Image of the Day

the enemy of the good. Insiders feel your pain, but pragmatically
recognize the glacial pace of change. And now—thanks to the wonders of
market innovation—insiders can digitally donate to the local food bank
from the comfort of their Martha’s Vineyard porch, even as they peruse the
timeless wisdom of Atlas Shrugged. Insiders are never all evil, but are
rarely half good.
Insiders sit atop mountains of wealth. When they check their bank
accounts, insiders find they own 42% of America’s wealth, even though
they comprise just 1% of its population. Insiders also happily concede they
gleaned 93% of our economic profits in 2010, capturing almost all the
benefits of the stimulus. Heavily invested insiders are thrilled to report that
the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite Index have
nearly doubled since 2009. On the inside, things are getting better. On the
inside, we are in the midst of a miraculous recovery that lines that
frontings of Wall Street with boughs of holiday cheer as another calendar
year closes with more record-setting Q4 profits.
While insiders get ahead, outsiders get by. Some of the time. Usually
thanks to high debt, artificially inflated assets and longer working hours.
What they didn’t inscribe at the foot of Lady Liberty was that once the
huddled masses are welcomed into America, they mostly remain in their
huddled mass. Upward mobility in America is the lowest among
developed industrial nations. Less than 20% of us even own individual
stock—those who do are mostly insiders, or outsiders who hope to build
mountains out of financial molehills. Outsiders own 1% of America’s
wealth, even though they are 50 times larger than that tiny tribe that owns
nearly half of it. Fifty-seven million outsiders are out of food. Fifty million
outsiders are out of money. Twenty-three million outsiders are outside the
workplace. Ninety million outsiders spent this election outside the voting
booth.
Some would quite fairly protest the existence of a third class, the
middle class. But in neoliberal social order—as seen from its track record
from Chile to Russia to South Africa—the middle class rapidly becomes
indistinguishable from the lower orders. The trope of the taxi-driving
economist is no lie. The undoing of the middle is well underway. Median