In Fond Memory Of Simon Benson

 
The poor keep getting poorer, yet poverty still isn't a political issue except to Republicans who want to raise taxes on the least wealthy.

That famous bridge is called the "Benson Bridge"

Today I've been thinking a lot about philanthropist Simon Benson, and not just because I'm a waterfall lover. Benson is most famous today for having donated Multnomah Falls, Wahkeenah Falls, and the surrounding area to the Oregon government which, along with donations from other wealthy landowners, allowed the government to not only build Historic Highway 30 but make it an incredibly scenic drive, passing by Crown Point and seven waterfalls. He's also famous in Portland for the copper drinking fountains he erected around the downtown area so that everyone in the city could have water. He died in 1942. He was over 90.

In contrast: a couple days ago I came upon a 2005 memo from Citigroup detailing how the wealthy should approach the current political/economic world. The memo defined the US as a "plutonomy," which is characterized by a large and ever-expanding gap between the rich and the poor:

In a plutonomy there is no such animal as “the U.S. consumer” or “the UK
consumer”, or indeed the “Russian consumer”. There are rich consumers, few in
number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take.
There are the rest, the “non-rich”, the multitudinous many, but only accounting for
surprisingly small bites of the national pie.

 The rich, according to the memo, have no need for anyone who isn't rich. As the memo later goes on to point out, the wealthiest 1% accounted for almost the same household income as the poorest 60% in 2000; therefore there is no need for the wealthy to appeal to the "average American consumer" (largely regarding the consumption of stocks in this case, referred to as "toys for the wealthy having pricing power, and staying power"). The rich can simply stick to themselves and get richer together. But this doesn't mean the poor and middle class can simply create wealth among themselves:

In plutonomies the rich absorb a disproportionate chunk of the economy and have
a massive impact on reported aggregate numbers like savings rates, current
account deficits, consumption levels, etc. This imbalance in inequality
expresses itself in the standard scary “ global imbalances”. We worry less.

In other words, the rich get more than they're due, implying that the poor and middle class get less. In the memo's words, "At the heart of plutonomy, is income inequality. Societies that are willing to
tolerate/endorse income inequality, are willing to tolerate/endorse plutonomy." And where do the rich get their "disproportionate" funds?

Oh, but exploiting the lower classes isn't all that's on the mind of the wealthy. The not-wealthy represent the threat of backlash against this status quo because "Low-end developed market labor might not have much economic power, but it does have equal voting power with the rich." In other words, the major threat to the rich maintaining its hold on disproportionate resources is democracy, people exercising their political rights. Indeed, one thing the memo cites as feeding plutonomic culture is "capitalist friendly governments and tax regimes." The government supports the wealthy getting richer. Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine makes a similar point, that the neoliberal free-market economic reform the US saw first in the 1980's was not suited for democracies and only ruthless dictators (like Agusto Pinochet in Chile) would dare to enact economic reform so devastating to the population. In order to implement these reforms in a democracy, the democratic society needed to receive a "shock" that would cause the normal rules of democracy not to apply (Hurricane Katrina, for example, resulted in the near complete dismantling of New Orleans' public school system). in the 2005 Citigroup memo we see another example of how the disproportionately wealthy's biggest obstacle to attaining even more wealth is democracy.

Tellingly, the memo reads, "How do we make money from this [plutonomy] theme?" immediately after stating that "we have no view on whether plutonomies are good or bad, our analysis here is based on the facts, not what we want society to look like."And that's all that matters to these wealthy completely free-market capitalists, isn't it? It is barely thinkable to use this new perspective on the terrible imbalance in wealth to combat the evils of corporate greed. By concerning themselves solely with profiteering off plutonomy the authors of this memo are clearly expressing their "view on whether plutonomies are good or bad." Greed is good. It's more important to use our wealth to acquire more wealth than to benefit those less fortunate. It makes me sick.

There were between 30 and 50 of us protesting

Today the CEO of JP Morgan Chase (which will cease to be my bank in 2 days!) was giving a business talk here in Portland. Needless to say, Occupy Portland was there, and I hung out and shouted slogans with them for an hour or so. This time I wasn't playing journalist so I got to take some pictures. And while I was protesting there in Portland, former home of Simon Benson, I wondered, not for the first time, what someone like him, a self-made immigrant logger, would think of this protest. As part of the wealthy, would he identify with the 1%? Would he keep Multnomah Falls to himself, use the money that could have built the water fountains instead to buy profitable equities? Maybe if he were born in this culture of greed you'd see protesters carted away at the foot of the waterfall. I can't say for certain why Benson was so invested in the community, and I certainly can't say that all the wealthy in the world are money-grubbing exploitation artists. But for the large number that are, like the high-ups at Chase and Citigroup, there need to be serious regulations. 

The police were ready across the street. Everyone knew there were quite a few (some said 12, some said 30) riot police around the corner in the even of violence. Nothing got out of hand, though, and these horses and a few bike-riding officers were all that were needed.

There were lots of news reporters as well as police. I felt that the event got much more attention than it deserved from each party (I'm pretty sure I got on TV). We weren't even protesting very well. We couldn't coordinate our cheers so every time we tried to make noise it died out after a few seconds. I liked this woman, though. Her sign says "Move Your Money," and she would say so to people who walked by on the sidewalk.

The woman from the picture at the top of the post being interviewed.