The Wealthy Also Have a Dream (final installment)

Don't Wake Us From This Dream

To their credit and despite the brutal attacks waged against them by workers—often out of sheer jealousy—the rich continued to make money. The number of millionaires grew from a mere 50 in 1848 to 5,000 in 1910. Despite a crippling income tax that stole virtually every dime they made, the number of millionaires somehow—by hook or by crook—grew to 50,000 in 1958 and 500,000 in 1980. But always in the back of their minds was the notion; how much more money could they have acquired were taxation not robbing them blind—or at least making them teary-eyed.

Workers continued to accuse their bosses of being greedy and indifferent, some might say insensitive, to the plight of labor. But workers didn’t have to walk in fine Italian shoes or ride in long limos or fly in company jets and know that those shoes could have been even shinier, the limos even longer and the jets bigger and faster. Workers didn’t have to spend every waking moment burdened by images of how things might have been, could have been—dammit, should have been.

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. The “Money Movement” that had begun with so much promise with Taft-Hartley was faltering. Who would deliver the spark needed to restore dignity to the downtrodden rich man? The young didn’t worry about the rich the way they had worried about the Vietnam War. Blacks didn’t concern themselves with the plight of the rich the way they had obsessed about Civil Rights. And the rich certainly couldn’t count on Feminists, whose concerns were lagging so far behind that “glass ceiling” wasn’t even in the vernacular yet.

Once the wealthy had counted on the kindness of strangers but their workers had long ago moved to suburbia and had problems of their own. Rich men couldn’t take their message to the streets because “More Money” was too blatant, and they wouldn’t be caught dead shopping at Woolworth’s—much less sitting-in one. They had nowhere to strike and no shoulder to cry on. All they could do was pray and dream.

In 1980, their prayers were answered, and their dream came true when Ronald Reagan rode down Pennsylvania Avenue on his way to the White House.

His campaign theme song, “California, Here I Come” was for the “Money Movement” what “Blowin’ in the Wind” was for the Civil Rights Movement. And those “wintry winds” it spoke of were a cold front about to blow workers away.

No sooner had the air traffic controllers (PATCO) gone on strike eight months into his presidency did Reagan fired all 11,000 of them. With the stroke of a pen, he ignited a trickle-down effect that killed the entire union movement—and not a shot was fired.

Union membership that had peaked percentage-wise in 1954 at about 35 percent of the labor force and in raw numbers in 1979 at about 21 million workers suddenly went into a death spiral. There were 470 work stoppages in 1952. Twenty years later, those numbers were much the same but in 2009, work stoppages hit rock bottom at a manageable five.

While American workers were left gasping for air, America’s wealthiest were sucking wind because they couldn’t stop jumping for joy. Of course, their position on top was never really challenged—they were always on top and always would be, but what they wanted more than anything was to feel as if they were on top again. After Reagan, they were feeling it. It was like the March on Washington all over again; only now, the marchers were driving limousines.

For as long as mankind has walked the earth, there have been only two real classes of people—winners and losers. The idea of a middle class walking around just a smidgen above the ranks of the poor but thinking and living as if they were rich went against all the rules of nature. Ordered society practically demanded there be two groups and two groups only, the haves and the have-nots. The creation of a middle class of pretenders into an otherwise successful free market has been the greatest injustice perpetrated by unions, socialists and other ne’re-do-wells.

Back in the 1880s, the poor didn’t want mansions. They didn’t even want big houses. But by the 1980s America’s middle class, as spoiled a group as any that has walked the earth, were no longer simply happy to have a job. Now they wanted everything that the rich had—security, retirement, income in retirement, health care, more free-time for fun stuff and access to better schools, bigger houses and boats. They began to think and act as if they were actually wealthy in spite of the reality that they were closer to the poor than a muskrat to a real rat—just a pink slip or devastating illness away from economic ruin.

This lesson that there are two kinds of people in the world, rich people and poor people—and definitely no middle people—is what members of the PATCO union learned from President Reagan. That and an air-traffic control tower is no ivory tower.

But the news got even better for the super-rich. They began separating themselves not only from the middle class but also from the pseudo rich. Over the course of the 30 years following Reagan’s election, life in America began to look more and more the way it did in the good old days when for every Cornelius, John D or J.P there were ten million Tom, Dick and Harry’s, or the really good old days when for every Louis XVI there was a whole nation of losers.

The cumulative change in real income between 1981 when Reagan sent workers to the back of the bus and today, has been nothing short of breathtaking. Real income for the top one percent rose over 300 percent while real income for the poorest actually dropped over 60 percent. Even the insufferable middle class lost almost 20 percent. The “Money Movement” wasn’t simply moving the money around. It was finally moving it in the right direction—back to its rightful owners.

If money is a measure of wealth then it stands to reason only the wealthy should have it. They had it all at one time but slowly had it stolen from them—and that hurt—more than a poor man or a man in the middle could ever know.

But winning and sustaining victory are two different things. Firing a bunch of workers wasn’t the end of the journey—only a leg in the journey. For the next leg, they would need allies. Unlike the Civil Rights Movement, which gained support by selling the dream to college students, sympathetic whites, religious leaders and folk singers, the rich would have to buy support. Fortunately, they had the money to do this.

Instead of throwing out ideas and hoping for the best, they threw their money at willing groups of lobbyists who, in turn, found willing groups of legislators. For over thirty years, these “friends of the rich” have willingly moved American politics away from protecting workers toward a brave new world of taking care of business—or more specifically, taking care of investors.

Investors have finally been recognized as not only an endangered species to be protected but also to be encouraged. And while investors can and do include everyone with money to spend, the real aim in the last thirty years has been the really small group of really big investors—that old standby, the top one percent. Just like the bald eagle, these old bald men wanted back in the game.

In 1900, this group took in and possessed over half the nation’s wealth. By 1915 it was down to 20 percent and by 1950 it stood at an embarrassing ten percent. But by 2011, they had gotten back almost all they had lost—fully 40 percent of all wealth was now back in their hands. The really rich today are making out like bandits—in a good way.

And lobbyists and legislators continue the fight to send those middle-class pretenders back to where they belong—poor once again, the way nature intended them to be. But today’s Captains of Industry are not resting on their laurels. There is still work to be done. So, they have continued the time-tested policy of the original Robber Barons, a policy as old as mankind itself—the policy of divide and conquer. Their money has turned up in every voting district in America.

They have pitted white against black, natural-born Americans against immigrants, middle class against the poor, workers against non-workers, union workers against non-union workers, private sector workers against government workers, the healthy against the sick, the young against the old, the South against the North, the Eastern elite against the common man, the urban against the rural, women against men, progressives against traditionalists, Conservatives against Liberals, strict Constitutionalist against open-minded thinkers, smokers against non-smokers, straights against gays, hippies against hard hats, evolutionists against creationists, abortionists against pro-lifers, Capitalists against Socialists, Catholics against Jews against Muslims against Mormons against Baptists against Atheists—any divisions that helped to keep the heat off themselves.

If the wealthy can continue their struggle against the oppressive forces of labor just a little longer, they will surely one day be able to look back and claim victory. This is the rich man’s dream—that one day he will have gained back all that he had lost, that his children, and his children’s children will one day ascend to their rightful place atop that shining city on the hill that Reagan envisioned—a city where only the rich live. A city where each man’s worth will be measured not by millions but by billions. A city without lazy workers, unemployed workers, sick workers, uneducated workers, old ex-workers.

Of course someone will still have to come by once a week to pick up the garbage.