Trendevents -- America: The Bastion of Inequality and Plutocracy

Clyde Wilson

1995

Published in:

Social Trends Newsletters, Nov. 1995, No. 141

Of all the industrialized Western nations, not one has as great a gulf between the rich and the poor as the United States. Figures show that 40 percent of the nation's wealth is concentrated in only one percent of American households.

The United States is not only the most unequal nation in the West when it comes to income and wealth, it is growing more unequal faster than the other industrial countries, according to Edward Wolff, an economic professor at New York University.

One-hundred percent of the increased wealth during the 1980s went to the top 20 percent of American families.

The present economic system is designed and structured for plutocracy where the rich get richer and the rest of the American people are merely pawns in the process.

Voices in the Wilderness

About 40 million Americans live at or below the poverty level, including 12 million children where hunger is rampant. Poverty in the midst of plenty is the worst crime against humanity (human rights), and the government of the United States must be held accountable as there is no excuse or reason for this degradation of its own citizens.

Economic equality is the master key to non-violent independence...A non-violent system of government is clearly an impossibility so long as the wide gulf between the rich and hungry millions persist. (From Against the Stream, Critical Essays on Economics, by Gunnar Mydal, 1972-73.)

Today, both the Soviet Union and the United States predict and anticipate the economic decline of the other. Neither will be disappointed. (Jane Jacobs, Cities and Wealth of Nations, 1984.)

Militarism is the most energy-intensive, entropic activity of humans since it converts stored energy and materials directly into waste and destruction without any useful intervening fulfillment of basic human needs. (From The Politics of the Solar Age: Alternatives to Economics by Hazel Henderson, 1988.)

For some unexplainable reason, countries seem to find a way to mobilize their financial and natural resources for war but can't find the way to mobilize their resources for meaningful pursuits and peace, or even make the attempt to put their own house in order. At this juncture in history, can any of the countries in the world afford the luxury of squandering its remaining resources on internal conflicts, limited or unlimited warfare?

Peacekeepers and peacemakers: The biggest merchants of death and world disorder

While chastising other countries and claiming to be in the forefront as a peacekeeper and peacemaker, the U.S. share of arms to Third World countries grew dramatically last year as new sales accounted for nearly $3 out of every $4 spent, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service.

U.S. sales made up 72.6 percent of all new sales to Third World countries, up sharply from the 55.8 percent U.S. share in 1992.

Even though the Third World arms market has been shrinking since the end of the Cold War, Third World countries contracted to buy $20.4 billion worth of weapons last year. Among the big buyers were Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, followed by China, South Korea, Iran,Thailand and Malaysia along with Burma, Egypt and Oman. Most revealing, China, both an arms dealer and purchaser, was the third largest weapons customer, signing agreements amounting to $1.3 billion.

The biggest arms and weapon suppliers in the world are the five permanent members of the U.N Security Council, accounting for 86 percent of all arms sales.

Russia, the United States, France, China and the United Kindom supply and sell 86 percent of the total weapons and arms, other nations 14 percent.

How ironic that the great peacemakers, who make the decisions and have the veto power in the United Nations, are the largest death merchants in the world. It gives a person an idea as to who is calling the shots in the world arena, and why certain foreign policies are followed. A case in point: While South Korea becomes a lucrative arms market, North Korea becomes the whipping boy in the process of drumming up new arms sales to South Korea. The Rothchilds, the Zaharoffs, the Krupps, the Duponts, Vickers, Remingtons, the Morgans and all the rest were among the first to fine tune the war business into the most lucrative racket that ever came down the pike. As they say, business is business, and business knows no enemies when it comes to making a profit.

Samuel Cummings of Interarms said, ``In the final analysis, the morality of armaments boils down to who makes the sale.''