Affluenza, and how the rich always win

A story from the tail end of last year, which ordinarily would have remained merely a local tragedy, has actually turned out to show us something broader and more disturbing about the society we live in. It begins with a 16 year old boy in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas taking his parents' car for a joyride with his friends, stealing a case of beer from a local WalMart, and eventually crashing into four people on the side of the road, killing them all.

A terrible tragedy for the victims and their families, for sure. But for the rest of us, the real story began later – when the judge sentenced the boy. The judge accepted the defence's argument that the boy was a victim of 'affluenza', and gave him a ten year suspended sentence – meaning he has essentially been set free, as long as he attends a rehab clinic for his alcohol and drug problems and doesn't commit any further crimes.

But what is affluenza? The judge argued that the teen had been sheltered from the effects of his action by his parents' money – basically, he had everything he could ever want, and was allowed to do anything without fear of the repercussions, all because his parents were so rich. Because of this, he couldn't be considered responsible for his actions on that fateful night.

Now ordinarily, I'm in favour of lenient sentences, and ones which focus on rehabilitation and forgiveness rather than mere punishment. But there's two particularly interesting aspects to this case. First, it's worth noting that the very same judge previously sentenced another teenager to ten years in jail for accidentally killing people while driving. The difference between those two boys? One was rich and white, the other was poor and black.

And second, this case makes it abundantly clear that in western society, and particularly in the US, your position at birth places you on a certain path in life. This is despite the claims of numerous (usually right-wing) commentators who will say that anyone can become rich and successful in America, no matter how they were born. In actual fact, if you're rich, you stay rich and you stay safe – you get paid more, you'll own a business, you'll get tax breaks from the government, and, as this case shows, the response to even your most violent and destructive behaviour will be leniency. But if you start poor, you stay poor – you go to a school with no funding, you get paid minimum wage, and you go to jail for the same crimes that rich people get away with.

This split between the winners and the losers in our society is obvious to almost everyone at this point. But this story also illustrates how it applies to the third path, those in the middle. This is the 'middle class', the not-quite-rich-but-not-quite-poor, the people who are just staying afloat like the four people who were killed. These people tend to consider themselves secure and hard-working. They think that if they just keep working for the rich people a little longer, one day they too will be rich. But as this story shows, they're ultimately as expendable as the poor. Their status in the middle of the pyramid won't help them when the rich decide to run them down.

In the end, all of these people were victims of 'affluenza' – the disease in our society which means the rich are considered untouchable, unimpeachable, and, as this story shows, unimprisonable.

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