Joining House to House, Field to Field

June 15, 2008

photo used by Creative Commons License, by Flickr user latham

Barbara Ehrenreich has a new essay up at The Nation. She describes the growing colonization of America's spectacular natural sites by the ultra-rich.. including Jackson Hole, Wyoming (pictured above). She writes:

Of all the crimes of the rich, the aesthetic deprivation of the rest of us may seem to be the merest misdemeanor. Many of them owe their wealth to the usual tricks: squeezing their employees, overcharging their customers and polluting any land they're not going to need for their third or fourth homes. Once they've made (or inherited) their fortunes, the rich can bid up the price of goods that ordinary people also need--housing, for example. Gentrification is dispersing the urban poor into overcrowded suburban ranch houses, while billionaires' horse farms displace rural Americans into trailer homes. Similarly, the rich can easily fork over annual tuitions of $50,000 and up, which has helped make college education a privilege of the upper classes.

Hurray for Ehrenreich! Someone needs to be calling attention to the fundamental re-alignment of wealth that has been going on for some time now in America.. and the rest of the world, too.

This issue interests us here at Old Roads not only because of the injustice of this growing disparity, but also because of the way this wealth re-creates the landscapes that ought to be our national inheritance. In slow motion our landscapes are coming to reflect the class divisions that exist here in America the beautiful. We believe that a correction of this massive re-alignment of wealth into the hands of the ultra-rich is long overdue and should be a top political priority of any progressive agenda. How could anyone argue differently in light of facts such as this: The richest 1 percent of Americans currently hold wealth worth $16.8 trillion, nearly $2 trillion more than the bottom 90 percent.

Ehrenreich mentions the transformation of places like Griggs, Idaho, once the home of low wage laborers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Now the money is pouring in, "transforming family potato farms into vast dynastic estates." The scenario reminded me of Isaiah's warning:

Ah, you who join house to house,
     who add field to field,
until there is room for no one but you,
    and you are left to live alone
    in the midst of the land!
The LORD of hosts has sworn in my hearing:
Surely many houses shall be desolate,
    large and beautiful houses without inhabitant.
[Isaiah 5.8-9]

These are the kinds of prophetic warnings we should hear more often. Goodness, but that might mean class warfare or something. And besides, these ultra-rich can be oh-so-generous and give a few million here and there to philanthropic undertakings. So I guess we'll just let them rearrange our world in gratitude.