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"Our main story tonight, is income inequality." Oliver began. "A good way to figure out which side of it you're on, is whether you are currently paying for HBO, or stealing it."
Noting that President Obama recently delivered a speech where he used the expression 'income inequality,' twenty-six times, calling it "the defining issue of our times," Oliver pointed out that Democrats immediately retreated on the issue in the face of accusations of class warfare.
"So basically, income inequality has become just another topic of conversation we prefer to avoid in America, like Japanese internment camps or that time we gave Roberto Bengini an Academy Award. National tragedies, equally wrong," he said.
Pointing out that income inequality is not exclusive to America, Oliver explained that it "rising faster here," with the average income of the richest ten percent now sixteen times as large as the poorest ten percent.
"At this point, the rich are just running up the score," Oliver said. "If our economy was a Little League game, someone would have called it by now."
Noting that economic policies that benefit the few at the expense of the many shouldn't be acceptable to Americans, Oliver attributed acceptance to "America's greatest quality - optimism."
"Here's the key. Sixty percent of believe that most people who work hard enough, can make it," Oliver explained. "Or, in other words, 'Yup, I can plainly see this game is rigged which is what is going to make so sweet when I win this thing.'"
He continued, "America now has a system where wealth is essentially dispersed as a lottery of birth and maybe the reason we seem to accept that is that, even though we know the odds are stacked against us, we all think we're going to win the lottery."
Oliver then showed clips of "experts" appearing on TV giving advice on how to handle future winnings from playing state-based lottery games, including putting them in a trust.
"Absolutely," Oliver added. "It is never too early to start protecting your imaginary lottery winnings from crippling estate taxes. It's crazy, you might as well do an eight-minute segment on how to handle being attacked by a shark while scoring the winning touchdown at the Super Bowl. Or things to say on your third date with Beyoncé ."
Watch the video from Last Week Tonight below:
Reader Comments
This piece very accurately denotes the function of experts, the so-called educated, respected ones in the techno-modern and highly sophist Western-style world. The type who fill the airwaves and write the books and make the speeches and carry the general dialog in a very particular direction.
During the infamous Pol Pot regime, in Cambodia, doctors and other highly educated people were reportedly rounded up and killed because they (at that time and place) were a stubborn link (and protector) to the poor, the masses, who are completely useable and discardable, disposable and essentially valueless in any totalitarian rulership.
In America and other so-called advanced technological countries with long-standing puppet democracies (actual dictatorships and oligarchies), doctors, lawyers and other educated people, are paid very well by the ruling order to obscure and distort and totally disfigure the truth of the totalitarianism in these nations. They are well paid to lie for their masters.
This is perversion and crime and falsity of the highest order.
And in some future time, will be punished as such.
ned