In “Upper Rung America,” Things Break but People Aren’t Left to Hang

A: If you run a pump and dump on rungs you know will fail and your dorm buddies at the Fed cover you bonuses, then … yes!

Your remark on shared problems and shared solutions is totally on target. The question the cover is asking is rooted in the bogus Milton Friedman daydream that the core of human behavior is selfishness. As though my own upward mobility is the extent of my concern over the system’s legitimacy. Totally bogus question. It’s hard not to suspect that the messengers of corporate consumer culture don’t have such a fetishistic fixation on individualism because it discourages people from correlating their struggles, asking rude questions, organizing protests.

3. As an analogy for America and our economic food chain, how could two non-consecutive rungs possibly shatter at the same time? 

I see a ladder damaged by the weight of the previous users, those now on top. I gather those on top are not troubled by the damage they did as they climbed, feel no responsibility to those that might want to follow. In fact, I suspect they’d like that guy holding on to turn loose and go away so they can pull the ladder up after them.

Like the repeal of the Bank of America $5/month debit card fee, this is a small yet significant sign that OWS has changed the parameters of political discussion.

    –bks

 A ladder is a poor  symbol of life in America.  OWS has substituted  a lifeboat analogy, because we’re all in the same boat.  The corporatists  don’t want to see that because changing their focus from profit to protecting life is Hard Work. for Time-Warner etc. 

I don’t see an Italian leather shoe kicking out the top rungs, so therefore this analogy is incomplete.