The Mega Wealthy Occupy Positions of Control and Influence, and the Rest are Reduced to Commoner or Peasant Status (We Call Them 'Consumers')

The real student loan crisis

August 5, 2013

paintcan, Reuters blog - So many people use college as a road to what they think will be entry to the “elite” and that is still the case in spite of the fact that there is no elite entry for most of them. The elite is still a matter of having enormous family wealth, and those kids don’t really have to study at all. They have to know how to socially dominate and control. Bush II was a perfect example. Social networking is the stuff of college that never gets into the college literature. Whatever one thinks about Obama or Clinton – they were both po-boys who had to study and were good students. So was Gore.

My father and I have had a long, not so subtle, argument about whether it was better to go to school for solid courses – something I thought I was doing – or whether it was better to go to a more expensive “finishing school” as he calls the small and almost unknown college my sister went to where she barely made any kind of grade but made some wealthy friends and has been bound and determined to emulate in consumption and lifestyle choices ever since. It worked for her – she makes big money (but spends it like water) and the girl writes like a high school student and very little of that. She knows how to use the social system and social status symbols, to “dress for success” and to “kiss the right a–es”.

One could also examine the quality of the courses – something that was never obvious when I attended undergraduate school. The brochures and visits don’t say what they don’t want to admit until you are there and it’s too late. But a kid out of High School can’t be a cynical post middle-aged person with that kind of world knowledge and a young student, with little lifetime experience, at the same time.

The standard of living will probably shrink here but not in terms of consumption. It is a society destined to imitate the pattern of historic world cultures where the mega wealthy occupy all the positions of control and influence and the rest are reduced to commoner or peasant status, we call them “consumers”. Most historic societies tended not to educate more that the upper tier and those who occupied support positions like clergy, attorneys and judges, physicians and teachers.

If you consider how often “icons and pictograms” are used on the computer it is possible that the future of this country could easily start to look like a more hi-tech version of the past when fewer people were literate.

The icons and symbols are easily understood by anyone regardless of their native language. It’s almost a subliminal language and might someday take the place of more advanced literacy for a severely stratified society.

The upper strata will have the old language skills and understand the subtleties of their culture while the rest, lower down the social pecking order, will be living on a diet of inexpensive consumer goods, popular entertainment, and mass political spectacles designed to keep the illusion of voter participation alive.

Health and fitness have always been a sign of class distinctions in Europe and even in this country. Wealthier people of the “elite” don’t tend to be as over weight or have many obvious signs of ill health. I live in a town that is stratified by income and education and those at the bottom tend to show it. I see people walking around with visible tumors and bad teeth or no teeth. They can’t afford to be too fussy or squeamish about their appearance and I tend to follow them now. They can’t get the best care so they wait and get what they can. Money still means access and being first in line. And the lower down the social economic scale one falls the harder it is to live and the greater and more numerous are the shooks that having money tends to cushion or make less traumatic.

This country is heavily armed, both in the private and public sector, has wall-to-wall surveillance and is paranoid about what the population is doing because it is a class dominated society and they are afraid for their own welfare and safety. They know that social turmoil can strike like madness and wipe everything away in its path. It’s happened repeatedly throughout recorded history.

BTW – I lost my lower false teeth last summer while working around the yard. I took them out because the gums always shrink and they never fit well after a few months and have to be relined and I may have mistakenly thrown them out with a wad of paper towels I was using to wipe my hands of glue to make repairs around here and than stuffed in the same pants pocket. I’m not going to replace them because they were never comfortable and I now understand how it is that some of the people I know who don’t have teeth, or many of them and they can be decades younger than I am – can continue to eat at all. The gums toughen up. I also understand now how cooking food was the greatest boon to extending man’s life expectancy. The hardest things to eat without teeth are uncooked vegetables. Cooked meats are actually the easiest things to eat. But potato chips and hard bread crusts are the foods that bring tears to my eyes and I just can’t eat them. Cooked food means one doesn’t really need strong teeth and old people can live longer.

But not having teeth means I look old and not at all affluent. That’s death for any job prospects in a world that likes new finishes and hates anything that looks like it is old, frail, worn or poor. The finishing school type says “OOOH poverty”!

OOTS – you really don’t understand the modern world and talk like an affluent person how dresses down, somewhat like me. The less affluent don’t have to chase after anything. That is the game of the upper income groups. The less affluent can never catch up. Your comfy nostrums don’t mean squat until you say how big a house, how much acreage you own, how old or expensive a car you drive, your income and family wealth and how much education you were able to acquire. You are also an idiot if you think people have kids as a “hobby”. But I forget, Alzheimer’s patients can be happy in your world too.

This country needs conspicuous consumption or its economy seizes up and starts to die. That is the trap it built but also the only aspect of its life that is truly democratic, or at least looks like it is. Debt sees no class distinctions.