Dear George,
Universal prosperity weakens a society. A living wage and great benefits are more debilitating to individual ambition than welfare. Let a man believe that he is entitled to a steady paycheck, and he immediately becomes a slacker. America’s shift from corporate benevolence to corporate selfishness was inevitable. Prosperity was destroying our moral fabric.
Prosperity cost us Vietnam. The best draftee is the man who is hungry, poor and pissed. This man will kick some real ass. Faced with the prospect of hardship, death or injury, the pampered children of the middle class took to the streets, shouting slogans and burning their draft cards. They sapped the national will to power and the American Empire shrank.
Our salvation has been the emergence of the new American hero, the Bean Counter, that financial wizard who can take a well-oiled financial machine and turn it into a rusted-out derelict. With his blinders firmly in place, the Bean Counter pursues short-term profit over long-term growth. Profit no longer derives from a quality good or service but from flipping capital back and forth across international borders that have become meaningless.
The letters SPQR emblazoned the banners of the Roman Empire. They stood for Senatus Populusque Romanus, “the Senate and People of Rome.” The same letters emblazon the banners of the American Empire, only now they stand for “Small Profit, Quick Return.”
We have let loose the Demon Dogs of want and misery who lick the fingers of the Corporatists with tongues stained with the blood of the poor and disenfranchised.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
5:47:06 AM 
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