If there was ever an article that perfectly summed up the times we live in, it’d have to be the one published yesterday at The Guardian titled, At LA Airport’s New Private Terminal, the Rich Can Watch Normal People Suffer.
Here are a few excerpts:
The guiltiest pleasure at Los Angeles international airport’s (LAX) new private terminal for the mega-rich is not the plush, hushed privacy, or the beds with comforters, or the massages, or the coriander-scented soap, or the Willie Wonka-style array of chocolates and jelly beans, or the Napa Valley cabernet.
It is the iPad that sits on a counter at the entrance, with a typed little note: “Here is a glimpse of what you’re missing over at the main terminal right now.”
The screen shows travelers hauling bags through packed terminals, queuing in long lines, looking harassed and being swallowed into pushing, shoving paparazzi scrums – routine hazards for the 80 million people who pass through LAX each year.
“There they process thousands of people at a time, they’re barking. It’s loud. Here it’s very, very lovely,” said Gavin de Becker, who runs the new terminal, called Private Suite.
He wasn’t wrong. The $22m facility, the first of its kind in the US, opens on Monday, giving the 1% a whole new way to separate themselves from everyone else’s reality.
Instead of battling the traffic jams that clog LAX you reach Private Suite via the Imperial Highway, leading to a discreet turn-off where an armed guard checks your identity and pushes a button. Tall grey gates open and you enter the haven.
It is pricey. In addition to annual membership of $7,500, you pay $2,700 per domestic flight and $3,000 per international flight. The cost covers a group of up to four people. If you aren’t a member, you pay $3,500 for a domestic flight and $4,000 for international flight for a group of up to three people.
The fact that the super rich and powerful have it so much better than everyone else is nothing new. It’s been that way in pretty much every society you can think of, whether capitalist or communist. The real sickening thing is that the geniuses behind this terminal thought it’d be a nice touch to add a screen from which oligarchs can watch and jeer at the unwashed masses. The idea clearly being that this would add to the experience and provide additional entertainment for the mega-rich. This speaks to a special type of demented self-satisfaction that is not representative of a healthy society.
That said, it doesn’t really surprise me, because as I noted in the recent post, Student Loans and Healthcare – Two Issues that Will Define American Politics Going Forward:
I have absolutely no problem with wealth differences within a society, even large discrepancies are fine as long as the general population benefits substantially from overall growth trends. This is not the case in today’s economy.
I support a real free market economy where barriers to entry are low, and in which small business and competition thrives. Unfortunately, this is not the case in today’s economy. Rather, America has largely become a neo-feudal society where a mass of debt slaves are lorded over by government protected, monopolistic, rent-seeking oligarchs and racketeers.
Societies work when people think the system is fair enough and have genuine opportunity for success and standard of living improvement. Societies work when the people who become fabulously wealthy are individuals who have created a product or service that benefits society at large. In contrast, people shouldn’t become wealthy by preying on their fellow citizens and driving them into destitution and debt bondage, but that’s precisely what is happening in many industries today. Our society rewards the worst sort of behavior, and as we observed in the aftermath of the financial crisis, protects and further empowers white collar criminals for destroying the global economy.
How long before they bring back the Colosseum?
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In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
I’m reminded of the story about the Roman patrician that was berating a plebian shopkeeper for not being deferential enough when dealing with his “betters”.
The shopkeeper replied “My family’s nobility begins in me while your family’s nobility ends in you.”
Stop flying. It’s that simple.
Bankrupt Government Air! (lets not pretend U.S. air carriers aren’t FedGov operations)
60 days or less. That’s all it would take (until they drop all pretense and nationalize air travel… FSA Air).
If not for the FAA and the government protection of the horrible airline CARTEL, EVERYONE would have access to good customer service, decent treatment, non-invasive security screening, non-existent lines, comfortable airline seats with plenty of room, etc. BLAME GOVERNMENT, while they enable the wealthiest to bypass the misery they have installed to victimize the rest of us.
When people feel/believe that they do not have a chance in life to better themselves they will turn to things like communism or strongmen.If we’re not careful,we will reach that point.
I once read about Karl Marx being asked whether communism would succeed in America.He said communism was not for America because the poor could rise in America and there was much back and forth between the levels of society.
It’s approaching the point where it is no longer like that.
I’m a simple man. I don’t want fancy things. I want a car that gets me from here to there. Hot dog on a grill over foie gras. I don’t mind standing in line to fly. I also have no grievance against the rich. The idea that people would be secretly laughing at me, my family or any other regular person – makes me want to slit their throats.
Greetings,
Airline travel was one of the very last places where the elites mingled with the unwashed masses. Now, I see this as a very dangerous move as the elites continue to surround themselves by yes men and ass kissers. That is never a good thing.
Case in point: I was transferred to a new Battalion and someone noticed in my military records that I could type 95 words per minute. Though I wasn’t trained for it, I was sent to Battalion HQ to S3 (plans and operations) to work directly for the Colonel.
Now, I lived with the grunts and often had to train with the grunts but work took me right up to the apex of power in our organization. So, I got to listen in once a week while the company commanders briefed the Colonel on all the wonderful things going on and all the amazing training that was taking place. Living in both worlds, I knew that what was being said was not true but, then again, the company commanders were getting their briefings from the lieutenants running the platoons. Where the lies began, nobody knows.
Our Colonel, a guy that never bothered to actually find out for himself what was going on, believed that he had combat ready troops that had been trained for their mission while I knew that the training he thought was taking place NEVER took place. What he really had were 1100 drunks and slackers and a bunch of officers that fed him bullshit.
The elites are now surrounded by people feeding them lies and bullshit. Like our colonel, they believe that they are adored and worshiped and that everything is going according to plan. It isn’t. What is happening at LAX is further proof of this and that they now take amusement from our suffering suggests peak isolation. It wont end well.
No elitest structured society where the few lord power over the many ever stands on its own for long . We had a close to fair and equal treatment governing and protecting all citizens but it has decayed into a special intrest side show and the elites fund the enforcer class to keep us in line . As time passes and decay continues to worsen , respect for law erodes and then the shit hits the fan.
People are already taking names of the elites and stocking guns and ammunition.
Nothing has happened ….yet….
But at some unknown point, the system will be pushed too far and hell with break loose.
I began boycotting the airlines when they brought the TSA into them. The problems would go away if everyone would just stop flying long enough to hurt them where it matters most to them. Their bottom line. When they meet the demands then resume flying if you must.
Blessings:-}
Zooming in on Southwest pilots turning into the terminal got me questioned by airport police, I was not on the list, heartbreaking. Two pretty women with guns in the terminal refused to frisk me, raised my arms high, asked wallmart greeter to check me out, she said I was too easy. How did she know that I had prostituted myself all those years for the rich? Could it have been the Armini boots I was wearing? Only a few trips to the terminals across the tarmac from the frisking of the common folk, one TSA agent seen, no checking for terrorists in Cessna, Gulfstream, Lear jet, and helicopter land. Two weeks ago, lots of sirens, emergency vehicles everywhere, went to the park, parked next to pickup with personal belongings in back, man liked my ranting and raving about chemtrails and such, dhs people showed up in the parking lot, blue shirts got out, she started bitching about me not presenting solutions, on the defensive about exposing evil again, I left. Texas has work, wonder why they left. Americans are not terrorists and neither are people thousands of miles away, the enemy is within.
The emperors have no clothes.