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Charles Jaco has written opinion and commentary pieces for dozens of magazines and newspapers. Each week, read and comment on a fresh on-line version. The discussion page enables you to share your view points world wide. If you would like to make a comment go to the " Join the discussion" link below. If you would like to view past editorials visit the Editorial Archive.
Editorial: 1/26/2000
NOTE: This update to NewsViews is earlier than usual because I'll be watching the
Super Bowl from northern Greece after giving a speech on medicine and the modern media to
an international medical conference. When I agreed last summer, who knew the blue-and-
gold would be in the Super Bowl? Go Rams! We'll resume our normal schedule of new
essays on Fridays the first week in february.
My mother knew social theory when she saw it, which is why she would always cast
a jaundiced eye on any true beleiver who ran off at the mouth and say "It's always the
stuck pig that squeals the loudest."
This brings to mind the ultra-right wing talk radio porkers and their litters of
followers. You know who I mean: the ones who always simper about "class warfare"
whenever anyone questions the breaks, perks, and foibles of the well-heeled. But nary
a word comes from their snouts about real class warfare--corporate execs feathering their
own nests while cutting the benefits of employees; workers laid off in the name of
shipping jobs and profits overseas; eliminated the earned income tax credit while
cutting capital gains taxes.
Welcome to Super Bowl economics--we unwashed can press our faces to the glass and
look inside, but we can't actually afford a ticket. Example? face value for Superbowl
tickets are either $325 or $425. All the NFL teams get 75 per-cent of the tickets, while
the Commissioners office gets the other 25 per-cent to hand out to football fans like
executives from Budweiser, Xerox, Microsoft, and this week's dot com.
In a sort of trickle-up economics, the middle-classes and higher who could afford
season tickets in the first place, and who are lucky enough to get them, sell them to
ticket brokers. The brokers--who avoid anti-scalping laws by having offices and
business cards--re-sell them to tour packages. So the tickets now retail for anywhere
from $1,750 to $3,200. Super Bowl commemorative jackets go for $2,000.
Odd, then, that the same newspaper advertising these goodies costing most of
a year's tuition at a community college or small state school also runs these items a few
pages over: Venator (formerly Woolworth's) to close 358 stores and fire 3,700 workers.
Chevron oil to cut 3,500 jobs by mid-year in good news that helps boost their stock
price. Lockheed to lay off 2,500 employees.
No big deal, really. Just three small paragraphs tucked away inside the business
page. Only 9,700 jobs. Only 9,700 disrupted lives. The three items, together, took up
half the space of one large tour package ad for game tickets over in the sports section,
tickets and perks and tours going for a month's or two month's or three month's pay from
any of those people losing their jobs.
The upper-middle class and the ruling class are seeing their incomes sailing away
from the rest of us like a Kurt Warner pass. Being Americans, we aren't screaming for
their heads in a guillotine basket. We want some, too. That's why over 49 per-cent of
all American households--a record--are invested in the stock market. It's not an
unshakable faith in Adam Smith's invisible economic hand.
It is, instead, a faith that the deck is stacked, the game is rigged, and that the
only chance most of us ever have to have a secure financial future is to invest in the
stock market. It's the only thing out there that seems to appreciate at an
astonishing rate. It lets those of us who live off of our paychecks know how the
Superbowl class feels as it lives off of its trust funds and investments.
Who wants to be a millionaire? Everybody, Regis! Why? Greed, to be sure. But
there's sort of an economic Calvinism at work. All is ashes and wormwood, for we hear
the wings of the Angel of Death. Or in plain English--so many people were downsized,
rif'ed, fired, laid off, let go, terminated, and allowed to seek new opportunities in
the last decade that we know the corporate number crunchers could crunch us and our
families at any minute. Jim Morrison sang it best: the future's uncertain and the
end is always near.
So while those 9,700 people crammed into three tiny paragraphs figure out where
their world goes from here, the monied classes pay the equivalent of your 14 year-old's
final orthodontia bill for three drunken days in Atlanta. And while they slap each other
on the back and chortle about how the I.R.S. actually lets them deduct their luxury suite
digs, they whine about "class warfare" anytime someone points it out.
The Germans had a word for them. When the Nazis rounded up Jews to be gassed,
they selected a few prisoners to help herd the others into the poison showers and pick
through the gold ripped from their teeth. They called them "Soderkommandos."
Their descendents have styled hair, expensive suits, and smooth, oily expressions as
they glide from one luxury suite to another. They're eyes briefly note three paragraphs
on the business page. And they chuckle.
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