The American Jerkocracy

Oregon recently held a special election to decide whether to impose new taxes on corporations and on individuals with upper-bracket incomes. In the midst of the debate preceding the vote, a letter to the editor appeared in our local paper, the gist of which was that increasing taxes on the wealthy was "unfair" because it took away their "hard-earned money." I have to disagree.

It seems to me that only a very small fraction of the wealthy in this country these days got there through honest hard work. The rags-to-riches, American Dream myth that an individual can become monetarily rich simply by "working hard" rings more and more false. On a personal level, I think I work pretty hard, and I'm not making enough to make ends meet. Granted, I'm a graduate student, so that sort of goes with the territory. But I don't see the situation changing drastically over the course of my career. If all goes according to plan, I will spend my career in academia working long hours, in what has to be considered a highly skilled profession, but I'm certainly never going to get rich.

On a more general level, where are the rich in America today? In banks, oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, health insurance companies, and various other less-than-noble professions. On the other hand, there are plenty of hard-working people who are not and will never be rich. As far as I can tell, the way to get rich is to simply care more about making money than about anything else, including, and perhaps especially, other people.

The problem is that money means power. The more money you make by not giving a crap about anything but money, the more power you can buy to make sure you can keep on raking in the cash and running over the little guy. This is the essence of jerkocracy - the bigger jerk you are, the more money you have, and therefore the more power you have.

The really disturbing thing is that the recent Supreme Court decision to treat corporations just like individuals in terms of political spending has taken this cycle and written it into law (or at least precedent). This decision effectively raises the cost of "free" speech, making it that much harder for us decent, hard-working folk to have our voices heard over the slick prime-time ads of corporations fending for their big-money interests.

It makes for a scary, scary world.