Greed Sickness is Real & Literally Destroying the World

A Spiritual/Political Blog Flashback to Just After Failed Trump Coup on January 6th, 2021 written during the Covid Pandemic Crisis

New Testament Matthew 19:24 - Quoting Jesus,

"easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God"

Some will argue this quote was only found in the Matthew gospel, thus it is circumspect whether Jesus ever said this. Well, one could say the entire Bible - old and new is circumspect because to this day no one knows for sure who wrote what. Also there ample stories of Jesus clearly being an anti-materialist as he taught to offer your shirt off your back to those in need and healed and fed everyone constantly for free etc. One could even say Christ was anti-capitalist as his flipping the money changers tables and trashing the market place proved, which coincidentally was one of the main reasons leading to his death. His teachings about hoarding all types of stuff that will gather dust and rot versus being a better person to insure a smooth transition to heaven and finally his famous quote that showed up in more than one of the 4 gospels (Mark 8:36 & Matthew 16;26), thus increasing the likelihood he actually said it - "What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? So it's very clear and undeniable to anyone with the ability to read and comprehend at a third grade level that Jesus was not a materialist - at least to the point where one becomes a perverted sinner by it in their behaviors. 

Just a quick shout out to the Buddha here who was also an anti-materialist that preached same type of lessons around 500 years before Christ. Siddhartha (Buddha) was born a rich prince and yet gave it all up to pursue a more spiritual, righteous, humble (sustainable) life and show others that it is not only possible but important to do so to ensure a better world and reincarnation/after life.

Our society in the West has devolved into a materialist nightmare where one is measured by how much money/wealth they have. Power inevitably ends up in the lap of those skilled and lucky enough to become filthy rich whether they are sophisticated enough to deal with it or not (Elon Musk/Mark Zuckerberg). This expression 'filthy rich' is literally true according to Christ and other great Prophets/Sages teachings and filthy is not something anyone should strive to be. Yet here we are in 21st century late stage Capitalism and most people have been convinced that being rich will solve all their problems and fill the hole in their souls. Well, for one, the odds of an average middle class person becoming rich is 95% against-fact. They don't teach us this very often in school growing up or in the top business colleges because this would throw shade on the American Dream. But when did the American Dream go from the more middle class (80% of population) humble dream of simply making a decent wage, working full time (40 not 50-70 hours a week), raising a family and owning a home? I believe most people are good most of the time, although the constant bad news in the mass media 24/7 makes it ever harder to hold this core belief.

Our supposedly mostly Christian society is sick with a superficial and material ethos that is the opposite of everything Jesus Christ taught.  We live in the age of 'Prosperity Theology' where false Christian Evangelical priests proclaim becoming rich as a desired goal and God given right. This in spite of all of Jesus Christ's teachings saying otherwise and in fact saying you will suffer greatly for being greedy and rich - as in not getting to heaven and going to the other place where it is very hot, miserable and there is gnashing of teeth (Hell). We have so many TV shows, websites, magazines etc that promote rich people like idols to be worshiped. We are lost and greed is at the root of all major problems we face.

The top mega rich elite 1% of our country and the world have increased their wealth exponentially over the last 40 years during the explosion of the world market boom, post new hi-tech information age where huge multi-national corporations benefited from being properly positioned at the right time and insuring their positions to stay that way via monopolies sanctioned by political puppets all over the world who do their dirty work rigging the systems and keeping them in power - via donations to election cycles here in America and more generally insuring easy cushy jobs as lobbyists or paper pushers after the puppets exit the revolving door political arena. 

The new Hi-Tech billionaires (Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter etc) who espoused lofty or even egalitarian maxims like Google's "Don't be Evil" or the general theme of 'connecting the world to make it a better place' - all turned out to be full of shit! These same CEO social media founders turned out to be more greedy and evil than their formidable previous Baby Boomer 'Greed is Good' generation of idiots. The same greed sickness that has led to the stratified, inequitable society we now live in. An average CEO from a top corporation used to make around 20-30 times what his lowest worker made in the 1960s. Jump ahead to the post Reagan corporate take over of the world in the 1980s and now in the early 21th century, the the average CEO makes around 300-1000 times the average employee! The top 1 tenth of 1% now possess more wealth than the bottom 80% of the entire world! This is outrageous and was finally getting some attention before the Pandemic via Senator Sanders runs for president in 2016 and again in 2020. 

Unfortunately, there is still a sizable amount of people in the USA that still believe all the false hype and narratives about late stage crony capitalism, which is not a free market and only caters to the rich and leaves 80% of citizens struggling to makes ends meet. Not a good system to anyone with basic common sense. Silver spoon crook, bone spur megalomaniac and Reality show and now traitor President Trump is the hero to this conservative, mostly white evangelical segment of the population that represent a powerful minority of 20-40 million people. They fall on a spectrum from diehard, ignorant, conspiracy cult level followers that invaded our capitol in a seditious act of insurrection - to anti-abortion extremists - to more moderate, less government and taxes, law and order - to protect property (aka racism) traditional conservatives. Notice I did not mention the often touted lie of 'fiscally conservative' republicans - because historically the national debt has always gone up on their watch (admins) - not from more domestic spending to help actual working citizens but from their direct ties to the military industrial complex with endless empire wars that keep the money flowing to these corrupt politician hypocrites and their military machine benefactors - all put on the American tax payers credit card aka national debt headed toward 30 trillion as I write this essay/blog in early 2021. As of now - we can only pay the interest and even that is becoming a challenge - especially after the multi-trillion tax break for the rich 1% passed by the Trump administration a few years back. Business as usual for the elite creeps that currently run our world. Currently is the key word. Change is coming whether they know it or like it. People are fed up and not going to take it anymore. 

The recent insurrection by the cult of Trump is one manifestation of this fed up vibe. They should all be arrested and held held accountable for the seditious acts. Yet they represent a very angry faction of the greater population of citizens who do all the right things - work hard, pay their taxes but still struggle to just have the basics, while the higher ups in their companies rake in the majority of profits at their expense. The Trump cult followers are not sophisticated enough to connect the dots of the root causes and understand the real reasons why they feel left behind. Their simple, lazy minds believe whatever racist, xenophobic, scapegoating disinformation that is pumped into their social media accounts via the evil, greedy social media corporations that profit off this disinformation and even design their algorithms to feed ever more evil crap to their millions of ignorant account holders! Thus, these Trump-er, Q-anon conspiracy theories, MAGA-morons vote against their own best interests and don't have the intelligence to know they are being taken advantage of - suckers basically.

The Senator Bernie Sanders movement was a healthier, more educated and egalitarian version of 21st century populism versus the negative, racist, white privilege panic populism of the Trump cult. Yet both movements share similar causes of frustration and anger. Namely - the greed and hoarding of wealth by the very, very rich. Sanders, using his now powerful platform continues to publicly shame rich greedy CEOs that refuse to pay a living wage. Billion dollar corporations like Walmart where almost 3% of employees (tens of thousands) are receiving food stamps and it costs tax payers 6-7 billion a year according to latest statistics!!! Along with the push of organizations like the Fightfor15 movement and some unions - Sanders shamed the richest man in the world, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, to starting to pay a 15 dollar minimum wage. Yet many Amazon employees have still gone on strike and raised red flags on social media about the high level and dangerous intensity of work conditions. They have had to fight for extra risk compensation during this Covid Pandemic crisis we are currently experiencing. 

Many of us well informed citizens have made this connection for a long time - that divisions in the country are a direct result of the greed sickness at the top of the economic ladder. Surely racism and actual disagreements about some important issues are also part of the divisions but these debates are all exasperated by financial stressors that negatively affect the quality of life for the majority (80%) of citizens and pours gas on the fire of simmering tensions and daily struggles to survive in a country taken over by 1% oligarch billionaires that have rigged the system to favor them and screw the rest of us.

And then there is the upper middle class bourgeoisie spectrum that represents around 10-20% of the population that also support the status quo but are rightly upset about being unfairly taxed as compared to their richer counter parts further up the ladder. It seems the further up the rich ladder you go - the less taxes you have to pay - which is absurd, totally wrong and not fair! Greed has become so bad that not only do these sick CEOs not want to pay a living wage, paid family leave or God forbid pensions - they don't even want to pay any taxes - at all! These same CEOs and executives made their fortunes in a safe country with an incredible infrastructure and public education system (needs work) all paid for by me and you, the average tax payer that pays around 35% of our paychecks into the system to ensure that all our public services are maintained/paid for - which includes all the teachers, firemen, police, administrators and infrastructure - national parks, roads, bridges etc! What the hell has allowed this ridiculous situation to happen? - A bunch of 0 integrity law maker bums in DC - aka puppet politicians! We need solutions and fast!

Solutions include - making the rich pay their fair share of taxes for God sake, fixing our Democracy to get dark money our of election cycles, quicker state sponsored elections like most other advanced countries, 15 dollar minimum wage, more co-operative share holder companies, getting rid of the Wall street casino model of over speculation and evaluations back to an organic capitalism where one can still get rich but only grows as big as one can handle - will end most monopolies that currently exist, bring back pensions and get rid of 401ks, bring back Fair Reporting law that will force social media corporations to better police their traffic for disinformation, usher in Universal Basic Income (UBI) for a smooth transition to new Artificial Intelligence (AI) work loss reality for 50% of workers to avoid chaos in the streets, erase college debt, stop feeding the war machine military industrial complex, make public college free, and teach more holistic spiritual education curriculum in public schools to make better humans.

God Bless this Mostly Human Made Mess!