Gates of Hell

Bill Gates gave a speech at the American Interprise Institute this week, in which he proclaimed that due to automation a lot of jobs are going to be disappearing over the next several years creating mass unemployment and that governments should combat this by kowtowing to corporations even more than they already do by eliminating corporate and payroll taxes, keeping the minimum wage low, and thus helping corporations keep people on their payroll.

Anyone who believes corporations will follow through on their end of this bargain should governments give them even more welfare has not been paying much attention to what the Reagan Revolution has wrought for those of us in the working class over the last thirty some odd years.

I've never thought much of Bill Gates--most of his gains have been ill-gotten, his being worth $60 billion dollars hasn't made anyone's life but his own better, and his philanthropic overtures have always struck me as being akin to Michael Corleone trying to buy his salavation through the Church in Godfather III.  Though he shares a lot more in common with your average psychopath than he does with most of us, at the very least you would think amassing such a fortune would come with a great deal of shrewdness.

Apparently not.

It takes a special kind of obliviousness (and Gates isn't alone among the 1% for that) to think that legions of people are going to be hunky-dory with minimum wage jobs, substandard healthcare, Potterville Housing, and gruel for three meals a day while Gates and his ilk amass fortunes that stem from their societal worth about as much as a cat fart stems from the antics of the man on the moon.

Gates and others in the 1% who think the path forward is embracing plutocracy are going to find themselves on the losing end of the modern version of the French Revolution.

Peace,
emaycee