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No Tolerance for Richistans - Obscene Wealth is not victimless!
Writing in the Guardian, Madeline Bunting laments the growing inequities in Britain. Her powerful critique is not jut applicable to the British society; in a world where global trends are aped and replicated by the hour, this is a damning comment:
“…. huge wealth is now regarded as a fabulous spectator sport and massively enviable. It is also, most importantly, regarded as legitimate - the global economy is akin to a vast lottery, some just get lucky. The “winner takes all” has become a respectable formula of economic life, not evidence of a systemic injustice. Any other view is dismissed, in that derogatory phrase, as the “politics of envy”. Peter Mandelson summed it up in 1998 with a magnificent use of adjectives: “We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich.
The wealth may be obscene but the means of achieving it are presumed, naively, not. This wealth is perceived as victimless - not achieved at the expense of someone else’s exploitation, but as a product of the near mystical vagaries of global stock markets….
We are as ghoulishly gripped by Richistan as if we were watching a car crash - and that’s exactly what it is. A slow-motion catastrophe: an elite, however small, with this kind of immense wealth has a hugely disproportionate impact, skewing the whole frame of reference in a society of value, worth and status - which are all human needs basic to dignity and wellbeing.”
I had earlier quoted Arundhati Roy in the South Asian context where the “growing middle class was reared on a diet of radical consumerism and aggressive greed..”
Some say it is inevitable, a sort of deterministic outcome. Others say, live with it. Well both are unacceptable positions.
July 16th, 2007 at 4:52 am
[...] Full entry here >> This entry is filed under Personal, Politics, Globalization, Arts & Culture, All My Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. 7 Responses to “No Tolerance for Richistans - Obscene Wealth is not victimless!” 1 I Me My says: June 26th, 2007 at 1:52 pm Not surprising though, this increased tolerance for Richistan. We have at least three channels here that are devoted to displaying the opulence and glamour of the rich and famous; lo and behold the channel has record breaking viewer statistics! People are ready to lap up all the glitz that they see and are still wanting for more! Little is this seen as a ’systemic failure” as Bunting puts it. We’ve developed an uncanny tolerance for excessive wealth like we have for obesity here in the USA. It is a relief that at least obesity is now recognized as a societal ill that has gained epidemic proportion. We can only hope that at some point the blinded middle class will awaken to the reality of ‘Richistan’ and stop pandering to it. 2 RR says: June 26th, 2007 at 3:15 pm IMM: thanks for the comment and pointing out some supporting evidence. I also hope that people wake up to this reality and say no to this culture of greed and enviable spectator sport. 3 nota says: June 27th, 2007 at 6:36 am As I Me My point about the channels dedicated to lifestyles of the rich and famous, it is by design. By that I mean you are shown these people with this obscene wealth intermingled with the message that you can one day get there (99.99% of you never will). Also hidden in these features are marketing messages selling you “designer” stuff so penniless bastards like us pay $40 for a $2 shirt just because it has a Nike swoosh on it and somehow feel like we are somebodies wearing one. This leads to another fallacy — most people you talk to are certain they are part of the middle class when in reality only about 1-in-10 of them are — and I am being optimistic here. Just spending your 3 months salary on a new Nokia makes you so much poorer no matter how rich you feel flashing it around…but that my friend is the trick: You feel richer while getting poorer making the very rich richer and the gap between you and them getting even wider… 4 kinkminos says: June 27th, 2007 at 8:16 am (The older I get, the more convinced I am that Douglas Adams was spot on with his assessment of our Glorious Planet Earth being somebody else’s science project.) [...]
November 27th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
[...] Negotiating with my middle class guilt, I have been pondering over this article. I had posted on Richistans earlier - somehow the obscenity of excessive (many would disagree here) wealth continues to irk me [...]
August 17th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Thanks to the article, Now there is more reason to comment than ever before! Everyone should participate. I am incorporating what your wrote to our project!
August 19th, 2008 at 2:09 am
Thanks for your article, Now there is more reason to comment than ever before! This is a great fir for our project!