Don’t trust 'em (2 / 2)

Don’t trust 'em (2 / 2)

Jay Heinrichs, author of Thank You For Arguing, compares modern politics with eighteenth-century politics and concludes that Americans have ceased to value disinterest: a reputation for being selfless and unbiased.

 “Hamilton and colleagues would have wondered at our preference for billionaires” (p.72). True enough, some eighteenth-century politicians went bankrupt on purpose so as to increase their popularity.

 Why, then, has being rich become accepted in the 21st Century?

 I believe the answer to be a combination of two things. 

In the first place, the “American dream” has been marketized to the point that people believe that being rich is simply an American success and a question of choice. The truth is – this is not the case. 

 Income inequality is measured through the GINI Index, an indicator that ranks a country from 0 (100% of income is distributed equally among all households) to 1 (one household has 100% of income). With a GINI Index of 0.45, the USA ranks 74th from lowest (best) to highest. In comparison, Sweden has 0.23, Germany has 0.27, Canada has 0.32 and the average for the European Union is 0.30. 

 The second reason people like the wealthy is because of corporate publicity. In the modern American culture, multimillionaires have made sure they are seen as benefactors. There have been cases of “philanthropists” that spend more on advertizing their donations than the amount of money they actually donated. In addition, any opposition is labeled as “cynical”, “communist” and the increasingly popular, “European”. 

Again, my advice would be: don’t trust 'em. Forgive me for the idiocy of making a generalization but, if they’re rich: it’s because they are the most (eighteenth-century definition) “interested” of them all.