don’t hold even half that amount.) If, however, just one thousand of the people each held a billion dollars, the rest of us would now only have $249,750.06 – about one tenth of what we would have had. Since I hold more than that quarter million amount, as do many others, there isn’t much left for the poorest half of us.

Simplistic? Oh, yes, but clearly demonstrates how big figure incomes could suck the life out of the people. Much of the money goes back into circulation, of course, but much of it just gets passed around among the rich as investments and acquisitions. Billionaires are not shopping at the little store on the corner of your block or buying rounds for the workers at the local bar or putting books in your kids’ school.

Of course, this is only reëstablishing the distribution of wealth and power inherited down from tribal chieftains who enlisted a few lieutenants to coerce the women, children and weaker men – the human resource – to grow the foods, find the materials, make the goods and provide the services that the warrior-class masters demanded. We call that “primitive.” It sounds pretty contemporary to me.

Sure, there have been some popular uprisings – peasant revolts. Even among those churning convolutions, we find the big pieces rising to the top in the cesspool for revolution. Those primitive urges aren’t going to be extinguished by any humane rationalism. The question isn’t, “Nature or nurture?” The question is, “Visceral or cerebral?” Aristotle got it. Donald Trump gets it.