Inequality Multiplied ?

We know now, how Covid 19 made the ultra-rich richer
and the poor poorer in the wealthiest countries in The West,
because of the way the virus limited basic low paid work,
whilst capital took flight to the most profitable climates. 

I wonder, how much the sanctions presently aimed at Russia
will not only hit the poor much harder than the rich there,
but they will also have the same effect as Covid did in The West;
they will make the obscenely wealthy to become even more obscene,
and further limit those on basic incomes from truly advancing?

The script will be 'commodity prices rising'
but what it will mean is 'human hopes shrinking',
as what keeps the rich richer makes for more poverty
from which there will be no exit for the rest of us.   

  

Double Vision

Benjamin Franklin is the person most credited
with the invention of bi-focal glasses,
the better to both see clearer at a distance
and read legal and social texts close up.

Was this his greatest gift to the presidents
who followed him? A way of losing the focus
in their political vision, from their prescription
needing renewal. This unclear view of society
was what enabled them to pursue legal arguments
with pin sharp logic with which to perpetuate
the inferior status of non-whites and immigrants.

The clearest vision was always for the few
and they were best expressed with economy,
the better to avoid the broader implications.

Those who read and wrote most
were The Few who owned everything,
particularly the deeds of the state
on which all ownership was based
which they read with the close part
of their bifocal lenses, whilst being blind
to the bigger world around them.