The annual billionaire gathering of global elites in Davos, Switzerland has a dream. Large swaths of people expressly rejected the World Economic Forum vision where machines replace people in the workplace, billionaires do deals in $100,000 a day suites, debt is maximized to optimize capital and cash is recalled in favor of electronic transactions, justified by "the poor will like it."
Consider a different dream nearly six decades old:
"I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream—a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality. That is the dream..." Martin Luther King 1961Eight men control half the world's financial assets. Add the cumulative billions of others in Davos and the percentage soars to what? Sixty percent, seventy five percent?
Many voters in the U.S. and Britain reacted to the raw deal they've had in the workplace for decades as executives enriched themselves massively while acting on their belief that workers are dispensable and easily replaced/interchanged. This dehumanization made it easier to cut benefits and scrimp on pay, mostly to ensure executive incentive compensation was maximized.
Voters reacted to the insider class which traverses between government, corporations and think tanks. The public glimpsed their boldness and greed in the pursuit of power via John Podesta's e-mails. Rest assured both the Red and Blue political parties aggressively play this insider game, where the main measure is who wins the election and can steer the federal might and budget toward their sponsors for the next four years.
In the early 1960's Reverend Martin Luther King spoke about injustice, moral, psychological and economic. 2017 has the injustice of criminal Wall Street that serially buys its way out of fraud and market rigging investigations. The psychology of Davos is "lived excess" by the very insider class that benefited so disproportionately the last few decades. Fittingly, this week consummate insider Larry Summers pontificated on the plight of the middle class, decimated by corporate flippers. Long ago Larry promised not to bite the hand that feeds him, no matter how greedy or malevolent. He's stuck to his word and the rewards have been great.
Contrast Larry's dream of acceptance by the greed and power boys with that of Martin Luther King. One dreams for all, while the other dreams for one (their self).
