Let Them Eat Cake

By Arty Mangan

It may actually be historically inaccurate to attribute the quote “let them eat cake” to Marie Antoinette, but it is an accurate mythological expression of how wealth and power can be so absurdly arrogant and tragically out of touch.

From the “let them eat cake” perspective one may wonder what all the fuss is about when low income people and retirees in the Northeast are complaining that they will have to cut back on food to keep their homes heated this winter because of escalating fuel costs.

 Free trade proponents often rely on the rationale of the wisdom of the market to create necessary adjustments and solve all problems.  In this case the wisdom of the market seems to be suggesting that for $25 those fixed income retirees can buy three sweaters at Goodwill that can be worn simultaneously when the thermostat is set at 50 degrees.

That is unless Hugo Chavez and Joseph Kennedy conspire against the free market, as they did a few years ago, by supplying Venezuelan heating oil to low-income New Englanders at highly discounted prices.

Tangentially Goodwill Industries is another example of how the wisdom of the market expresses itself.  The great surplus of clothing donations to Goodwill are bundled, shipped and sold to third world street venders and shops effectively putting small local clothing manufacturers in those countries out of business; which partially explains why kids in Bangladesh wear Boston Red Sox T-shirts.

Unfortunately the market is not concerned with keeping people warm or maintaining small local industry; it’s designed to concentrate wealth and power.  But history reveals that when wealth is concentrated into the hands of too few it marks the beginning of the decline of that society. Near the end of the Roman Empire 5% of the population owned 80% of the land. 

Kevin Phillips in his book Wealth and Democracy looks at the history of Britain and other world powers to identify the signs that indicated their decline. Disparity in wealth was a consistent indicator.

In the 1990’s Bill Clinton, one of globalization’s great proponents, reinstated Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the socialist firebrand who was deposed by a military coup. At the time, I for one felt it was a good use of US influence to reinstate the first popularly elected president of Haiti even if he happened to mouth off about American imperialism from time to time.

Experience, however, dictates that in all matters from washing machine warrantees to international trade agreements it is wise to read the fine print. In this case the cost of Aristide’s Faustian deal with American power was to sell out Haitian rice farmers and ultimately the food security of his nation. In exchange for US help in reclaiming his power, Aristide agreed (was forced) to lift trade protection on imported rice, opening the doors for cheap, highly subsidized rice from the US. 

Haitian rice farmers, who previously grew all the rice their population needed,  could not compete and went out of business. Today all rice in Haiti is imported. But now due to escalating prices- because of drought, ethanol production, and feeding grain to cows to supply an increasing global appetite for meat- Haitians no longer can afford to import rice to feed themselves and in some cases are forced to make a meal of vegetable scraps baked in mud cakes – and thus the prophesy is made true- “let them eat cake”.

Some things just need to be kept sacred and food is one of them. Indigenous people traditionally have used song, prayer and ceremony to imbue humility into the act of killing animals for food; transforming the act of slaughter into offering and sacrifice.

Without respect, gratitude, and generosity the whole system is weakened and is opened to pathology and degeneration. Loading a downer cow with a forklift back on to a conveyer belt so that it can end up on someone’s dinner plate has no place in a system of reverence and nourishment.  Robbing a nation’s capacity to feed itself is sacrilegious.

In an attempt to cultivate gratitude around my privileged nourishment, I often try to understand my relationship to and my dependence on the farm worker, whom without him, her and often their kids, I would not eat.

The legendary Cesar Chavez once said, “It's ironic that those who till the soil, cultivate and harvest the fruits, vegetables, and other foods that fill your tables with abundance, have nothing left for themselves."  In order to change that Lucas Benitez and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW)- tomato pickers from Florida- have successfully campaigned against some of the wealthiest and most powerful corporations in the world. CIW has brought Taco Bell, Mc Donald’s, and more recently Burger King to the negotiating table to add one penny per pound for the tomatoes harvested, which essentially doubled the farm workers pay to about $15,000 a year.   Before Burger King agreed to the price increase things got nasty and they tried to role back gains CIW made with Taco Bell and Mc Donald’s.

Goldman Sachs is one of three private equity firms that control Burger King stock. During the impasse Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, wrote in a NY Times Op Ed piece that it would cost $250,000 a year to pay the penny a pound.  Schlosser wrote that “in 2006, the bonuses of the top 12 Goldman Sachs executives exceeded $200 million — more than twice as much money as all of the roughly 10,000 tomato pickers in southern Florida earned that year”; or in other words a small fraction of the interest on the executives bonuses could cover the farm workers pay increase. CIW prevailed making a small but very significant step in allowing farm workers in Florida to feed their families.