The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'monopoly man.'
Growing up, my family didn't have much. Then living with chronic illnesses as an adult placed me in deep poverty for many years. Throughout much of this time, I advocated adversarial class politics. I favored eating the rich. Funnily enough, this perspective started to change during Occupy Wall Street.
This movement motivated me to get clear about how the economy worked. It also invited me to pay attention to media portrayals of social issues arising from the unfair economy. Occupy characterized our great struggle as a contest between the 99% and the 1%. Yet the more I learned, the less it looked that way to me.
The financial sector and its regulators were all hopelessly corrupt. Predatory behavior had become the norm. As a society, we'd long been in a position to eliminate poverty, yet no one seemed to think that was a good idea. Meanwhile, editorial after editorial in major newspapers promoted the idea that the real problem was income inequality, and that the solution to this problem was to tax the rich.
When I was living in poverty, a tax on the rich wouldn't have helped me at all. It would have been irrelevant to me, and to everybody else who was barely getting by. True, it was crazy that some people were worth so much more than others. But unfair as that was, it seemed more like an afterthought than any kind of central issue.
These days, I know a small handful of millionaires personally. Some were self-made, others inherited their fortunes. These friends are all very different, yet without exception, they all behave as if their wealth increases their social or civic responsibilities. One is deeply involved in local politics and the others dedicate significant resources to philanthropy. They're all 1%, and they're definitely not the enemy.
If there is an enemy, it's financial predators and the regulators who support them. Protecting the rest of us from these maniacs would likely require systemic change. In order to peacefully bring about such change, many in the 1% would have to be involved. Otherwise the change could never happen.
On a deeper level, since the internet put everything at our fingertips, I feel like class politics have become little more than populist outpourings of lazy thinking and unproductive anger. If you get people resenting each other over income disparities, no one ever mentions the real issues. Instead they just argue endlessly about how to stick it to the rich.
Admittedly, the millionaires I know may be exceptional. I've come across a few rich people who were absolutely terrible, and maybe that's not unusual. But I don't judge one by the actions of another. I never liked when I was judged for being poor.
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