Not necessarily in the concrete, but certainly it is impossible to go anywhere without hearing or parta...
Not necessarily in the concrete, but certainly it is impossible to go anywhere without hearing or partaking in a conversation about it. The two Presidential hopefuls are decrying the greed of Wall Street that has led America and the world to the edge of the abyss. There hasn’t been such negativity displayed toward the wealthy since the 1930’s. Alas, it is no coincidence. Steve Frazer, the author of “Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace” says, “This feels very similar, historically, to 1929 and the emotions that filled the air in the months and years that followed the crash. There is a sense of shock and astonishment, which is followed by a sense of rage, outrage and anger directed at the centers of finance.”
It was after the ‘29 crash that the rich first became the objects of scorn. In movies of the 1930’s, the rich are depicted as old, doddering useless people, without social or moral conscience. Everyone who ever saw a black and white movie can recollect a wealthy character depicted in a denigrating way. George Bernard Shaw summed up the American mood with his statement: “What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness.” That sentiment led, in the 1940’s, to an idea of a noble working class man, equally absurd on the surface, but one that had legs that ran all the way into the 1960’s glorification of the individual. I find it intriguing. I wonder if the next John Steinbeck is typing away frantically with the dust bowl wind howling at his oil-skin covered windows about the plight of the working man. Already I’ve seen two different newspaper stories about the excesses of the wealthy. The behaviors described were equally fascinating and repulsive. And that’s what makes America so great. Americans hate the rich up to the very point that they become rich. And they have a faith that stretches reason to the extreme, that they, each and every one of them, might someday be rich. These are fascinating days. As to me, I am less grandiose about the idea of money or the lack of it. I tend to side with Woody Allen who once said, “Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.”
