Well I guess Ill hold it down for having a problem with rich folks because it seems unpopular here, as confusing as that is. My question is how do these people get rich to begin with? By robbing the workers, that's how. If I generate a hundred bucks in net profit in an hour of factory work, but the boss pays me ten, how does he justify taking the other ninety bucks that my labor generated? Note that I said net profit - this means profit after overhead, including perhaps an extra cut of some modesty towards whomever had the much-vaunted "idea" that capitalists are always claiming justifies their absurdly thick cut of the profit. Risk is a non-factor because it could just as easily be distributed among the workers evenly. That one man takes it all on and then goes on about his struggle is gross entitlement and a manufactured conflict. So all this said, it is nonsensical that capitalists justify the systems for exploitation that secure their riches, and frankly, an affront to human dignity. My mother has worked all her life, often three jobs, raising kids, making ends meet, perhaps working as hard as a person could be expected to work and yet she stills struggles to pay the rent. Why, after a life of toil, does she not ascend economically? Well, because it takes money to make money, and she, like I, was born with none. When someone is born into a million bucks, it is exponentially easier for them to secure themselves economically from poverty and lack. This is why this system shatters any sense of human decency. When your car is worth more than my entire extended family, that you can stand by enjoying your absurd luxury while the gas company turns off our heat in January because we got laid off - so your could move your operation to China where you can exploit even more - you have so degraded your humanity that I pity you, and so offended human dignity that I will resist you and your efforts to exploit us further.
This rhetoric about "equality" being applied to the rich as evenly as the poor, for these reasons, is a weak and hollow trick that capitalists and poor lovers of capitalist whips use to distract from the reality of the capitalist system. To the exploited, the boss and the worker are not the same because one seeks to enrich himself at your expense and the other is alongside you as a true equal. If we want equality with the rich, we must demand or force the rich to step down from their pedestals.
That we in the U.S. are not as poor as folks in Asia, Africa, and so forth is a lesser evil argument. When you have a family you cannot afford the luxuries we tramps can. You can't hop to a warm place when it is cold. You can't take your kids out of school and squat in the woods. You are stuck with whatever situation you got, meaning unemployment usually, or at best, a job that demands all your time and pays not enough to live on. As surely as I advocate for the American poor, I'll fight as surely for those in the third world.
Now don't get me wrong, there are people that misuse these ideas to justify a culture of endless bitching, apathy, and inaction. To do this degrades our radical history and is useless.
