"Whence comes this new wealth?" W.E.B. Du Bois

Today we are likely asking "Where did it go?" But did we have a right to it in the first place if all our wealth and leisure was acquired through our imperialist attitude toward the "darker" nations (as Du Bois put it) from which we pilfered natural resources and squelched their attempts to achieve independent and democratic nationhood. We Americans have no grounds I think to complain as our "standard of living" tumbles downwards toward where it might have been had we not been led by such a predatory corporate leadership to want for more than we needed.

But truthfully, and as Du Bois insists, we were all in it together, the leaders and the laborers. We all benefitted from the plunder!