True, and it’s way more than “them” having more than “us”. It’s far deeper, because they hold everyone back. They amass the wealth and use it simply to generate more wealth.
But far more valuable than wealth are time and intellect. If we erased personal wealth and replaced it with a merit system of personal contribution to the improvement of all people, we would have things like cures for AIDS and complete eradication of polio, malaria and starvation, as well as major inroads into the eradication of cancers, flu and lots of other stuff like environmental remediation, the arts and yes even business science.
It’s not a socialist vision. This is humanistic. Socialism at its worst is an antimeritocracy. I’m talking about a meritocracy where intellect and a person’s intrinsic value are required of all citizens. That’s not utopic. It’s fully possible to move our planet towards a smarter system of operations. But we won’t do it. The richie riches won’t let us. We are a threat.
Yep. It’s called “projection”. That’s of exactly what it is they are doing to the 99% of the world and they know in the depths of their empty souls exactly what they deserve.
Income and wealth inequality will always result if controls are not in place to prevent it. There is not a governor on greed that says “I now have enough”, unless you look to things like religion or some other socially prescribed morality like noblesse oblige.
The controls are the governor then, which should prevent all the money from pooling at the top due to a vicious cycle of money and influence rewarding itself with more of both. Without legislation in the form of progressive income taxes, anti-trust protections, estate taxes, and a firewall between business and government to prevent these from being eroded by the very rich and their influence on legislation, the rich get exponentially richer. And the rich want to eradicate the controls and opportunities for the middle class to make the jump. It’s staggering how little we learn, and how this continues to happen time and time again. Look at 1928 and 2007.
You can’t completely blame the 1% - anyone playing a game as complex as capitalism can be counted on to try and game the system as much as possible. And the individuals are merely rationalizing their own greed in that way. Even Warren Buffet admits that although he pays too little in taxes, he also says that he won’t pay more unless someone makes him. Hate the game, not the player. We need controls, and to get the money out of politics. It’s very tough to swim against the flow of the incredible current of billions of dollars.
No, that’s not satire. I just sat down with the latest stack of articles my dad set aside for me, including several from the WSJ: it’s par for the course, no doubt about it. Most of the readership would have been nodding their heads in agreement as they read it.
You are wrong that it would always be this way. Its our values that are at fault. We are a super-size culture where the consensus is always that more and bigger is better. So for instance we build crappy houses, and for people who aspire to be wealthy they buy bigger houses that are just as crappy.
Sweden has a word - lagom - a word that we have no equal to in english. Lagom means, as can be best translated, “just enough is best”. No more, no less. And that is a cultural value that is shared by everyone. That manifests itself all through the society. Sure, CEOs in Sweden do well, but they live in the same neighborhoods as other middle-class people, and in modestly sized houses, because that is just enough for anyone’s needs. Its a society that for example does not build crappy houses, they build very high quality, energy efficient, long lasting houses. And a small inexpensive house is built just as well as a bigger more expensive house.
So if we are to change in the US we need to change at a deeply fundamental level.
The bankers tended to be Jews for historical reasons. Tends to be true today.
Although it’s a ridiculous assertion, when you consider how many people were mad at banks in both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, I can see how someone could delude themselves into thinking they’re persecuted.
Agreed. The mistake in my comment was not labeling the game “American Capitalism”. But capitalism by nature cannot survive without constant growth, and without government controls it will manifest in as much growth as possible. This, with the help of the advertising, public relations, and financial (credit) industries which have converted the American economy from a need-based model to a purely desire-based model in just a few generations.
Sweden is an excellent example of a more enlightened social democracy and an economy that revolves around high taxes and provides a robust welfare state- all aspects that would result in cries of “SOCIALISM” if they were suggested here. It’s probably worth noting that they also have many political parties instead of a two party system.
When people invoke slander against the 1%, I like to tell them that if they make more than about $30K a year (factoring in what they received in kind from scholarship programs, if necessary) they were part of the 10%… that is, if you count the rest of the world and not just the .05% that is the US. I’ve gotten yelled at quite a lot for that, and yes, sometimes in crybaby language.
Something about your post made me think you probably joined bbs just to say that. Then I checked your profile, and I’ll be damned, I was right!
So, is someone paying you to go to popular blogs and fight posts and comments that challenge the neoliberal, crypto-fascist paradigm? If so, how much? I’ve always wondered what people like that get paid to defend their oppressors.
I think they would have been grandfathered in as honorary Aryans. Strangely, the Nazis seemed obsessed with Jews owning department stores. But above all, Hitler claimed the Jews were controlling the trade unions and the slanderous “liberal press.” Yes, Hitler used the phrase “the liberal press.” I’m not sure if he invented it.
As much fun as it is, I don’t think dehumanizing them gets to the bottom of anything useful.
There’s a bit of a variety of people in there, and while obviously none of them ‘earn’ any more than a good nurse or teacher that doesn’t make them cartoons.
Sure, we probably can agree that a lot of them don’t demonstrate the sort of responsible forward thinking or social responsibility that this world deserves but that’s a problem with the system. In another world I bet most of them would be great fun to hang with and inventors or researchers or something.
If we want to accomplish something, we hit them where we can see each other as human beings and not caricatures.
This is an excellent point and it raises the interesting question of what happened to Tom Perkins’ brain during his trip up to join the ranks of the super-rich. He started out as a bright guy from modest means, who worked hard in the tech industry and was rewarded financially for his efforts. He was an integral part of the rise of HP and he started a successful laser company. Definitely not a guy born on third base who thinks he hit a triple. Definitely not somebody who got rich by gambling recklessly with other peoples’ money.
Even his venture capitalism was the sort that most Americans celebrate: tech start-ups in Silicon Valley. There is no question that jobs were created from his efforts. I have no more problem with this this sort of wealth than I do with movie stars or rock stars who make big bux.
But in his later life, we see increasing reason for concern. Nothing wrong with owning huge yachts per se, but what are we to make of his membership on the board of News Corp? It seems like drowning in money does something to your brain. And now this. When you play the Nazi card as your opening rhetorical gambit, you forfeit all respect. Poor victimized rich dude, who feels threatened by the masses. I don’t think the Occupy movement arose to protest people who got rich in the way that Perkins did, but Perkins seems to have absorbed the victimization ploy from his rich buddies. He is old and sick these days. Perhaps we attribute his editorial to senility?
I’m not surprised that you’ve been yelled at a lot for pulling out that statistic, since the only reason you’re doing so is to obscure the issue by not actually addressing what critics of inequality are saying. I mean, why else would you be pulling out “shut up, others have it worse” canard to deny the existence of poverty in the US as if comparing it against the worst deprivation you could find some how makes it all okay?
I keep recommending the recent Robert Reich docu “inequality for all” on the subject of income/wealth inequality:
Also, American society needs to remember the influence of Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, the now relatively obscure inventor of public relations. There are few individuals who have done more damage to society without being a household word. The fundamental change you describe is in the exact opposite direction of Bernays’ work- which was the manufacturing of desire.
Look for the three-part BBC documentary “The Century of the Self”: http://vimeo.com/67977038
(This BBC documentary keeps getting taken down, but it’s worth digging around for!)
We humans tend to like our conformation bias, how far does that take you when you’re surrounded by fawning sycophants? From cinema stars and athletes to world leaders and captains of industry you see the same things happening all over the place.
It’s not that just that we’ve created a system that caters to the worst in us, it’s also that only a few good ones make it terribly far down that path before getting lost themselves.
I really wonder if that is true. Radical as I have tried to be, I have not been able to think of a more broadly useful system for enhancing the net productivity of humans than capitalism (one that works anyway). Where it breaks down is in the current structure where wealth accretes at the top and not necessarily according to merit.
I also think history is full of disasters engendered by attempts to dictate or control how things develop. We are in one now, or on the brink - if you accept the premise that the dotcom and real estate bubbles, and current bond bubble, were the unintended result of policies intended to accomplish certain policy objectives.
I would love to hear about a concept of capitalism as an engine for improved well-being that doesn’t require constant growth, or doesn’t require expanded consumption of ecological resources, or doesn’t have massive inequality built into the system.
