The Myriad Horrors of Too Much Money in Too Few Hands

Go ahead, read what Barbara Ehrenreich has to say and consider what the uber-rich are doing to the West and many other places of beauty and character. Meanwhile, the middle class deteriorates and people can't afford to go to the dentist, buy decent groceries or keep up with their rent or mortgages. Bravo corporatism, tax-free investment gains and the unrestrained "free market." Excerpt:

About ten years ago, for example, a friend and I rented a snug, inexpensive one-bedroom house in Driggs, Idaho, just over the Teton Range from wealthy Jackson Hole, Wyoming. At that time, Driggs was where the workers lived, driving over the Teton Pass every day to wait tables and make beds on the stylish side of the mountains. The point is, we low-rent folks got to wake up to the same scenery the rich people enjoyed and hike along the same pine-shadowed trails.

But the money was already starting to pour into Driggs -- Paul Allen of Microsoft, August Busch III of Anheuser-Busch, Harrison Ford -- transforming family potato farms into vast dynastic estates. I haven't been back, but I understand Driggs has become another unaffordable Jackson Hole. Where the wait staff and bed-makers live today I do not know.

.. Of all the crimes of the rich, the aesthetic deprivation of the rest of us may seem to be the merest misdemeanor. Many of them owe their wealth to the usual tricks: squeezing their employees, overcharging their customers and polluting any land they're not going to need for their third or fourth homes. Once they've made (or inherited) their fortunes, the rich can bid up the price of goods that ordinary people also need -- housing, for example. Gentrification is dispersing the urban poor into overcrowded suburban ranch houses, while billionaires' horse farms displace rural Americans into trailer homes. Similarly, the rich can easily fork over annual tuitions of $50,000 and up, which has helped make college education a privilege of the upper classes.

... When I was a child, I sang "America the Beautiful" and meant it. I was born in the Rocky Mountains and raised, at various times, on the coasts. The Big Sky, the rolling surf, the jagged, snowcapped mountains -- all this seemed to be my birthright. But now I flinch when I hear Woody Guthrie's line "This land was made for you and me." Somehow, I don't think it was meant to be sung by a chorus of hedge-fund operators.

Having bought up most of the beautiful locales in the nation, sent prices skyrocketing, screwed up the housing and finance industries, jacked up the stock exchange with bubbles, sunk the dollar to record lows and arranged to have poisonous food and other commodities imported into America, the uber-rich "investor class" is now searching about for places to put their huge sums of excess cash. Enter outrageous speculation, often beyond the reach of the law. Wonder why commodity, food and energy prices are exploding? Check out the games being played by the wealth elites to get even more bang for their capital. The crony capitalists are still hungry for more.

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