POLITICO: To: My Fellow Zillionaires: …Here’s what I say to you: You’re living in a dream world. What everyone wants to believe is that when things reach a tipping point and go from being merely crappy for the masses to dangerous and socially destabilizing, that we’re somehow going to know about that shift ahead of time.
Any student of history knows that’s not the way it happens. Revolutions, like bankruptcies, come gradually, and then suddenly. One day, somebody sets himself on fire, then thousands of people are in the streets, and before you know it, the country is burning. And then there’s no time for us to get to the airport and jump on our Gulfstream Vs and fly to New Zealand. That’s the way it always happens. If inequality keeps rising as it has been, eventually it will happen. We will not be able to predict when, and it will be terrible—for everybody. But especially for us.
The most ironic thing about rising inequality is how completely unnecessary and self-defeating it is. If we do something about it, if we adjust our policies in the way that, say, Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression—so that we help the 99 percent and preempt the revolutionaries and crazies, the ones with the pitchforks—that will be the best thing possible for us rich folks, too. It’s not just that we’ll escape with our lives; it’s that we’ll most certainly get even richer… (more)
The thing I dislike about this piece is the writer has no ideas. Where are they?
Roosevelt’s ideas are largely in tact and working.
As I look at the numbers, wealth redistribution of itself would not solve the problem, not to mention it is unlikely wealthy people would create wealth for the purpose of giving it away.
Somewhere along the line the Kennedy point of “What you can do for your country”, turned into “What your country can do for you”. We add to this “Jobs that Americans don’t want”, continued attempts at “free” college educations, and large increases in primary education costs with almost no improvement in student outcomes.
In general Americans get more from America than they put into it. In the end it’s not sustainable.
EDITOR: Facts and studies contradict “it is unlikely wealthy people would create wealth for the purpose of giving it away.”
First of all, taxes at worse hardly reach beyond 50% the margin, with many using loop holes to pay only 25%.
Secondly, once affluent, people work even more for the challenge than the pay. Studies have demonstrated.
Thirdly, we taxpayers are the highest contributors to charity in the world. This flies in the face of Anonymous’s contentions.
Keep in mind that during the boom days following World War II and well into the Eisenhower admistration, the top income tax bracket approached 90%!
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously pointed out that rich people are different from the rest of the population.