I subscribe to Charles Pierce's first law of Blog Economics , namely: "Fk The Deficit. People got no jobs. People got no money."
Pierce rightly notes that with the suicidal plunge of the teabag wing of the Republican party over the ACA, " the deficit fetishists are back. Even Messrs. Simpson and Bowles have rolled away the stone. They have their commission's recommendations to wave around. The Fix The Debt frauds are wandering the Green Rooms. While all this scrambling about defunding the ACA is going on, it is very likely that the various cultists in Congress, at the instigation of the White House, might decide to start feeding Vaal again."
Blame the douchebags members in the tea party? But of course. But it also turns out there may have been another culprit all along.
Nearly four years ago, I began writing a novel, set in the aftermath of the Norman conquest of 1066. Before I began to write, I spent six months sitting in the Bodleian library poring over books and journals to familiarise myself with the period. I soon realised that, apart from the story of the Battle of Hastings that everyone learns at school, I knew hardly anything about the impact of the conquest. I began to understand, too, how much of that impact is still with us.
By the end of the process, I had come to a slightly disquieting conclusion: we are still being governed by Normans.
Take house prices. According to the author Kevin Cahill, the main driver behind the absurd expense of owning land and property in Britain is that so much of the nation's land is locked up by a tiny elite. Just 0.3% of the population – 160,000 families – own two thirds of the country. Less than 1% of the population owns 70% of the land, running Britain a close second to Brazil for the title of the country with the most unequal land distribution on Earth.
Much of this can be traced back to 1066. The first act of William the Conqueror, in 1067, was to declare that every acre of land in England now belonged to the monarch. This was unprecedented: Anglo-Saxon England had been a mosaic of landowners. Now there was just one. William then proceeded to parcel much of that land out to those who had fought with him at Hastings. This was the beginning of feudalism; it was also the beginning of the landowning culture that has plagued England – and Britain – ever since.
The dukes and earls who still own so much of the nation's land, and who feature every year on the breathless rich lists, are the beneficiaries of this astonishing land grab. William's 22nd great-granddaughter, who today sits on the throne, is still the legal owner of the whole of England. Even your house, if you've been able to afford one, is technically hers. You're a tenant, and the price of your tenancy is your loyalty to the crown. When the current monarch dies, her son will inherit the crown (another Norman innovation, incidentally, since Anglo-Saxon kings were elected). As Duke of Cornwall, he is the inheritor of land that William gave to Brian of Brittany in 1068, for helping to defeat the English at Hastings.
And the Americans adopted a lot of British traditions-although the teahadists firmly deny it. Wealth inequality being one.
It might behoove our Galtian overlords to remember that England had more than a few ups and downs over the years in its quest towards total Plutocracy. "Though the Normans were never expelled, the spirit of the silvatici can be traced throughout later English history, from the Peasants' Revolt to the tales of Robin Hood. Not everyone takes conquest lying down. Today's elites might like to take note."