New Yorkers lining up for ... cake? ... during the Great Depression.
While it is unlikely that
Marie Antoinette ever uttered the words, "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche," or the garbled English translation, "Let them eat cake," those words still have meaning to us today. It is likely that those words were used as propaganda by those who opposed her and her husband, King Louis XVI, leading up to the French Revolution.
"Let them eat cake" has become the rallying cry of the oppressed, as it showed how the aristocracy in France had no understanding of those living in poverty at the time. It sowed the seeds of revolution.
We have had our own "Let them eat cake" moments in America. During the gilded age Cornelius Vanderbilt stated, "What do I care about the law? Ain’t I got the power?" His son, William Vanderbilt, once said, "The public be damned!" when he heard of criticism of his railroad monopoly. This is the same man who was poorly treated by his father until he cheated the Army on the price of hay during the Civil War. What a fine family they were.
Jay Gould, another robber baron, once said about striking railroad workers, "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half." Republicans of today are obvious disciples of Mr. Gould. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his "divide and conquer" statements, Mitt Romney with his comments about the 47 percent being dependent on government, Rep. Paul Ryan blaming poverty on lazy inner city men, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie being tired of minimum wage talk, and Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson stating, "I think it’s unrealistic, for public-sector employees to believe that they are immune from modifications to their pay and benefit packages."
These men, doing the work of the robber barons of today—the Koch brothers being the most well know of them—are out of touch with the American middle class.
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Sen. Johnson will score points with his base for attacking the pay and benefits of federal employees. Congressman Ryan will score points with his racist and bigoted constituency. Scott Walker conquered by dividing a state, Mitt Romney a two-time presidential loser, is still being recruited to run again in 2016, and Chris Christie is a bully who picks on the those who cannot defend themselves.
These politicians all have a populist message that resonates across America—that they are guarding your tax dollars, and that those in poverty are not pulling their own weight. Oftentimes they will tell an updated version of the mythological Horatio Alger tales, how someone born into poverty became rich beyond their wildest dreams just through sheer determination, because that is the American dream, to grow up to be a millionaire.
Of course that is their message, but the reality is far different. The chances of rising up from poverty to riches are infinitesimal:
The likelihood that a child born into a poor family will make it into the top 5% in income is just 1%, according to "Understanding Mobility in America," a study by economist Tom Hertz of American University in Washington. By contrast, a child born rich had a 22% chance of being rich as an adult, he said.
"In other words, the chances of getting rich are about 20 times higher if you are born rich than if you are born in a low-income family," Hertz told an audience at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank that sponsored the work.
We continually hear of layoffs, wage cuts, benefit reductions, and salary reductions to increase the bottom line, as if the human beings that make up the sum total of a corporation are nothing more than a commodity and nothing but an entry on a spreadsheet. Our pensions and retirement funds are raided, and promises made are often broken by the robber barons of today. We live in an era when loyalty to a company is meaningless. If you are perceived to earn too much, those at the top will figure out a way to reduce your take home pay. You can be doing the same job for years only to have your job reclassified. You still have a job, you still do the same work, but you make less money for doing it. That is what Gov. Scott Walker did in Wisconsin to thousands of public servants, that is what Sen. Ron Johnson is proposing to do with federal employees, and is what millions of people in the private sector have already gone through.
All of us, in both the public and private sector, have seen our purchasing power go down, and our wages have not kept up with inflation even as our productivity goes up. We are forced to do more with less and less. Those of us who have vacation and sick time do not use it for fear of losing our jobs. Many of us are one paycheck away from living in the streets. We keep waiting for the the wealth to trickle down to us, but it never seems to leave the hands of the one percent.
"Let them eat cake!" That is really what the robber barons of today are saying. The Walton family of Walmart fame, the Koch brothers—they just want to make more and more money until they have it all, vast fortunes that they could never spend in multiple lifetimes. But they keep taking more and more wealth, siphoning it away from us in ever greater quantities and still that is not enough for them. If the workers cry for a raise they threaten them, they bully them, they beat them down.
"Let them eat cake." Those words were the undoing of a monarchy in the 18th century. What words will be the undoing of the plutocracy in 21st century America?