“Uncle Pennybags” had a huge smile on his face as the Senate passed its Robin Hood-in-reverse tax bill last weekend. It’s no secret the rich have engineered the real-life game of Monopoly to ensure they win at the expense of a multitude of losers; studies have concluded that the top 0.1 percent of U.S. households control as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.
It’s clear the game has entered a new phase: Monocracy. Economic power translates into political power, and the power player on the board just snuck through a permanent corporate tax cut and other sweetheart deals for the rich on the backs of the rest of us. It’s time to wake up and see the game is rigged, that rule by a powerful minority is the law of the land.
Instead of fighting one another over crumbs, it’s high time for us to change the rules and cooperate to ensure one player doesn’t continue to control both the bank and the ballot box. Individually we can do little, but working together at the community level we can fight back before it’s game over for all of us.
