Most people don’t know what money is, so they struggle to understand inequality or why we need programs like SNAP.
They’ve been propagandized to think poverty is a moral failing.
They don’t realize it’s the result of mass theft.
Once you get it, it’s a real light bulb moment. Actually more like an exploding star.
Most think if someone has a billion dollars, it has nothing to do with them.
Like water in a stranger’s bathtub down the street.
None of our business!
That’s because human beings have trouble grasping scale.
We forget we actually share the world’s water. And that it’s not infinite.
There’s only so much of it, especially the clean kind.
The Real Exchange
Similar to water, there are about 4 billion people in the global workforce.
The labor energy we share to keep the world going is also finite.
Money is just the tool we use to measure and trade that energy.
Why use money?
Because trading a house for a 9-volt battery, or three coffees for a cement truck, would be super annoying.
Money lets us trade efficiently.
And why do we need to trade in the first place?
To take care of each other’s needs. That’s all.
That’s the point.
The Power of a King
But when one person gets a hold of a billion dollars, it’s like they’ve seized the labor power of a small city -- working from childhood until death.
A billionaire has that in the palm of their hands.
That is the power of a king.
That labor energy is no longer circulating to meet human needs but is now used to command the labor of others -- which they only give back in tiny drops, because that’s how they got hold of all that energy in the first place.
The Bathtub Analogy
So to go back to our analogy, it’s like a billionaire’s tub is the size of a small lake, drained from the town reservoir.
The rest of us are left with a thin film at the bottom of our tiny rusty tubs. We're cold, shivering, and unable to get clean. What's the point? I guess let's just wear more deoderant?
And honestly, this analogy isn't far from the truth.
1/4 of the world is now experiencing water shortages.
And we are now paying billionaires for access to clean water.
What Inequality Really Means (the lightbulb moment)
For a billionaire to exist means an enormous number of working people have to be drained of fair wages. That's the only way one person’s tub can overflow enough to create a lake.
That's how Jeff Bezos makes $7 million an hour.
By requiring that 23 percent of Amazon warehouse workers useSNAP (food stamps) in the last three months, and 53 percent experience food insecurity in that same period.
Not only is Bezos stealing fair wages from his employees, he’s stealing again from every taxpayer who now has to pay for food stamps. Because Amazon also pays next to no taxes.
And don’t tell people to start a small business to compete with Amazon!
You can’t compete with a monopoly whose business model is crushing or absorbing small businesses.
The Widening Gap
And it’s not just Amazon.
Half of all U.S. workers are employed by large corporations whose CEOs now earn around 350 times their average employee — up from 20 times in the 1950s.
In the U.K. it’s roughly 150 times.
In Germany, 130 times.
The gap keeps widening.
That gap represents fair wages taken from employees.
When societies tax obscene wealth, that returns labor energy back to the pool.
That’s why inequality drops and stability rises.
That’s how we built the middle class through FDR’s New Deal, and why both he and Dr. MLK called to extend it with an Economic Bill of Rights.
The Con As Old As Time
Billionaires and their media networks will always scapegoat poverty as a moral failing.
They'll keeping calling the idea that we want actual services for our tax dollars, "communism." LOL.
And they will always want to scapegoat immigrants.
Meanwhile, global corporations operate without borders.
Racism has always been the bedrock of classism.
And militarism is what enforces their unholy religion.
The Good News
This message is spreading fast. Globally.
People are recognizing that the economy we live in is actually a form of feudalism (from the word fee). And they’re not buying the racism anymore either.
Candlelight gatherings are forming at Home Depots across the country this weekend.
Peaceful protests against corporate-state violence.
Coordinated boycotts of ICE contracts and publicly funded profiteering will call for redirecting billions toward housing, healthcare, and living wages.
Our Shared Demand
The Economic Bill of Rights. The unfinished vision of FDR and MLK:
the right to a home, a job, healthcare, education, and a dignified life.
A tub with a fair share of water. So all the world's kids can have a bath.
Mass boycotts are the most effective way to have an impact, and bring about these demands.
The boycott list is being updated regularly on the main page of our site, outside the prison walls of the lizard tech-lords, along with tools and actions to support this movement.
Share this message if you think someone would appreciate it!
Keep feeding your peace, hope, and sense of possibility.
We need you in tip-top shape.
We’re all in this together.
Stop by at SurvivorsGuideToEarth.com
to go deeper, and find other ways to take part.
Big hugs,
Matthew