In a recent post, I said that the unfair economic burden put on the working class causes poverty in the United States. In this post, I want to explain how I believe the ruling class puts the unfair burden on the working class. By ruling class, I mean the government and more importantly the rich, special interest groups that control the government.
Obviously, it involves some sort of trick or illusion to oppress the working class. Otherwise, the working class would not let the ruling class oppress them.
Because of their control over politicians and the media, the ruling class tricks the general public in many ways whenever it suits them. Nonetheless, I see the overarching trick as the illusion of economic freedom and fairness. Slaves do not revolt if they think that they have freedom and think that they live in a fair society.
A while back, I made a post entitled, The Myth of Meritocracy. In that post, I explained that the false idea that wealth has been distributed fairly hinders the fight against poverty.
But even worse, I think that the working class lives in a form of slavery–“neo-slavery” if you will. The general public thinks it has freedom but it truly does not.
The working class has an illusion of choice. They can choose to work for scraps or they can starve. They have a little choice between which jobs they take at which companies, but the working people still have to work long hours for low pay while the ruling class lazily leeches off the labor of the working.
Despite the illusion of freedom, the ruling class enslaves the working class by, most of all, appropriating natural resources. Throughout almost all of recorded civilization in every society, a minority of people have controlled the majority of natural resources and thereby controlled the general public. A minority of people control the majority of land and other resources such as lumber and oil. In parts of Latin America, they have even started privatizing water and literally making it illegal for citizens to collect rain water.
It may seem free and fair enough for one person to offer to pay a second person for a service. However, when combined with the appropriation of natural resources by the first person, that same process becomes clearly authoritarian. For example, it may seem free and fair for John to ask Greg to cut John’s hair for $5.00 and for Greg to accept. However, if John first claims to own the air and says that Greg has to pay him $5.00 just to breathe, then we can see the slavery in the situation.
In our modern society, the working class has to provide an extremely excessive amount of labor to the ruling class because the ruling class claims to “own” the natural resources which the working class need to use to live. The process uses supply and demand. The ruling class has taken control of the natural resources, and the working class desperately needs those resources. That desperation causes the working people to “sell” their labor for rock-bottom prices.
So I hope you can see how the ruling class has put an unfair economic burden on the working class. And I believe that that unfair economic burden causes poverty. If the working class weren’t slaves and they were able to keep the fruits of their labor, then they would not always be at risk of poverty, and the working people could fully support themselves, their families, and their communities.
I know many people may disagree to varying degrees with how I have portrayed the political status quo. Please post your comments and your own views in this thread at the World Hunger and Poverty Forums. You can join and participate in the forums completely for free, and we welcome all viewpoints.