I do not believe more than you in class distinctions – the castes are archaeology. But I think the poor hate the rich, and the rich are afraid of the poor. So it will be forever. To preach loving one another is useless.
Wednesday, June 20, 2018
The Rich and the Poor
Gustave Flaubert, extract from a letter to George Sand, October 7, 1871 (five months after the suppression of the Paris Commune):
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"The majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
-Anatole France, 1894
Flaubert may be right. The poor will always hate the rich, and the rich will always fear the poor.
Why, then, do we not get rid of both? If it is useless preaching loving one another while such economic inequality exists, then surely the only sensible option is to eliminate the distinction between rich and poor - to ensure that everyone has enough, and no one has too much?
Why do we so valiantly and ferociously fight to preserve the supposed "rights" of the so incredibly few, to be so incredibly wealthy, at the direct expense of the rest of society? We've seen it over, and over, and over again. When you allow the rich to get richer, the poor always get poorer.
And yet, instead of taxing the rich and spending the money uplifting the poor, we let the rich influence our policy instead - and they quite unsurpisingly prefer for our sitting politicians to ease taxes against them instead, and to pass the costs onto to the poor.
Greed is the poison that will kill off humanity, if we only let it.
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