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Den almindelige amerikaners syn på de meget rige: Tyveknægte
Naomi Klein skriver i dagens The Guardian om Conrad Black, den ærkekonservative bladkonge, der afsværgede sit canadiske statsborgerskab for at opnå en britisk adelstitel, og som i dag står sigtet ved retten i Chicago for at proppe flere hundrede millioner af andre folks kroner i egen lomme.
Hans forsvarsadvokat har haft det hårdt med at finde frem til 12 "acceptable" nævninge ud af 140 kandidater, og de mulige nævninges udsagn giver et interessant indblik i ganske almindelige amerikaneres syn på de meget rige - de mennesker, der ellers i Bush og neoliberalismens øjne fremhæves som de sande frihedshelte.
Den almindelige opfattelse er tilsyneladende, at ingen kan være en løn i størrelsesordenen flere millioner dollars værd - og at enhver, der har så mange penge, nok har stjålet dem:
As the judge questioned a pool of 140 prospective jurors in order to whittle the group down to 12, plus eight alternates, she found men and women who had "lost every dime" in the WorldCom collapse, whose pensions had evaporated on the stock market, who had been fired thanks to outsourcing, and who'd had their finances ravaged by identity theft.Et syn, som nok kan minde om mange danskeres syn på Henning Dyremose, som ragede et tocifret millionbeløb til sig under i bedste fald meget suspekte omstændigheder - hvor forskellen er, at den almindelige amerikaner allerede har betalt en langt højere pris for liberalismens og globaliseringens amokløb, end vi (endnu) har i Danmark, og modviljen mod en tyveknægt og hykler som Black følgelig er langt mere dybfølt.
Asked what they thought of executives who earn tens of millions of dollars, jurors answered almost uniformly in the negative. "Who could possibly do that much work or be that much capable?" one asked. A mechanic's apprentice pointed out that no matter how much he works, "I'm barely getting by as it is, living at home". No one said: "More power to you."
Many appeared to regard North America's ultra-rich the way Russians see their oligarchs - even if the way they amassed their fortunes was legal, it shouldn't have been. "I just don't think anyone should get that amount of money from any company, example Enron and WorldCom," one juror wrote.
John Tien, a 40-year-old accountant at Boeing, launched into such an elaborate lecture about the accounting scams endemic in corporate America that Black's lawyers asked the judge to question him in private, to prevent his views from influencing the other potential jurors.
Link.