Truth to Power

Life on Maggie’s Farm

I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more

No, I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more

Well, I wake in the morning

Fold my hands and pray for rain

I got a head full of ideas

That are drivin’ me insane

It’s a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor

I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more</i>

Bob Dylan turns 70 today. He released his first album in 1962, the year I was born. And like Bob, I got a head full of ideas that are driving me insane. Like when I read something like this:

The Rich Are About To Get Very, Very Rich: Study Finds Global Millionaire Wealth Set To More Than Double By 2020

A new study by Deloitte confirms everyone’s worst fear (and every millionaire’s wettest dream): the wealth amassed by millionaire households is set to increase by more than 100% over the next 9 years. From a total of $92 trillion held by the world’s richest in 2011, by 2020 the world’s millionaire households will possess $202 trillion, or roughly 4 times current global GDP. Even though much of move up is attributed to the wealth surge in the developing world, the biggest beneficiary is, you guessed it, the United States where the millionaires (those with net wealth of at least $1 million), who currently account for $38.6 trillion of total wealth, will see their assets increased by 225% to $87.1 trillion!

And as has been the case for the last 30 years, incomes of the lower and middle classes will remain stagnant, and social services and infrastructure get further slashed, in order to fund more gimmies to the wealthiest among us. But that’s the thing, you see. They aren’t “among us”. They live behind walls in gated communities, drive expensive cars to private airfields- you don’t hear Warren Buffett whining about the TSA, do ya? Their children don’t go to public schools, or sit in emergency rooms with a cough.

I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more

No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more

Well, he puts his cigar

Out in your face just for kicks

His bedroom window

It is made out of bricks

The National Guard stands around his door

Ah, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more</i>

The oft-quoted axiom that democracies survive until the public learns to vote themselves money frequently gets tossed into discussions about this, despite it not being an actual quote, nor it being particularly factual. Show me a society that collapsed because the majority of the citizens had the majority of the nations wealth, and it will be the first I’ve heard of it. In fact, in this country our darkest hours are generally the exact opposite. The majority of the wealth- wealth that should be moving around society, hiring people, building bridges, paying school teachers, is instead sitting in bank accounts off shore, waiting. Same as it was before the last Depression. So please explain to me how the rich of this country are going to get richer when nobody is working enough to buy anything? Start another war? We have enough of those, no more room to increase production to sate the war profiteers (make due with what ya got, Cheney and crew), and since taxes are at their lowest since the 1950s, and most large corporations have rewritten the laws to pay nothing at all, so where is the money going to come from? Are we going to wake up one morning with crude stitches where our kidneys used to be? Or all in jail on bogus drug charges, while private prison investors get a check each month for keeping us there?

Just how long you think this nation’s wealth can continue to be pilfered by those who write the laws until we’re just a bare husk of a nation? Until we have no teachers? No firemen? Until our food is nothing but masses of GMO poison, contaminated and uninspected? What will happen then?

This guy. Or this guy.


Recently on Ink 19...

The Prehistory of Suzi Quatro

The Prehistory of Suzi Quatro

Archive Archaeology

Before there was Leather Tuscadero, Suzi Quatro was in two pioneering, all-woman rock bands in her hometown of Detroit, Michigan. This is a Quick Look at those bands: The Pleasure Seekers and Cradle.

Sun Ra

Sun Ra

Music Reviews

Lights On A Satellite: Live At The Left Bank (Resonance Records). Review by Bob Pomeroy.

Zyzzyx Road

Zyzzyx Road

Screen Reviews

Don’t let the stats fool you. Zyzzyx Road may have been the lowest grossing movie in history, but is it worth checking out? Phil Bailey explores the new 4K UHD from Dark Arts Entertainment.

B.B. King

B.B. King

Music Reviews

In France: Live at the 1977 Nancy Jazz Pulsations Festival ( Deep Digs). Review by Bob Pomeroy.

Tomie

Tomie

Screen Reviews

The first film based on Junji Ito’s manga, Tomie, makes its US Blu-ray debut from Arrow Video.