Survival of the Richest: How the Corruption of the Marketplace and the Disparity of Wealth Created the Greatest Conspiracy of All

229 Pages·2017·2.7 MB·English

by  Donald Jeffries

Copyright © 2017 by Donald Jeffries Foreword © 2017 by Richard Syrett
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover design by Rain Saukas
Cover photo credit: iStock Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-2065-7
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-51072066-4
Printed in the United States of America
This book is dedicated to the millions of anonymous souls such as my parents, grandparents, and great-
grandparents, who have been forced to live with constant financial uncertainty, because of a system that is
stacked against them.
C
ONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1 Are They Worth It?
Chapter 2 Deindustrialization and Free Trade
Chapter 3 Part-Time Jobs
Chapter 4 Special Perks of the Wealthy
Chapter 5 Hating the Poor
Chapter 6 Huey Long
Chapter 7 Does Anyone Even Care?
Chapter 8 How Failure Keeps Succeeding
Chapter 9 The Third-World Standard
Chapter 10 Natural Talent
Chapter 11 The Good Old Days
Chapter 12 Why What Pays What
Chapter 13 Profits Before Progress
Chapter 14 Keeping the Masses Down
Chapter 15 The Best and the Brightest
Chapter 16 No Admissions, No Gratitude
Chapter 17 The Future of Wealth Distribution
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
F
OREWORD
THE RECENT US PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN pitted a rude, crude, alpha-male, reality
TV star and real estate tycoon against a political insider, opportunist, and fair-
weather progressive feminist.
And for the first time in living memory, the battle lines were cleanly drawn
between two diametrically opposed camps. On one side was a cabal of globalists
who view western liberal democracies as an annoying obstacle to the free flow
of capital. Once content to pull strings from the shadows, a perceived change in
the wind—namely, a nationalist fever sweeping Europe—forced them out of
their lairs and into the glare. For their latest standard-bearer, they awkwardly
shoehorned onto the ballot, by hook and by crook (but mostly by crook) the tired
and insipid Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Across the irreconcilable breach, the brash, trash-talking disruptor Donald J.
Trump defied all odds and won the White House and the hearts and minds of the
disaffected with a barrage of plainspokenness and rough-hewn truths. His ball
cap–ready battle cry in defense of the sanctity and sovereignty of the nation-state
was a middle finger in the face of political, corporate, and media elites. Like
JFK’s pledge “to smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the
wind,” Trump’s anti-globalist screed may yet still prove to be his coffin’s final
nail.
Against this revolutionary and historic backdrop, Don Jeffries has once again
proven himself to be a true and righteous chronicler of our times and for our
times. In Survival of the Richest, he shines a disinfecting light on the dark
insidious players that have, over the course of only two generations, conspired in
a process that has led to the hollowing out of the flyover states and the virtual
collapse of America’s middle class.
Jeffries tackles his subject—the root causes of economic inequality—with all
the finesse of a back-alley brawler. Understanding the urgency of America’s
perilous decline, he spends little time on nuance and subtlety.
Like Rowdy Piper’s immortal drifter, John Nada in the John Carpenter film
They Live, Jeffries has come to chew bubble gum and kick ass. Don Jeffries is all
out of bubble gum.
—Richard Syrett is a veteran radio and television broadcaster based in
Toronto, and a frequent guest-host on Coast to Coast AM.
I
NTRODUCTION
Poor—Persons who are unable to pay their taxes. For example, Vanderbilt.
—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary THERE HAVE BEEN WEALTHY
PEOPLE and poor people throughout the course of history. One cannot exist
without the other, much as no one would understand what “beautiful” meant, if
there wasn’t a contrasting “ugly” to compare it with, and teenagers would have
no idea who the “popular” kids were, if there weren’t corresponding “unpopular”
kids. How many organizations—from Country Clubs to Freemasons—would
exist without exclusionary rules? What good is a group, after all, if anyone can
be a member? Rich and poor, success and failure, are man-made constructs.
However, when the medium of exchange in our society, which largely
determines the quality of everyone’s lives, is being distributed in an obscenely
unfair way, then the vast majority of the people, who aren’t benefiting from the
present arrangement, have a right and an obligation to demand change.
This book is not meant to be an attack upon the rich. Without wealthy
statesmen, which nearly all the Founding Fathers were, the United States would
still be a colony of England. Historically, many rich individuals heeded the call
to public service and felt an obligation to look out for the interests of their fellow
human beings. They had a sense of history and were principled enough to care
about liberty and justice. Joseph P. Kennedy urged all his children to enter
public service, reminding them regularly of the old adage, “To whom much is
given, much is expected.” Can anyone picture the Koch brothers, Warren Buffet,
and their ilk—the closest approximations we have today to George Washington,