It All Comes Down To Surrender To The Ultra-Rich At All Levels Of Government

[hatrack]

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When the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, helped destroy the lives of the world’s poorest by tearing down USAID, he did so on behalf of his class. The same goes for Trump’s assaults on democracy, and his war on the living world. It is the ultra-rich who benefit most from destruction, in making money and in spending it. The WIR shows that the richest 1% of the world’s population account for 41% of greenhouse gas emissions arising from private capital ownership: almost twice that of the bottom 90%. And through their consumption, another study shows, the 1% produce as many greenhouse gases as the poorest two-thirds.

Inequality damages every aspect of our lives. Decades of research by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson shows that higher inequality, regardless of absolute levels of wealth, is associated with higher crime, worse public health, higher addiction, lower educational attainment, worse status anxiety (leading to higher consumption of positional goods), worse pollution and destruction, and a host of other ills. Extreme inequality creates an “Epstein class” of global predators, exploiting the rest financially – and in other ways. It creates an ethos that no longer recognises our common humanity, that sees other people, as Musk puts it, as “non-player characters”, and believes that, “the fundamental weakness of western civilisation is empathy”.

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The second excuse is that the uber-rich will flee the country. There are three possible responses to this claim. The first is that there’s no evidence to support it. The second is, if true, good riddance: they do us more harm than good. The third is to say: then the obvious solution is a global tax-avoidance measure. So guess what? While 125 nations supported this approach, Keir Starmer’s government was one of nine that opposed it. Our government doesn’t tax the ultra-rich enough not because it can’t, but because it doesn’t want to.

It’s not just politicians. Almost all the media belongs to Group 1. As the wealth and power of the proprietor class becomes ever greater and harder to justify, the views expressed in their outlets become ever crazier. Immigrants, asylum seekers, Muslims, women, transgender people, disabled people, students, protesters: anyone and everyone must be blamed for our dysfunctions, except those causing them. Ever more extreme “culture wars” (a euphemism for divide-and-rule) must be waged. It’s also why imaginary threats (Venezuela, “cultural Marxists”, “domestic terrorists”) must constantly be drummed up. You cannot have both a free market in media ownership and a free market in information and ideas. The oligarchs who dominate the sector stifle inconvenient thoughts and promote the policies that protect their fortunes.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/16/super-rich-inequality-politicians-extreme-wealth

[dutch777]

1. While Repugs have always been this way, seems Dems defer to $$$ all too often as well.

We do it for slightly different reasons perhaps, knowing that sometimes little people can get hurt when the rich or corporations get dinged by new regulations or increased taxes, but we still have room for improvement for making the economic landscape more equitable.