The following is an article that I excerpted from the CommonDream.org site. If you are not aware of Common Dreams I heartily suggest that you visit and bookmark it. It is the best portal for news, information, and opinion that is not controlled by the corporations. It is accessible at: www.commondreams.org
THE NEW AMERICAN CLASS SYSTEM - Giga-billionaires are climbing the ladder and pulling it up behind them. Your six-figure salary won't even get you on the bottom rung.
By Jeff Gordinier
You know this guy from college. He runs a hedge fund—let's call it Colossal Capital Strategies—and if you’re diligent or masochistic enough to do a little research, you’ll find out that he made about $100 million last year. He’s 36 years old and he has billions under management. The Wall Street Journal likes to refer to him as a “high-net-worth individual,” but that wording seems so odd and clunky—the sort of boardroom-pretzel terminology that some lawyer from Enron might use to explain away a phantom transaction.
No. Let’s call him a luxocrat.
A luxocrat is not merely rich, but rich in a way that you couldn’t have imagined back in college. (Otherwise you would have been nicer to the guy.) He’s rich enough to guarantee that every calorie that passes his lips has been fussed over by a master chef, rich enough to share his truffled foie gras with the treasury secretary on a Gulfstream headed for Barbados, rich enough to impulse-buy doodads from the Robb Report with a black American Express Centurion card (whose existence you weren’t even aware of), rich enough to make your proud and dutiful little 401(k) look, in comparison, like the mound of coins that an Appalachian beet farmer might stash away in a pickle jar. A luxocrat is enormo-rich, robber-baron rich, 21st-century rich, swelled up with a wealth of such magnitude that it suggests the American class system would have to undergo a wholesale restructuring in order to accommodate it.
Which is arguably what’s happening at this very moment
As long as these "luxocrats" control the media and through it the public discours; we will continue down the road toward extinction. They have it in their minds that the final days will be like the final hours on board the Titanic. Their vision is that they will be travelling in first class and thereby have access to the lifeboats (on the boad deck) while you, I, and our familes will be down in steerage with the stairwells coming up barricaded and secured with chains. It's a grim way to look at the world, but if the highest priority is to set a record for crossing the Atlantic, and the people in charge are busy drinking Champagne, have no doubt we will eventually ram into an iceberg.
THE NEW AMERICAN CLASS SYSTEM - Giga-billionaires are climbing the ladder and pulling it up behind them. Your six-figure salary won't even get you on the bottom rung.
By Jeff Gordinier
You know this guy from college. He runs a hedge fund—let's call it Colossal Capital Strategies—and if you’re diligent or masochistic enough to do a little research, you’ll find out that he made about $100 million last year. He’s 36 years old and he has billions under management. The Wall Street Journal likes to refer to him as a “high-net-worth individual,” but that wording seems so odd and clunky—the sort of boardroom-pretzel terminology that some lawyer from Enron might use to explain away a phantom transaction.
No. Let’s call him a luxocrat.
A luxocrat is not merely rich, but rich in a way that you couldn’t have imagined back in college. (Otherwise you would have been nicer to the guy.) He’s rich enough to guarantee that every calorie that passes his lips has been fussed over by a master chef, rich enough to share his truffled foie gras with the treasury secretary on a Gulfstream headed for Barbados, rich enough to impulse-buy doodads from the Robb Report with a black American Express Centurion card (whose existence you weren’t even aware of), rich enough to make your proud and dutiful little 401(k) look, in comparison, like the mound of coins that an Appalachian beet farmer might stash away in a pickle jar. A luxocrat is enormo-rich, robber-baron rich, 21st-century rich, swelled up with a wealth of such magnitude that it suggests the American class system would have to undergo a wholesale restructuring in order to accommodate it.
Which is arguably what’s happening at this very moment
As long as these "luxocrats" control the media and through it the public discours; we will continue down the road toward extinction. They have it in their minds that the final days will be like the final hours on board the Titanic. Their vision is that they will be travelling in first class and thereby have access to the lifeboats (on the boad deck) while you, I, and our familes will be down in steerage with the stairwells coming up barricaded and secured with chains. It's a grim way to look at the world, but if the highest priority is to set a record for crossing the Atlantic, and the people in charge are busy drinking Champagne, have no doubt we will eventually ram into an iceberg.
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