When the one percent starts to feel paranoid, Clay Cockrell is the first to hear about it. A therapist who specializes in treating the neuroses of the ultrawealthy, Cockrell says that many of his clients are in the privileged position of getting freaked out by eat-the-rich sentiments these days.
For a long time here in the US, inequality has been treated as no big deal. “Oh, inequality is growing?,” said the business leaders and economists, “Why should we care?”
This is why.
When it boils over, the lesson it will teach society will be bloody and painful.
I doubt the lesson will be learned well.
It is never learned, not because people are dumb and can’t remember, but new people take the places of both sides.
The problem I have, is that some people DO learn the lessons, even from the books and stories left over from before. It’s just that the new people don’t care to learn anything.
It’s so disheartening.
Class politics is a learned generational institution. If I look at history I can see that technological disruption, and loss of social cohesion can dampen this.
Today in some countries, like the USA, we have a minimum of both teachers and examples that show such things are worthwhile. We have lost institutional knowledge about how to form unions, strike or protest.
This goes beyond the workplace.
Knowledge of how local municipal politics work and what is democracy is lacking. If one looks at how people vote, one sees a complete lack of awareness of vote counting or exit polls in the USA, replaced by a childish faith in some imaginary fair system that blindly picks the winners. Many great grandparents would scorn this. But there is nobody to tell the current people differently
Remember when Bruce Wayne was a millionaire?
And then a multimillionaire?
And then a billionaire?