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the poor can eat potatoes

someday you'll be rich (and i'll be dead); mixed media on canvas (with a wooden stretcher), 10 x 8 inches.

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Well, it looks like they brought down another one: first it was Iceland and this time it's Ireland. That should be it for the i's for awhile.

Eighty billion dollars for a country of six million people.

And it's funny, too, how much the cure smells like the poison: dishing out an austerity budget of deep spending cuts (including to welfare), widespread layoffs in the public sector, a minimum wage drop and a sales tax of 23 percent ... while at the same time leaving the corporate tax rate ridiculously low. This what a government looks like, when it's run by bankers.

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Did you know that the richest Americans -- the top one percent -- took in nearly twenty-four percent of all pretax income in 2007? Bush brought in some nice tax cuts for these folks (anyone making over 200K a year) because that's kinda what he was all about (and who would expect anything less?) but even then he did so with an expiration date written in ... just a little ol' tax holiday for rich people, and it was supposed to be over soon. But now that the Republicans are feeling all ballsy again, they think the tax cuts should stay. And because Obama wants to keep similar tax cuts for the very poor, he just might cave.

Do you care about this stuff?

A friend of mine says I shouldn't. My friend certainly doesn't care. In fact, said friend couldn't care less about anything happening in politics, just about anywhere. Said friend is happily ensconced in middle-class-ness, and feeling rather warm and insulated. We talk about our kids.

But I see this kind of thing as the sharp end of the spear, and there's more and more fine fellows (usually white, damp-handed and deery-eyed) in this country who want to mimic the American model, who think that rich people are just fucking awesome, because inheriting an estate or being lucky in the market is the best indicator we have of superior genes and survival of the fittest and all those good things that set us apart.

Comments

  1. "Follow the Money" is a very interesting book written by an Irish economist/journalist about how it (Ireland's downfall, for want of a better word) all came about!

    In Canada we talk about the "Have" and "Have Not" provinces . . . . the Irish became a nation of Want to Have (what the American's have) and that is part of the reason my husband & I now live in Canada!!

    I care - to a certain extent. But at the end of the day, I am happier to be here and insulated a bit. Bring back the good ol' days when life was simple and not all about money, I say!

    And potatoes, no matter what way you cook 'em up, always taste good!

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  2. Someday you'll be rich and i'll be dead.
    You, me and maybe one or two others, we're going to make this the best great depression, ever.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I care because I live in England and whatever happens in Ireland and Europe impacts on me! And my tax dollars (although they are few).

    Thanks for dropping by my blog. I'm Canadian and it's always nice to meet a fellow Canadian blogger!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Economics are a tricky thing especially on a macro level.

    Happy Thanksgiving :) even if you don't celebrate up there in Canada :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. That's a great painting, I love the spatula style.
    I once saw this info-graphic at the United Nations in New York. It was a triangle separated into different segments with the biggest one at the bottom representing how much money is spent every year in the world on military and weapons, like a gazillion dollars.
    There were other things in between, which I don't remember now, but the very top tip of the pyramid was just a fraction of the money the world spends on weapons and war, it was the money needed to make sure all children in the world could go to school and learn to read and write. God it still makes me so angry thinking about it now.
    Money is a very strange thing indeed.

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  6. it is infuriating, disgusting and completely insane on all levels. i care, i care a lot and it really makes us want to run away at least once a week. then we remember how really small the world is (it's messy most everywhere or will be soon enough) and that change comes from the lowest levels.
    bush stepped on our heads so long that we are most definitely in the lowest levels now. the used-to-be middle class is now one foot away from the shelters and dole line.
    worst thing is that man was never tried for starting a war under dubious reasoning, his war crimes and of course his buddies were right there with him.
    then there was 9/11. which never was really sorted out.
    don't make me go on. i have some nice roasted potatoes waiting for me and i don't want them cold.
    oh yeah, did you see the latest reviews of bush? now they are selling us "he was a good man - just a bad president" lines.
    wtf? are we all losing our short term memory?
    ARGH!

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  7. Do not follow the American model. Repeat. Do not follow the American model. Yes, I know that now I have written this, I can never run for public office. But then, I don't have the money to run for public office in the U.S.

    ReplyDelete
  8. darryl? did you receive my mail??

    btw, you're getting better and better. or: i like it (the things you paint and write) better and better...

    bg,
    i.

    ReplyDelete

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