Christ Series

The Spirit of Christmas -- Gift Exchange

Money by Edwin Walter Kemmerer, Princeton, 1935

Goods were exchanged long before money existed, and the origin of exchange was in gifts. One would make a present to another in the hope of obtaining a present in return. Our modern customs in regard to Christmas and birthday presents are reminiscent of these primitive forms of exchange.

Mammon by Robert Graves, Annual Oration, London School of Economics, 1963

Let us go back farther in ancient history, to the idea of barter; and beyond that to the idea of obligatory gift-exchanges; and beyond that, to the still purer idea of unconditional gift. What we now call ‘finance’ is an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.

A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

Everyone could share the routine of necessary jobs for a few hours a day, and leave most of the time free for enjoyment, creativity, labors of love, and yet produce enough for an equal and ample distribution of goods.

Prophets and Profits

Money Changers

The Day Christ Died

Bloodline of Jesus

Constantine Hijacks Christ

Christ Climbed Down

Cross of Gold Speech

Holy Prepuce and Happy New Year

Calcata: Home to the Holy Prepuce

The Real Thanksgiving

Native American Series

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen, 1995, Excerpts

The true history of Thanksgiving reveals embarrassing facts. The Pilgrims did not introduce the tradition; Eastern Indians had observed autumnal harvest celebrations for centuries. Our modern celebrations date back only to 1863. During the Civil War, when the Union needed all the patriotism that such an observance might muster, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday. The Pilgrims had nothing to do with it; not until the 1890s did they even get included in the tradition.

The First Thanksgiving [1914] by Jennie A. Brownscombe (1850-1936), Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, Massachusetts

Elite Corporate Wealth

Power Elite Series

The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills, 1956, Excerpts

The very rich are now deeply entrenched in the higher corporate world of the twentieth-century American economy. Not great fortunes, but great corporations are the important units of wealth, to which individuals of property are variously attached. The corporation is the source of wealth, and the basis of the continued power and privilege of wealth. All the men and the families of great wealth are now identified with large corporations in which their property is seated. They form the corporate rich of America, whose wealth and power is today comparable with those of any stratum, anywhere or anytime in world history.

Those who have risen into the very rich have been economic politicians and members of important cliques who have been in positions permitting them advantages. Very few of those who have risen to great wealth have spent the major portions of their working lives steadily advancing from one position within and between the corporate hierarchies. It is not the far-seeing inventor or the captain of industry but the general of finance who becomes one of the very rich.

The chief executives and the very rich are not two distinct and clearly segregated groups. There has been an increase in personnel traffic that goes on between the military and the corporate realms.  They are both very much mixed up in the corporate world of property. Within the corporate world there is an elaborate network of interlocking directorships. ‘Interlocking Directorate’ is no mere phrase: it points to a solid feature of the facts of business life, and to a sociological anchor of the community of interest, the unification of outlook and policy, that prevails among the propertied class.

CEO-to-worker compensation gap shrinks in 2016 – but it's still 271-to-1

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/20/ceo-compensation-2016-report-wage-gap-workers-shrinks

20 Jul 2017

The CEOs of America’s largest firms made an average of $15.6m in compensation last year, or 271 times the annual average pay of the typical worker. The study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) looked at compensation, including share options and other benefits, for the top bosses of the largest 350 companies in the US in 2016. The 2016 CEO-to-worker compensation ratio of 271-to-1 is down from 299-to-1 in 2014 and 286-to-1 in 2015. But the report points out it is still “light years beyond the 20-to-1 ratio in 1965 and the 59-to-1 ratio in 1989”.

Executive pay '180 times average', report finds

http://www.bbc.com/news/28286264

13 Jul 2014

Executive pay has grown from 60 times that of the average worker to almost 180 times since the 1990s, according to a report. The High Pay Centre's report says that, without further action, trust in business will be damaged by the perception that an executive "elite" is reaping all the rewards from economic growth.

Class Distinctions 1780's

Constitution Series

The Anti-Federalists by Jackson Main, 1961, Edited Excerpts

The Untied Sates consisted in the 1780’s of a number of sections and subsections, each with a distinctive social structure, economy, and set of political objectives. The existence of classes was clearly recognized, three were distinguished. They were, as Patrick Henry expressed it, the well-born, the middle, and the lower ranks. Property, not birth, was the major factor in determining class structure.

The well-to-do were greater and lesser planters, merchants in towns and in cities, speculators and landlords, lawyers and ship owners, “River Gods” and “manor lords” – each had particular economic and political aspirations. They shared similar attitudes toward property and politics. The merchants and their allies were usually supported by those farmers who were producing for urban consumption or for export, and who recognized that their welfare depended upon commercial prosperity. The key here is not so much the size of the farm as its location with respect to the market. The great plantations, with their slaves and wealthy masters, developed along the rivers, not so much because of the alluvial soil as because of the transportation facilities.

Frontier farmers’ interests were not so connected with commerce. Typically, they were unable to produce a large surplus either because the land was inferior, or because they lacked the means [slaveless, for instance], or because they were too distant from a market. Since it was difficult to accumulate wealth under such circumstances, the vast majority were small property holders in a local society wherein wealth was more equally distributed.

Frontier society, from Maine to Georgia, did not include extremes of wealth and poverty. There was an embryonic class structure. Property was more equally distributed, and from the bottom to the top was but a short step. The men of the frontier wanted to keep it that way. Such people naturally subscribed to equalitarian or “leveling” principles, and held economic ideas favorable to debtors and members of the “middling sort” generally.