Who is John Galt? Well, the strictly factual answer is that he’s a fictional character in a boring novel by a 3rd rate pseudo-intellectual. In a broader sense, he’s an inspiration for the neoliberal financial oligarchy (and its congressional quislings) that set the stage for this. That’s right – 1 in 2 Americans are now poor or low income. Yours truly may be late to the party (this news is several days old, of course), but I simply can’t let this pass without comment. Worth noting is the tone of the piece – that is, the failure of the “journalist” to connect the dismal data to any sort of historical context. What we are left with is a narrative of crisis without responsibility. “Rising housing costs” are cited, along with an aside about stagnating wages and rising medical costs, but these are not explained. They are noted simply as events – a case of rising costs – rather than as the real consequences of quantifiable human actions. Apparently, when it comes to the clear results of the blatant transfer of wealth from everyone else to the rich (privatized profit, socialized risk), the 1% have no historical agency. No, they only have that when they’re being “job creators.” (When was that, exactly? I must have been indisposed that day, ’cause I sure don’t remember it). The best part is this bit:
“Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, questioned whether some people classified as poor or low-income actually suffer material hardship. He said that while safety-net programs have helped many Americans, they have gone too far, citing poor people who live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.”
Evidently the boys over at the Heritage Foundation would have us believe that cars are an unnecessary luxury in a country with notoriously inadequate public transportation. But Robby – how are we going to get to all these jobs you job creators have on the way? Evidently it’s also necessary to make sure you destroy any possessions that hint at your past existence as a non-impoverished person. If you’re recently poor and still have that house you bought back when you weren’t, be sure to get rid of it, or the Heritage Foundation won’t consider you poor – and god help you if you happen to live near a Rent-A-Center.* Rent a TV you could never afford to buy, and Robby Rector doesn’t care about anything else. Only someone utterly disconnected from real life could confuse the trappings of prosperity for prosperity itself. My downstairs neighbors are impoverished Brazilian immigrants, but even they have an excellent stereo system. That one comfort doesn’t make them any less poor, nor does it somehow render their hardships irrelevant.
The absurdity of Rector’s position seems obvious, but for the many yet ensnared in what the great Joe Bageant called “The American Hologram,” appearance equals reality. I recall a night about six years ago when, at a dinner with friends, discussion turned to the economy. After I made the usual assertions regarding capitalism’s contradictions to the bored faces of people used to my lefty ramblings, I argued that the American economy was looking more and more like that of a third world country. There was only one question: The US will be a third world country – but will it look like it? The implication, of course, being that an abysmal standard of living is perfectly acceptable as long as the appearance of prosperity is maintained. Unless the streets turn to dusty dirt roads and the homes to the shacks of Hollywood poverty, the actual conditions don’t matter. We’ve been trained well.
So who is John Galt? John Galt is a tepid excuse for the not so hidden costs of neoliberalism. Gear up, folks. It’s going to get worse.
*For the uninitiated, Rent-A-Center is a business that exploits the working poor by renting electronics to them at monthly rates that appear affordable for a predetermined length of time that guarantees they will ultimately pay more than the cost of buying their rented “center” outright, which they of course would never have enough ready cash to do.