to each according to his bank account
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The waiting room is where hope goes to die slowly, one postponed appointment at a time. [https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/01/09/to-each-according-to-his-bank-account/]
notes/quotes from article linked:
January 9, 2026 – To Each According to His Bank Account – by Jan Ralske – posted on counterpunch
A few years ago, a poll showed more than half of USA citizens attributed Karl Marx’s quote “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” to George Washington or President Obama. People like Howard Zinn and Oliver Stone have repeatedly shown how Americans’ knowledge of their own history is astonishingly limited:
“Why aren’t people more aware of this history?” This turned out to be the start of the concept for a documentary series entitled “CLASS WARS”.
The series aimed to show that the forces that criminalized progressive activists before WW2 are the same methods used today. When the USA had Julian Assange persecuted and imprisoned for 10 years they used the same repressive law they used to imprison socialist Eugene Debs for his opposition to USA involvement in WW1. But the method goes deeper that just the “laws” as Oscar Ameringer, another socialist imprisoned under that “Espionage Act” of 1917 put it: “Politics is the art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.” Or in other words: the USA political system is based on class war.
Then, in April 2024, as the budget for CLASS WARS was being discussed and the contracts on their way to being sealed, a bombshell headline appeared in the New York Times: “Participant Calls it Quits.” The company’s lifeline was millions in investment from eBay-billionaire, Jeff Skoll, who announced that he was pulling out. Though Skoll refused to be interviewed in the Times article, he was quoted as blaming the “revolutionary changes” in the media. This was a misuse of the term “revolutionary”. The problem was well known and not new. Netflix and Disney had started selling ads, and advertisers preferred apolitical entertainment.
When Trump was elected in 2024, Skoll was seen celebrating at Trump’s inauguration with his buddy, Elon Musk. Some commentators presumed that Skoll’s association with the studio behind the climate-change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, had just become “inconvenient” for the billionaire. Times change. It also meant the demise of financing for the CLASS WARS series.
Other sources pointed to the real factors for Skoll’s decision to stop funding Participant and take his money elsewhere: the California wildfires had aggravated Skoll’s asthma and he decided he had to move to Florida, which can be costly for those requiring beachfront property. He threw down nearly $90 million for an ocean estate in “Manalapan”,
The Florida villa was not the only real estate requiring the funds with which Skoll had formerly financed Participant’s activist films: Skoll also bought a $17 million estate near Washington D.C., seven months after announcing the closing of Participant. ..Skoll’s explanation that he purchased the estate to be closer to the Washington Capitals ice-hockey team, which he owns.
“To each according to his needs”: part of the equation seems to have been fulfilled, for one class of the population.
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be you. 