You need more than 47 grand to get into one percent club
By Letters to the editor
Editor, The Nelson Daily
Who is the one per cent against whom Occupy wants us to mobilize? A website called Global Rich will tell you.
Unfortunately it uses simple math to calculate who is “rich” and come up with a figure around $47,500 Cdn. as being in the top 1 per cent annual wage earners.
Arithmetically, you are in the 1 %. But politically, socially, economically, you are an object -— not a self-ruling citizen.
Government is a tool of the one per cent. Our minds are in thrall to a system that calls our social order “normal.”
The Global Rich website calculation is not helpful. You could earn twice thatannual-income figure in Canada, and in no way would you be part of the ruling class.
It is the one per cent, different in each country and national economy, who own so much of the world’s wealth, as owners of corporations or owners of their country (e.g. kings of the Saudi family, the sultan of Brunei etc.) who rule us.
They have machinery called governments to keep us blinded about their power.
We think we rule ourselves if we have elections.
Our politicians are a servant class, and their masters are the ruling class who never take government office.
Best of all, our politicians and we the voters, believe so much in our systems that we do not have to be coerced to act for the ruling class.
We do it voluntarily.
We call it common sense.
We say it is realism.
We say the economy works if you are willing to work.
We say capitalism is a huge benefit to humanity and our progress over that last 200 years is proof of that.
Our own Prime Minister is a great believer.
Remember Warren Buffet saying so clearly, “There is a class war and my side is winning” ?
He tells it like it truly is, and he also says he should pay more taxes.
So, No.
You are not part of the one per cent who is the enemy of most of us just because you make over $47,500 a year.
Occupy, with its simplistic slogan, will have to become more complicated in its analysis of power if it is going to help us break the tyranny of our economic ruling class and their systems of thought control.
Charles Jeanes
Nelson
