A Question

If it's wrong to steal the wealth from rich people in order to make poor people less poor, then it's just as wrong to steal the labor from poor people in order to make rich people richer.

Having believed that first part while purposefully ignoring the second part is what haunts me about my own career history, and what leads me to believe that the flirtation with economic justice we've indulged in since the 1930s is all but over.  We're sliding back into the old ways of doing things and so we need to call our system by it's more suitable name: Kleptonomics.

I've had a bad feeling when thinking about the downward pressure on real wages and earnings here in the US over the last few decades.  It's almost as if somebody wants us to feel guilty about our success in order to make us more willing to do more and to accept less in return for it; while workers in other countries are portrayed as making "great strides" and how they're humble and so they're grateful for whatever crumbs the noble job-creators are willing to let fall from their tables; and so "why can't you spoiled rotten Americans just take whatever we give you and shut up about it?"

While we're being distracted by game shows and disaster porn and attention whores, the real meanings and merits of Socialism and Capitalism are being flipped and perverted until we have no idea what any of it means at all.

In confusion there is opportunity - somebody benefits while the credit and the culpability are shifted to those who least deserve them.

It all sounds way too conspiracy-theory-ish, but y'know, I may be paranoid but that don't mean nobody's out to get me.