Opinion: Gringo view: The rich get richer

By Peter Rosenwald

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – “The rich get richer, and the poor get babies” is an old saw always underpinned by an unfortunate amount of truth. Just look at the cascade of anti-abortion legislation which followed the Texas law known as Senate Bill 8 (SB 8).

That law makes it unlawful for anyone to provide abortion care in Texas beyond six weeks of pregnancy. The likely US Supreme Court ruling to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the landmark law on abortion, is due any day now. In many US states, it will soon be impossible to terminate a pregnancy after six weeks, no matter if it is the result of rape or incest.

Guess who won’t have the resources to travel to states where abortion laws are less draconian, who can’t even afford to take a day off from work because of the mouths they have to feed. It certainly won’t be the rich and famous and the new plutocrats. Could it be possible that as the rich get richer, they are behind these new anti-abortion laws, which are less about protecting the unborn and more about making certain that their mothers are kept in poverty?

If we continue in the wayward direction we are headed, the privilege of speaking out against this or any other injustice – of free speech as enshrined in the US Constitution’s first amendment – will be strictly limited. It may be taken away for the foreseeable future as more and more of our modern communication channels fall into the politicized hands of billionaires.

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is headed to take over and reshape the iconic Twitter, a platform which has become the stomping ground for important voices. Musk is hardly without his strong views. As the ‘New Yorker’ reported, “The qualities that have helped make Musk into a Twitter super-user—or super-troll—aren’t necessarily the foundational attributes you’d hope for in the leader of a de-facto town square.

While we may continue to have the ‘right’ of free speech, the very tools which allowed people to speak up on social media will be curated by the likes of the opinionated Musk. He has promised a true virtual town square, but we’ll have to wait and see who gets to speak there and how widely the speech is broadcast.

There appears to be a growing trend among the tech billionaires to create major problems and then, through their power, buy the right to dictate the solutions. That’s what is happening more and more, and it goes to the heart of the ‘billionaire’ issue, which has filled the pages of Forbes and other publications recently, asking how so many newly minted billionaires have joined what was once an elite brotherhood. What will they do to make sure that they retain their status and power?

Discretion used to be in vogue among the rich and powerful. But not always.

There was a period in the 1880s dominated by the ‘robber barons’, of which John Jacob Astor and Andrew Carnegie are prime examples. The successful NBC TV series, ‘The Gilded Age’, provides a fine fictional portrait of a classic robber baron, flush with lots of ‘new money’ and his family’s efforts to join the rich man’s society.

The turn-of-the-century generation enjoyed their wealth but made certain that they were seen to be the philanthropists anointing them with public status. Carnegie Hall and Rockefeller Center are just two reminders of wealth in the public good.

Today’s crop of very, very rich such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, also give away substantial parts of their fortunes for causes in which they believe. And through their ‘Giving Pledge’ initiative, they have inspired the wealthiest people of the world to pledge to give at least half of their net worth to philanthropy. Founded in 2010, by 2017, 158 people had already signed the pledge, many of them billionaires.

They may be giving away big bucks, but In our increasingly politicized world, the billionaires are more and more calling the conservative shots. They pour money into political campaigns designed to make certain that the recipients of these funds will vote the way they want and not rock the metaphoric boat. Beyond that, they support political initiatives consistent with their prejudices.

Is this beginning to change as elitist universities like Harvard have lately recognized that much of their gilded histories have been on the backs of slaves and are searching for both understanding of their pasts and possible reparations? Let’s hope so.

No one can be sure. But the racist conservative voices on the right of the US political spectrum are doing their powerful best to make certain that their riches grow, and the lower economic classes have more babies.