One of the stories from the French Revolution is about what Queen Marie Antoinette said of the peasants’ inability to buy bread: “Let them eat cake.” She probably did not actually say that, and some evidence suggests that she was actually concerned about the fate of the poor. It was, however, generally believed that the wealthy just didn’t care how the poor were suffering and seems to have figured into the emotional fervor that led to the French Revolution. The aftermath of the Revolution made the the Guillotine a famous device for executions.
If you haven’t seen the old black & white movie of A Tale of Two Cities, it is worth viewing if only to gain understand of the tenor of the times. Throughout history, something seems to happen when the rich get too rich and the poor get too poor. The Russian Revolution and the various revolutions in China were essentially about the extreme divisions in wealth. Unfortunately, in the States we seem to seem to be moving in that direction again. The US is currently the “big dog” on the world stage, so what happens here influences economies around the world.
At this time, the US is considering gifting the rich with additional tax breaks, which will not only make the rich even richer, the legislation will also make the poor poorer by taking money out of programs that typically help those not already wealthy. We have recently seen cuts in social welfare programs, and subsidies have been “rearranged” so that the wealthy benefit and those less fortunate lose. This echoes the parable of the talents from the New Testament, even while demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of the parables of Jesus. Certainly those who claim to be Christian and to have Christian values should be aware of ministering to the poor. After all, what does it profit those who are rich if they gain the world but lose their souls?
The United States, is not the only country with a lopsided division between wealthy and poor. To a greater or lesser extent, all countries have an uneven division of wealth. Things didn’t start out that way. At one time, all people everywhere were hunter-gatherers. Some had more access to resources than others (deserts don’t provide much in the way of resources). Also, resources were redistributed by warfare. In all cultures everywhere, however, some ended up owning most of the resources. In Potlatch cultures, in which the wealthy could gain status by giving away or destroying items of value, the rich still stayed rich. In most primitive cultures, the rich owned slaves—and had a “let them eat cake” philosophy. People don’t become refugees without good reason. When they can live relatively comfortably and in relative safety, people are usually content to stay home. We owe the exploration of the planet primarily to those who did not have everything they desired in their countries of origin.
We have, however, run out of habitable land to explore and populate. People who are struggling to survive in their home territories are driven by survival instincts to go places they think will provide greater safety and more opportunities. Mass migrations are the result of major problems surviving in a specific region or location. People immigrate because they want to survive and believe that it will be difficult for them to do so in their current location. Migration itself is a risk, so remaining in the current location needs to seem even riskier for people to seek new territory.
If we had a Planet B and the means for people to get there and explore, we might expect many of the poor to risk going there in the hope of a new life, just as Europeans flocked to the New World in spite of the risks of travel and establishing new homes in a new country. At this time, however, we have no Planet B, so people struggling to survive will have to do something here. We have a long history of seeing what happens when too many are squeezed too hard and become willing to do whatever it takes to increase their chances.
How close are we to the edge? It’s hard to say. The French Royalty had no clue. I don’t think the Tsarist autocracy expected the trouble they found themselves in, either. In one way or another, history repeats itself. One of the things about revolutions is that they aren’t obvious until after they have occurred. Those in charge are always the most surprised. The current question is whether we have learned enough from history to be able to avoid having it repeat itself.
