Hi 4321,
I've watched it. Made by the Kochs, perhaps? I thought it was funny all the way through. To the extent it wasn't noxious and ignorant of both history and economics. Let me call it the Marie Antoinette video.
Being utterly without human compassion is something the far right specialises in. One expects this.
But to pretend that these OWS folks are doing something other than pointing out the INCREASING and grotesque concentration of wealth in the hands of a very few billionaires is dishonest as well.
Is this 1% somehow more productive than the 1% 30 years ago? Or have they simply corralled all the productivity in society, which ought to have benefitted everyone to some extent, and taken it for themselves? It is the latter, of course.
No one is mad at "corporations" for providing services. They are mad that very rich people have perverted US democracy to suit themselves and reap all of the economic benefits that the US market confers.
The argument used in the video is rather like one that demands that pigs should be grateful for the fact that a farmer provides them with oats. Sure. But the point is, the pigs get their oats only so that they are fattened up for slaughter. As a wise pig, one is not only happy to have oats. One also wants to make some important decisions about the operation of the farm. From a pig viewpoint, maybe one actually wants to be rid of the farmer regardless of the oats.
There is a reason why the trickle down theory of economics used to be called horse and sparrow theory. 99% of people living on horse-shit isn't everyone's idea of a healthy economy.
Indeed, anyone with their head screwed on knows that a society in which wealth is broadly shared is healthier and more economically efficient than one in which a small number of people have cornered all the wealth and the decisions and the opportunity.
Some history: when rich people suppress the interests of the common people and say how they are disgusted by them and suggest that rather than the rich sharing their bread with them, the poor should choose to eat cake instead, they encourage something. But not the thing they wish for. They encourage their own demise. I hope it happens in a nice, democratic sort of way. The other models are rather more ugly.
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