text
( the URL of this article is
http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Globalism/14shalom.htm
I do not know whether this article appeared in print in
Z Magazine.)
"This summer, the United Nations Development Programme issued its annual Human Development Report.
The document is a stinging indictment of globalization and its horrific impact on the well-being of so many of the world's people. According to the Report, in developing countries nearly 1.3 billion people do not have access to clean water, one in seven children of primary school age is out of school, 840 million people are malnourished, and an estimated 1.3 billion people live on incomes of less than $1 a day. ... This human misery is not a consequence of globalization's insufficient advance. 'More than 80 countries still have per capita incomes lower than they were a decade or more ago', comments the Report. In sub-Saharan African and some other least developed countries, per capita incomes are lower than they were in 1970. And some of the countries that are worst off are those that are most integrated into the global economy. Exports account for close to 30% of the gross domestic product of impoverished sub-Saharan Africa, for example, compared to less than 20% for the industrial nations. In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, where privatization and the market have expanded most rapidly, 'the dismantling and weakening of the welfare state have meant cuts and deterioration in services in health and education -- across the board -- contributing to the deteriorating human outcomes. Life expectancy was lower in 1995 than in 1989 in 7 of 18 countries -- falling as much as five years since 1987. Enrolment in kindergarten declined dramatically.' The gap between rich and poor has, in the words of the report, today "reached grotesque proportions." In 1960, the countries with the wealthiest fifth of the world's people had per capita incomes 30 times that of the poorest fifth. By 1990, the ratio had doubled to 60 to one, and by 1995 it stood at 74 to one. And the Asian economic crisis of the past few years has exacerbated the marginalization of the poorest countries. Within nations, the income gap has been growing as well. Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have experienced "the fastest rise in inequality ever." ... A recent study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (reported in the New York Times of Sept. 5, 1999) found that the richest 1 percent of (United States) Americans earned as much after taxes as the poorest 100 million; in 1977 the top 1 percent only (!) had as much as the bottom 49 million. The poorest 20 percent are making less today in real terms (adjusting for inflation) than they were in 1977. The assets of the world's three richest people, notes the Human Development Report, are more than the combined GNP of all least developed countries on the planet. ... The assets of the 200 richest people in 1998 were more than the total income of 41% of the world's people. The Report observes that a measly 1% tax on the wealth of these 200 people could fund primary education for all the world's children who lack access to schooling."
Folks, make four or five print copies of this page
and show them to people you know. Email this info to four or five people.
Now is a good time.
The URL of this article on this page is
http://members.tripod.com/~doggo/doggsummations.html#undp
"The following statistics are a 1991 comparison of the United States with Northern Europe, Japan and Canada. The comparison is especially revealing because all these nations are more liberal and democratic than we are. Their voter turn-outs are 50 percent higher; their corporate lobbying systems are much less developed; their taxes are higher, their safety nets larger, their societies more equal, their labor unions stronger."
"Every four years, as the November presidential election draws near, I have the same daydream: that I don't know or care who the president of the United States is. More importantly, I don't need to know or care. I don't have to vote or even pay attention to debates. I can ignore all campaign commercials. There are no high stakes for my family or my country. My liberty and property are so secure that, frankly, it doesn't matter who wins. I don't even need to know his name. ...
For those who do not vote and do not care about politics, their liberty is secure. They have no access to special rights, yet their rights to person, property, and self government are never in doubt. For that reason and for all practical purposes, they can forget about the president and, for that matter, the rest of the federal government. It might as well not exist. ...
As you may have already assumed, my daydream is was what our system was designed to be in every detail. It was created by the U.S. Constitution, or, at least, the system that the vast majority of Americans believed they were getting with the U.S. Constitution. It was the world's great free republic, however unrecognizable it is today.
This was the country where people were to govern themselves and to plan their own economy, not have it planned by Washington, D.C."
"The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful."A must-read.
"Having lost our firm credulity about just what man (sic) "is" and what society is "for", we have become confused about what is relevant, useful, or efficient. Thomas Huxley or Thorstein Veblen were thinking of a "scientific society" where people were critical and modest, accurate and objective; where they shared in an international community of inquiry; where they lived "naturally", without superstitions or taboos; and they hoped to make this come to be for every child. Is anybody saying anything like this? ...
In my opinion , science has become a superstition for both the mass of the people and scientists themselves. ...
Our hope was, during the Enlightenment, to dissolve all such magical fears. Tyrannies and castes were undermined; religion was refuted; progressive education began to be invented; and the claims of science, too, became modest (I think that this was the chief contribution of Hume). (perhaps a reference to the "Prometheanism" of such earlier investigators as Bacon and Newton.) The climax of this effort against superstition was the amazing synthesis of Kant, who managed to combine Hume and Rousseau with his own background of astronomer and pietist. But the history has turned out otherwise. For political, economic, and technological reasons, magical fears have not been dissolved. Calling this antiscientific bent Luddite, machine-breaking, is to miss the public tone, which is rather a murderousness toward the scientists as persons, more like anti-Semitism. * Wiser scientists, like Huxley (apparently Thomas H., based on the context) or Helmholtz or Einstein, have been sensitive to the danger of scientific estrangement, but their efforts of a hundred years to enlighten the people have not suceeded."
by Paul Goodman,
originally printed as "The Human Uses of Science" in
Commentary, DEC 1960
and included as
"'Applied Science' and Superstition"
in Utopian Essays and Practical Proposals.
Highly recommended
-- see also pages on this site on / Humanism / and
/ Modernism /
"Western culture has not survived this century; we float and make our lives, says Steiner, from the surface wreckage, the post-culture, and in the depths the largest fragments anchor vast, proliferating reefs of coral scholarship. ...
The death of the culture is not just the breaking of the chain of tradition, of reference. The confidence of the culture has been shattered as well. The automatic, unself-conscious elitism it once possessed is gone --- Western culture is unique for its assaults on itself --- and the unforced ease with which it distinguished and evaluated, created hierarchy and gave itself a high place therein is lost to all but the fatuous. That the great events of our century --- the ``Thirty Year's War'' of 1914--1945, the genocides, the bureaucratization of terror and torture and death, the real possibility of deliberate human extinction at the press of a button --- that these were even possible would have struck those of prior centuries as ``nightmarish jokes.'' The optimistic beliefs of those centuries, of the prior tradition --- that there is progress, that the humanities make one humane, that ``the future is holy'' --- in their turn begin to seem like nightmarish jokes."
What is the heart of the problem? The hundreds of pages and statistics on this website make one long, sustained and repeatedly proven argument: that inequality of income is the basis of nearly all of our society's ills. Both Harvard and Berkeley have studied income inequality in all 50 states, and have found that states with higher income inequality have all the following social problems:
- Higher rates of homicide.
- Higher rates of violent crime.
- Higher costs per person for police protection.
- Higher rates of incarceration.
- Higher rates of unemployment.
- A higher percentage of people receiving income assistance and food stamps.
- More high-school dropouts.
- Less state funds spent per person on education.
- Fewer books per person in the schools.
- Poorer educational performance, including worse reading skills, worse math skills.
- Higher infant mortality rates.
- Higher death rates for all age groups.
- Higher heart disease.
- Higher cancer rates.
- A greater percentage of people without medical insurance.
- A greater proportion of babies born with low birth weight.
- A greater proportion of the population unable to work because of disabilities.
- A higher proportion of the population using tobacco.
- A higher proportion of the population being sedentary (inactive).
- Higher costs per-person for medical care.
from "a kind of Pontius Pilate feeling"
by Jay Hanson (04/01/97)
"...most individuals believe in things that are untrue or unjustified or both: most people possess a lot of unreliable knowledge and, what's worse, they act on that knowledge! Other ways of knowing, and there are many in addition to science, are not reliable because their discovered knowledge is not justified. Science is a method that allows a person to possess, with the highest degree of certainty possible, reliable knowledge (justified true belief) about nature. The method used to justify scientific knowledge, and thus make it reliable, is called the scientific method."
-- From the superb
An Introduction to Science :
Scientific Thinking and the Scientific Method
by Steven Schafersman
( or
here,
here,
here, or
here )
"I'm often asked, "Just what is science, anyway?" Here's how I answer:
Simply put, science is an organized system for finding out how the universe operates. Its beauty lies in the fact that it is perpetually questioning its own decisions in order to produce even more accurate statements about the world. Science does not declare "facts" -- it makes statements that describe how nature works, statements that are always subject to correction, revision, or refinement. Science approaches "truth" but can never really get there, since we live in a universe that constantly surprises us with its wonders and complexity. But we do have an excellent understanding -- through science and its methods -- of how to control, fashion, handle -- and sometimes alter -- this incredible world in which we find ourselves, willy-nilly. Science is a tool, not a final statement. It is never dogmatic, always ready to accept new paradigms, and totally flexible. It is the single most powerful means we have of understanding ourselves and our world, and probably the most important accomplishment of our species."
"To this day, most philosophers suffer from Plato's disease: the assumption that reality fundamentally consists of abstract essences best described by words or geometry. (In truth, reality is largely a probabilistic affair best described by statistics.)"
"The modern world is held to be the deliberate creation (with some unintended consequences) of the modern philosophers -- namely, the Enlightenment, which gave birth to both scientific- technological progress and the liberal ideology of social-political progress. The Enlighteners argued (though still covertly) that instead of hiding philosophy, philosophers should reform society to make it more hospitable to philosophy: in particular, by undertaking the "project" of modern science, by which reason masters nature and provides material gratifications -- safety, health and wealth .... Physical science and technology would provide the know-how, while a new kind of regime, liberalism, would provide the conditions of liberty and equality enabling men to pursue their self-interest. ...Links are mine -- ed.
(But in so doing) philosophy inadvertently exposed men to certain hard truths, truths too hard for them to bear: that there are no gods to reward good or punish evil; that no one's patria is really any better than anyone else's; that one's ancestral ways are merely conventional. This leads to nihilism, epitomized by the listless, meaningless life of bourgeois man, or to dangerous experiments with new gods -- gods like the race and the Fuehrer."
"... I used to say that people want certain things to be true in order to fit them into their personal philosophies; now, I say that they need them to be true. Personally, I believe I would have no problem if my world-view were radically altered by the introduction -- for example -- of real "mental" spoon-bending. Yes, it would be a shock, but I'd survive it, and I would incorporate it appropriately into my philosophy. Regardless of how correct we think we are, if we lose sight of other people's sensitivities, we lose our battle. I admit that I'm rather blunt in my approach to such matters, but a closer study of my methods and my results might show that my approach works, though a few receiving noses might end up somewhat bent."
" 'Why, of course, the people don't want war', Goering shrugged. 'Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.'
'There is one difference', I pointed out. 'In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.'
'Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
"... what is more extraordinary is his capacity to co-opt the populist style of his adversaries at a time when the Republicans are more than ever the party of extraordinary wealth.
The men and women in the ballroom had paid a minimum of $1,500 (£900) for their hot dogs, and almost all of them had contributed much, much more. The single night brought the Republican party a total of $14m. Mr Bush has so far raised $83m for his primary campaign, more than all nine Democratic contenders put together, even though he does not have an opponent inside his party.
This financial superiority flows from the simple fact that the president's backers are far wealthier than those of his rivals. More of them give the maximum contribution to a presidential campaign of $2,000, and more of them are chief executives who vie with each other to become honoured Republican "Rangers" or "Pioneers", by putting together $200,000 and $100,000 "bundles" of contributions from their employees and friends. ...
The richest 1% of Americans now own well over 40% of their nation's wealth. It is a skewed distribution that sets the US apart from other modern industrialised nations. In Britain, widely viewed in America as the embodiment of social stratification, the richest 1% owns a mere 18% of the wealth.
These disparities are, of course, not solely the work of the Bush administration. The economic division of the country has been under way for 20 years. (If, like me, you are suspicious of both major U.S. parties, you may want to examine a page on this site on / The Greens /). After a long period of levelling incomes and wealth after the second world war, inequality began to rise exponentially from 1980, driven principally by the boom in stock prices and the decline in unions. ...
The Bush cabinet also stands out for its big money background. Every member is a millionaire and, the Centre for Public Integrity says, its total net worth is more than 10 times that of the Clinton cabinet. ...
For outsiders, the absence of class-based politics is the enduring mystery of American society. Among US analysts it is a matter of ideological disagreement.
David Brooks, a commentator at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, believes the divide is cultural rather than economic. It is the divide between the urban, cosmopolitan and liberal culture of the coasts where there are "sun-dried tomato concoctions" on restaurant menus -- what he calls Blue America -- and the conservative, church-going, gun-owning, patriotic and mainly white culture of Red America.
Red America eats meatloaf and votes for George Bush because it identifies with his cultural values. Its people are not envious of the top 1% of the population, Mr Brooks argues, because in Red America they never meet them. Instead, they consider themselves lucky to live in their own modest communities where prices are so low they see little they cannot afford. ...
Paul Krugman, a Princeton economist and Mr Brooks' liberal counterpart on the comment pages of the New York Times, argues that this cultural divide is more manipulated than natural, and serves to mask the society's ingrained inequity.
'There has been a tremendously successful campaign to shift the focus from economic elitism to cultural elitism', Mr Krugman said. 'Because the president uses short words and talks tough, he is seen as an ordinary guy'. "
"On December 24, 2001, Pat Robertson resigned his position as President of the Christian Coalition. ...
Robertson’s act was symbolic, but it carried a secret and solemn revelation to the faithful. It was the signal that the Bush administration was a government under God that was led by an anointed President who would be the first regent in a dynasty of regents awaiting the return of Jesus to earth. The President would now be the minister through whom God would execute His will in the nation. George W. Bush accepted his scepter and his sword with humility, grace and a sense of exultation. ...
This article is the documented story of how a political religious movement called Dominionism gained control of the Republican Party, then took over Congress, then took over the White House, and now is sealing the conversion of America to a theocracy by taking over the American Judiciary. It’s the story of why and how “the wrath of God Almighty” will be unleashed against the middle class, against the poor, and against the elderly and sick of this nation by George W. Bush and his army of Republican Dominionist “rulers.”
As Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court explained a few months later, the Bible teaches and Christians believe “… that government …derives its moral authority from God. Government is the ‘minister of God’ with powers to ‘revenge,’ to ‘execute wrath,’ including even wrath by the sword…”
Dominionism is a natural if unintended extension of Social Darwinism and is frequently called “Christian Reconstructionism.” Its doctrines are shocking to ordinary Christian believers and to most Americans. Journalist Frederick Clarkson, who has written extensively on the subject, warned in 1994 that Dominionism “seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of ‘Biblical Law.’” He described the ulterior motive of Dominionism is to eliminate “…labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools.” Clarkson then describes the creation of new classes of citizens:
“Women would be generally relegated to hearth and home. Insufficiently Christian men would be denied citizenship, perhaps executed. So severe is this theocracy that it would extend capital punishment [to] blasphemy, heresy, adultery, and homosexuality.”
Born in Christian Reconstructionism, which was founded by the late R. J. Rushdoony, the framers of the new cult included Rushdoony, his son-in-law Gary North, Pat Robertson, Herb Titus, the former Dean of Robertson’s Regent University School of Public Policy (formerly CBN University), Charles Colson, Robertson’s political strategist, Tim LaHaye, Gary Bauer, the late Francis Schaeffer, and Paul Crouch, the founder of TBN, the world’s largest television network, plus a virtual army of likeminded television and radio evangelists and news talk show hosts.
.... Machiavellianism, Communism, Secular Humanism and Neo-Conservatism Inspired a New Militant and Evil Anti-Christian Religion
... Dominionists introduced a perversion to Calvinism -- the same one James Hogg utilizes in his The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner -- its technical name is “supralapsarianism.” It means essentially that the man called from before the foundation of the world to be one of the elect of God’s people, can do no wrong. ...
How comforting the Calvinistic idea of a “justified sinner” is when one is utilizing Machiavellian techniques to gain political control of a state. It’s more than comforting; it is a required doctrine for “Christians” who believe they must use evil to bring about good. It justifies lying, murder, fraud and all other criminal acts without the fuss of having to deal with guilt feelings or to feel remorse for the lives lost through executions, military actions, or assassinations.
Leo Strauss was born in 1899 and died in 1973. ... He is most famous for resuscitating Machiavelli and introducing his principles as the guiding philosophy of the neo-conservative movement. ... More than any other man, Strauss breathed upon conservatism, inspiring it to rise from its atrophied condition and its natural dislike of change and to embrace an unbounded new political ideology that rides on the back of a revolutionary steed, hailing even radical change; hence the name Neo-Conservatives.
Significantly, Dominionism is a form of Social Darwinism.[48] It inherently includes the religious belief that wealth-power is a sign of God’s election. That is, out of the masses of people and the multitude of nations, wealth, in and of itself, is thought to indicate God’s approval on men and nations whereas poverty and sickness reflect God’s disapproval.
(It was not until I read this article that I realized that this is a fundamental tenet of Dominionists.
Worldly wealth and power are signs of God's favor -- to attempt to limit or decrease one's wealth and power is to disrespect God.
On the contrary, God's elect on Earth are called upon to increase their wealth and power.
It is not sufficient for a man to be a millionaire, or for a country to have sovereignty within its borders -- a man must strive to increase his wealth as much as possible, and a Dominionist government's behavior toward its neighbors must be "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity".
Furthermore, any attempt to decrease a person's or a country's wealth and power -- to take from the rich to give to the poor, to reduce military spending and power -- is a direct attack on God.)
If “Secular Humanists are the greatest threat to Christianity the world has ever known,” as theologian Francis Schaeffer claimed, then who are the Humanists? According to Dominionists, humanists are the folks who allow or encourage licentious behavior in America. They are the undisciplined revelers.
Put all the enemies of the Dominionists together, boil them down to liquid and bake them into the one single most highly derided and contaminated individual known to man, and you will have before you an image of the quintessential “liberal” -- one of those folks who wants to give liberally to the poor and needy -- who desires the welfare and happiness of all Americans -- who insists on safety regulations for your protection and who desires the preservation of your values -- those damnable people are the folks that must be reduced to powerlessness -- or worse: extinction.
What would a “reconstructed” America look like under the Dominionists? K.L. Gentry, a Dominionist himself, suggests the following “elements of a theonomic approach to civic order,” which I strongly suggest should be compared to the Texas GOP platform of 2002, which reveals that we are not just talking about imaginary ideas but some things are already proposed on Republican agendas.[60] Dominionism’s concept of government according to Gentry is as follows:
“1. It obligates government to maintain just monetary policies ... [thus prohibiting] fiat money, fractional reserve banking, and deficit spending.
“2. It provides a moral basis for elective government officials. ...
“3. It forbids undue, abusive taxation of the rich. ...
“4. It calls for the abolishing of the prison system and establishing a system of just restitution. *...
“5. A theonomic approach also forbids the release, pardoning, and paroling of murderers by requiring their execution. ...
“6. It forbids industrial pollution that destroys the value of property. ...
“7. It punishes malicious, frivolous malpractice suits. ...
“8. It forbids abortion rights. ... Abortion is not only a sin, but a crime, and, indeed, a capital crime.”[61]* Gary North describes the ‘just restitution’ system of the bible, which happens to reinstitute slavery,
like this:
“At the other end of the curve, the poor man who steals is eventually caught and sold into bondage under a successful person. His victim receives payment; he receives training; his buyer receives a stream of labor services. If the servant is successful and buys his way out of bondage, he re-enters society as a disciplined man, and presumably a self-disciplined man. He begins to accumulate wealth.”Emphasis and links are mine -- ed.
"The modern world is held to be the deliberate creation (with some unintended consequences) of the modern philosophers -- namely, the Enlightenment, which gave birth to both scientific- technological progress and the liberal ideology of social-political progress. The Enlighteners argued (though still covertly) that instead of hiding philosophy, philosophers should reform society to make it more hospitable to philosophy: in particular, by undertaking the "project" of modern science, by which reason masters nature and provides material gratifications -- safety, health and wealth .... Physical science and technology would provide the know-how, while a new kind of regime, liberalism, would provide the conditions of liberty and equality enabling men to pursue their self-interest. ...Links are mine -- ed.
(But in so doing) philosophy inadvertently exposed men to certain hard truths, truths too hard for them to bear: that there are no gods to reward good or punish evil; that no one's patria is really any better than anyone else's; that one's ancestral ways are merely conventional. This leads to nihilism, epitomized by the listless, meaningless life of bourgeois man, or to dangerous experiments with new gods -- gods like the race and the Fuehrer."
"Our civilization, pace Chesterton, is founded on coal (This was written in 1937, now of course it would be petroleum) , more completely than one realizes until one stops to think about it. The machines that keep us alive, and the machines that make machines, are all directly or indirectly dependent upon coal. In the metabolism of the Western world the coal-miner is second in importance only to the man who ploughs the soil. He is a sort of caryatid upon whose shoulders nearly everything that is not grimy is supported. For this reason the actual process by which coal is extracted is well worth watching, if you get the chance and are willing to take the trouble. ...
Watching coal-miners at work, you realize momentarily what different universes people inhabit. Down there where coal is dug is a sort of world apart which one can quite easily go through life without ever hearing about. Probably the majority of people would even prefer not to hear about it. Yet it is the absolutely necessary counterpart of our world above. Practically everything we do, from eating an ice to crossing the Atlantic, and from baking a loaf to writing a novel, involves the use of coal, directly or indirectly. For all the arts of peace coal is needed; if war breaks out it is needed all the more. In time of revolution the miner must go on working or the revolution must stop, for revolution as much as reaction needs coal. Whatever may be happening on the surface, the hacking and shovelling have got to continue without a pause, or at any rate without pausing for more than a few weeks at the most. In order that Hitler may march the goose-step, that the Pope may denounce Bolshevism, that the cricket crowds may assemble at Lords, that the poets may scratch one another’s backs, coal has got to be forthcoming. But on the whole we are not aware of it; we all know that we ‘must have coal’, but we seldom or never remember what coal-getting involves. Here am I sitting writing in front of my comfortable coal fire. It is April but I still need a fire. Once a fortnight the coal cart drives up to the door and men in leather jerkins carry the coal indoors in stout sacks smelling of tar and shoot it clanking into the coal-hole under the stairs. It is only very rarely, when I make a definite mental-effort, that I connect this coal with that far-off labour in the mines. It is just ‘coal’ -- something that I have got to have; black stuff that arrives mysteriously from nowhere in particular, like manna except that you have to pay for it. You could quite easily drive a car right across the north of England and never once remember that hundreds of feet below the road you are on the miners are hacking at the coal. Yet in a sense it is the miners who are driving your car forward. Their lamp-lit world down there is as necessary to the daylight world above as the root is to the flower.
It is not long since conditions in the mines were worse than they are now. There are still living a few very old women who in their youth have worked underground, with the harness round their waists, and a chain that passed between their legs, crawling on all fours and dragging tubs of coal. They used to go on doing this even when they were pregnant. And even now, if coal could not be produced without pregnant women dragging it to and fro, I fancy we should let them do it rather than deprive ourselves of coal. But -- most of the time, of course, we should prefer to forget that they were doing it. It is so with all types of manual work; it keeps us alive, and we are oblivious of its existence. More than anyone else, perhaps, the miner can stand as the type of the manual worker, not only because his work is so exaggeratedly awful, but also because it is so vitally necessary and yet so remote from our experience, so invisible, as it were, that we are capable of forgetting it as we forget the blood in our veins. In a way it is even humiliating to watch coal-miners working. It raises in you a momentary doubt about your own status as an ‘intellectual’ and a superior person generally. For it is brought home to you, at least while you are watching, that it is only because miners sweat their guts out that superior persons can remain superior. You and I and the editor of the Times Lit. Supp., and the poets and the Archbishop of Canterbury and Comrade X, author of Marxism for Infants -- all of us really owe the comparative decency of our lives to poor drudges underground, blackened to the eyes, with their throats full of coal dust, driving their shovels forward with arms and belly muscles of steel."
This is the first and last few paragraphs of Chapter 2 of the 1937 book The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell. The middle of the chapter is a first-hand account of Orwell's visits to working coal mines.
In 1937 the world ran on coal; now it would be petroleum. But the overall concern of this chapter is all of those who do hellish work or live in hellish conditions so that others of us can live, as Orwell puts it, in comparative decency.
-- A page on this site on / Poverty /