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Dr.DePaolis
English1A
October2015

The American Bourgeoisie

I stood on the steps of San Diego State University alongside my friends, passing out
literature on Election Day 2008, in hopes to turn down Proposition 8 that would eliminate same
sex rights in California. The proposition succeeded, it would be eight years before gay marriage
would find legality in the United States, despite the majority support for its legalization.
The
elite of the United States, those holding the top one percent of income, control government
policy changes that have immediate effect on our jobs, climate, and overall lifestyle through
their financial hold on what issues our government makes their priority, not the votes of the
average American citizen.
We continue on this fallacy that the United States is still a
democracy, when in reality we are living in an oligarchy. An oligarchy is defined as
a small group
of people having control of a country or organization. A recent study conducted by Princeton
University Professor Martin Giles and Northwestern University Professor Benjamin I. Page
concluded that, Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups
representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. Government
policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no influence.
President Bill Clinton had promised more economic growth and jobs for American
Citizens following Chinas induction to the World Trade Organization, (W.T.O). This created an
opposite effect for the average American worker, as the U.S. has lost millions of jobs in the
transition to China and caused American manufacturing businesses to close due to the
overwhelming competition. Even so, the amount of wealth in the United States continued to

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Dr.DePaolis
English1A
October2015

swell substantially. For example, Bill Gates net worth in 1994, when China joined the W.T.O.,
was 9.35 billion. In 2015, Bill Gates net worth is 79.2 billion dollars. Why is there such extreme
monetary success in our country while those who lay below the poverty line increase annually?
It is like a curved grade with little to zero chance of ever tought the top of the grading scale, the
system is designed to keep the working at the bottom. The fight for a fair living wage is making
some improvements, as mega cities like Seattle and Los Angeles prepare to initiate their new
adjusted wages. But when you look into the nature of the oligarchy, it makes you question the
motives behind moving forward with hourly wages starting over $13 an hour when they control
not only the government but the very payrolls that would support these measures. In
comparison, you also need a customer in order to keep a business running and say we give
millions of Americans a raise, they will more than likely pour this additional income into the
economy and evidently, give the money right back to the people who gave it to them.
We have a fast food restaurant available in every part of the United States, providing
low cost meals for families struggling to make ends meet. McDonalds, for example, has a
location in every country minus Iceland, Zimbabwe, Bermuda, Macedonia, Ghana, Bolivia, and
North Korea. In order to produce their premier products, they rely on livestock and dairy farms
which are proven to be the number one threat to the global warming of our environment, not
humans, but the animals we consume. A diet is what sustains you, it isnt meant to be an event
or a prize but the means in which you are nourished, and the food industry has made a
monopoly of this. They have instilled the everlasting devotion and belief that our bodies need
copious amounts of meat to survive. There are now countless studies that prove this to be
false, supporting a healthy vegan lifestyle will cure many ailments in humans and in our planet.

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Dr.DePaolis
English1A
October2015

We dedicate 260 million acres to growing feed for livestock in the U.S. and about 3 million acres
of the Amazon rainforest for chicken feed. The Amazon is the lungs of our planet and in order
for them to breathe, we have to stop the deforestation of them and the only way is to eliminate
our dependence on animal products. Methane gas has a global potential 20 times higher than
carbon monoxide, and over 37% of methane emissions are from factory farming. Organizations
like GreenPeace received contributions from livestock lobbyists to encourage environmentalists
to adapt an approach of adjustment to the climate change rather than exploring any and all
opportunities we may have to cure our planet and ourselves. We are not given the chance to
choose the life of our planet, the ideal Money is speech, creates a scenario where the
proletarians of America cannot compete with the bourgeoisie incumbents.
It is difficult to have faith in the ability to influence and execute change in your
community when the changes the politicians you vote for promised you dont happen time and
time again. They say that the Great Recession is over, but over for who? Those who are in the
working class are still looking for jobs and struggling to achieve anything more than 40 hour
work weeks and a family to support. The overwhelming evidence shows we are living under a
corrupt government, but the time and energy it takes to follow in the footsteps of the activists
of our history is not granted to our modern citizens. We are tired from the long hours and
draining entertainment we find ourselves thoroughly encompassed by, the distractions of our
modern society keep us at home in a toxic state of indifference. We work at jobs we hate for
the majority of our lives to pay for our living and things we dont need to impress people we
hardly care about, to paraphrase Chuck P
alahniuk. The average American citizen spends $94 a

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October2015

day on to live, we are involved in a consistent subconscious oppression to buy and on top of
that are expected to still make our rent.
The frustration you find in the tone of Karl Marx through his comparison of the freeman
and the slave, the lord and the serf, the oppressor and the oppressed is a depiction that we
have seen carry itself through time into our modern lives. The pawns may have changed, but
the game of the bourgeoisie and the proletarians is eerily similar with little indication that a
change is on the horizon. We have seen third party politicians make it to the Iowa Caucus
before, Bernie Sanders has great ideals but it is hard to believe that the oligarchy will truly allow
him to succeed with him spilling all of their supposed secrets of corruption. The elites affairs in
the trade industry, factory farming, and the high cost of living affects not only the sustainability
of our planet but of our society, and that is too high a cost for them to give up. There is
unlimited money in politics, creating this oligarchy system that nullifies our claims of being a
democratic society that acknowledges the needs of our average citizens, the only way change
can occur is through action, and in the case of the American government with the signing of a
check.