I grew up in the middle of Wisconsin in a working-class family of seven. I was the son of a son of a son of a son of a son of a dairy farmer and the first generation to not have the farm thanks to conservative financial policy in the late ‘70s. Regardless, my Dad sold seed and we knew enough farmers to get a decent price on ground beef. And with three sons, two daughters, and Mom and Dad to feed we had a lot of casseroles, hotdishes, and one-pot suppers, always with bread and butter on the side to fill you up if the food ran out. Whether it was cheeseburger macaroni, creamed hamburger, chili, spaghetti, shepherd’s pie, or my Mom’s own legendary Bordertown casserole, there was hamburger several times a week. As a result, I’m a pretty beefy fella.
Way back before the world lost its mind, I wrote an article in this here circular talking about how my wife and I were trying to go meatless more often. The decision was rooted more in economics and personal health than any scary stories about the evils of meat, but boy howdy that was one of my most contentious pieces of writing before I decided to start regularly sparring with local trolls for fun. It’s not 1993 anymore and your wages (which have been kept artificially low for 30 years now) don’t go as far as they used to. A pound of hamburger, once the cornerstone of my family table, is now a luxury. And yet, I see many red-faced howlers going on and on about how policies like the Green New Deal are “coming for your hamburgers.” Too late, chumps, capitalism already took most of mine away.
Here’s a pop quiz: What will make it harder to have ground beef in the future? A system where the farmers work cooperatively and don’t have to answer to massive money-grubbing processing corporations, or a system that is already leading to climate nightmares, antibiotic-resistant superbugs, and the overall weakening of the agricultural soil overall? If you ask me, continuing down this crazy capitalist route where we don’t think about what might happen next week so we can make an extra $3.50 today will have a greater effect on our ability to get hamburgers in 50 years than a return to smaller, local control of agriculture that puts people above profits. But hey, that’s why I call it psychocapitalism: let the world burn while we count our money, who cares? The problem isn’t that hamburgers exist, it’s that the system that has been created to provide hamburgers only cares about making money and literally nothing else.
I’ll quote from a NYMag article profiling billionaire “Mean” Jeff Greene back in 2012: “You’re in Palm Beach, you’re in the Hamptons, you think you’re so secure… Do you really think if you had 50,000 angry people coming across the river, you think you’re safe?” He was speaking about how he wanted to renovate his property in Sag Harbor, and he wants to make sure it has strong fences. Greene grew up “middle class” and also said “People think that Obama is this leftist, socialist guy… But I don’t think they understand what people can go for when they are at the end of their line.” Greene is aware that what he and other billionaires are doing is wrong, and he is aware that once folks like you and me figure out how badly we’ve been hosed, we’re going to get mad. His solution? Not to try to make things better for you and me, but to put plenty of fences between us and him.
The choice now could not be clearer: we have to try to make this work for ourselves and our loved ones, and not expect the oligarchy to lift a finger to help us. They know what they’re doing, and they’re darn sure planning for something worse than a day with no hamburgers. At this point, I’m more than willing to tighten my belt and cut my Whoppers down to once a month if it means we won’t have the riots.
Source: https://nymag.com/news/business/themoney/jeff-greene-2012-8/
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