Thurston’s Thoughts
Inflationary Expectations
Government Cheese Anyone?
In 1793 Queen of France Marie Antoinette had a date with the Guillotine. The opulence of the Queen didn’t set well with the starving peasants and collective destitute of France’s people. Her “let them eat cake” comment can be construed or misconstrued as to the purpose, intent, or as a valid attribution to her. However, the public’s condition, dissatisfaction, or wrath was not in question. Consequently, she lost her head and became the preeminent symbol of decadence and indifference to the struggles of the lower and common class or the monarchy’s “subjects”.
In 1981 under Ronald Reagan and the Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program the U.S. government passed out free cheese to the poor and under privileged public. This kind jester was a token of their disdain for the poor and in classic Marie Antoinette fashion said let them eat cheese. The Trickle Down Economic policy of the Reagan Administration favored the rich and corporations while cutting the economic throats of the poor and lower working class. The fat cats gorged themselves while the American peasants or “subjects” scavenged for the crumbs that “trickled down”.
Anyone who mentions Ronald Reagan and his policies are referring to feeding the poor and working class the economic scraps too small for the elite to abscond with. Similar to a bank robber taking the bills and leaving the pennies. This is a subtle application of racism and obvious distinction of classism. Racism is a microcosm of establishing and maintaining classism by creating the perception of scarcity. Scarcity magnifies the primal instincts of survival and self-preservation. The greater the insufficiency, the greater the desperation. Desperation breeds conflict among those competing for the same insufficiency.
Tax breaks, abatements, public financing, bank bailouts, and many more similar fiscal handouts are trickle down ideological subsidies where the rich or corporate entities siphon and swindle the objective public for the fat cat’s subjective good. Sure, some of the general public benefits, but only to the extent that is necessary for the puppeteer to abundantly receive theirs’. Below the surface of the iceberg is a calculated political structure complicitly embezzling for the rewarded reciprocity dangled before them. It is not a pay to play but a play to get paid arrangement where the middle person gets their cut while the bulk is kicked upstairs. It is the same aristocratic con game parlayed by exploitation of the republics “loyal” subjects.
Most grifts are set up in a comparable fashion. Prime example of a confidence game gone right until it doesn’t is a Ponzi scheme or the carrot remaining just out of reach propelling the horse from in front. The prospect of inflationary expectations motivates the mark concealing the Machiavellian fly trap’s divestment by interest or necessity. The art of the con is tricking you by you tricking yourself in pursuit of securing or protecting an advantage or benefit. So, when the scarcity and desperation metastasizes the poor, lower class, and middle class into a consolidated underclass many gazes are not fixated above but below. It is far easier to prevent someone’s ascension to your level than to overcome someone preventing your ascension to theirs’. It is a pyramid scheme.
Crabs in a barrel are akin to Plato’s Cave where their reality is the inescapability of their confinement by perspective or lack of. In a chicken or the egg analogy, can there be a general without troops or does the troops make the general? Can there be rich without the poor or is there poor because of the rich? The system dictates the parameters of its confines and its confines the conditions. For example, a working or minimal wage within a system of profiteering escalades excursions into maintaining separation by increasingly compensatory degrees to sustain the previous level or condition.
Therefore, the solution creates the problem it sought to remedy because the impact and burden is always at the bottom. Meanwhile, the top maintains their cushion of economic separation. Many fat cat problems are not public problems and few public problems are fat cat problems except for how it impacts their bottom line. The term essential workers takes on a different context when viewed through the lens of their dependency on you being greater than your dependency on them. So whether people vote their pocket or their conscious, there is an echelon of separation towards those below from those above.
Hence, the rat race of accumulation. Ironically, it is often for accumulation sake independent of necessity but instead prestige and ego. Feasting within view of the famished is a treason of humanity and destined for the gallows. Marie Antoinette was convicted of treason, not of feeding em cake. Any structure will crumble or collapse under a weight greater than its capacity. The implosion of society and social order might be fiscal disorder or the ramifications of it. Misappropriation of public funds or public trust can only lead to the guillotine of governmental condemnation. Hope you have a strong constitution or good laxative if you refuse this epiphany. Government cheese anyone?
