![]() Penny clerk in 1948-50 in Little Falls while in high school.) (Shucks, I wish I would have thought of that. His family is now the richest in the world, with 10,526 WalMart and other “banner” stores in 24 countries employing 2.3 million workers, with 1.6 million in the U.S. ![]() He sold items for a penny, dime or quarter less, hoping to garner the “market.” He succeeded. Penny, bought an old Ben Franklin store in Bentonville, Arkansas, and turned it into one that sold all kinds of different stuff. In 1945 Sam Walton, a former employee of J.C. Then Disaster Capitalism proved that nothing succeeds like excess But money, like Brooks wrote, always talked to him. His main economic theory of supply-side economics because of tax cuts has never worked. Then came that great budget balancer Ronald Reagan who cut taxes, remodeled old battleships that were never used again, played a great president on TV, tried to turn ketchup into a vegetable, told the Russians to tear down the wall, and destroyed unions by the dozen, thus beginning the destruction of the middle class that continues to this day.īy the way, he never balanced a federal budget, even if it was written on the 3x5 cards that filled his pockets. We climbed out because a white supremacist named Adolf Hitler forced us to build ships, planes and tanks with borrowed money.Īfter the war we raised income taxes on the rich, educated veterans with the GI Bill, built a new middle class with the power of unions, and started to work on the dreams in “We Shall Be Free.” Perhaps what was good for General Motors was good for the country. Then, when the Wall Street bull transmogrified to a bear cub, causing men to go splat on Wall Street sidewalks, we slipped into a Great Depression. Morgan and others entered and won the cross-country sweepstakes to economic and political power. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, J. The nobles of the land were still judge and jury over life and death.Īfter feudalism came the various industrial revolutions, from the cotton looms to the black oil replacing the whale oil used for centuries. Sometimes they objected to their slavery, bringing about the Magna Carta and other protests. ![]() The nobles paid off knights to protect them.įrom their moated castles and manors they ruled the peasants who grew the food and supplied the labor for the operation of the “estate.” Peasants were worked so hard most of them died before the age of 30. So in order to actually run entire countries, kings chose “nobles” to dominate an area. Homo sapiens have been trying for about 300,000 years to reach the nirvana Brooks is singing about in his song, screwing up from caves and clubs to Egyptian pyramids and Aztec sacrifices to Rome and Christian-eating lions on the way to an earthly paradise.įor the last 1,000 years from the Battle of Hastings we have tried feudalism, communism and capitalism trying to get to “we shall be free.” Our chances on reaching nirvana before our planet becomes too hot to be habitable are lessening by the moment.ĭuring the feudal period certain humans claimed God gave them a “divine right” to rule. When there’s only one race and that’s mankind When we all can worship from our own kind of pewĪnd when money talks for the very last time When this world’s big enough for all different views When we are free to love anyone we choose When the skies and the oceans are clean again ![]() When the last thing we notice is the color of skinĪnd the first thing we look for is the beauty within When there’s a shelter over the poorest head When the last man dies for just words he has said When the last child cries for a crust of bread Garth Brooks in “We Shall Be Free” has expressed what we should believe in for our now Divided States of America (edited for brevity): But Johnny Cash, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Garth Brooks and others have written great American poetry-songs. I have never liked the whiny, rednecky, wheezy, hillbilly, calling-pigs-kind of voice. I also sang in a mixed quartet called the Winter Wonderland Quartet and traveled for a year in a show WCCO’s Cedric Adams put together with Miss America Bebe Shopp of Minnesota. As a vocalist, I have sung solos, in duets, trios, in male and mixed quartets, in madrigals, and in church, high school, and college choirs. I have never been a country music fan, but I have been a country “poet” fan for decades. When will money talk for the very last time? ![]()
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