Ok, I have a comment and I know it won’t be received well, but here goes.
He says:
But the problem isn’t that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.
I agree for the most part with what he says. But I have to add this, I believe that most humans prefer a feudal type society at a local level. Most humans are taught and are ‘comfortable’ with someone being ‘in charge’. They just want to drift from day to day in a happy “I know what I need to do” sort of haze. What they don’t like or want is change especially disruptive change.
If the vast majority of people are kept fed, entertained and safe from worry then they are just ducky in their lives.
The problem of course is that there are those born in every generation that are NOT happy with the status-quo because they want to be at the top and a feudal system is designed to prevent that. Our republican style government allows for movement status wise up and down the social ladder plus a quasi-feudal system at the local and state level where there are people who want or need to lead and ‘rule’.
As long as the excesses of those who want to lead and rule are kept at a ‘reasonable level’ the masses are happy as long as they are still ‘fed, entertained and made to feel reasonably comfortable’.
What has upset that ‘apple cart’ is that we now have some VERY power hungry people in government and by judicious manipulation of international tensions and internal to the nation tensions they are about to change the entire system so as to bring about that true Feudal system that they admire so much because that system allows for maximum freedom to indulge in their passions for power over the people.
The end result is going to be chaos and a bunch of people who remember the days of ‘good food, entertainment and a general feeling of well-being’ who are going to listen and gravitate to the one who promises a return to that.
And to get there all they have to do is tear down all of the things that allowed those things to exist in the first place. So yes the pitchforks are coming... Where, when and who they get stuck into has yet to be fully determined.
I, too, agree in principle with what he says. I do not agree with his approach to fixing the problem.
Social programs like those of FDR, which didn’t work, are not the answer. Prosperous raging capitalism, which made the author rich, is.
I, too, agree in principle with what he says. I do not agree with his approach to fixing the problem.
Social programs like those of FDR, which didn’t work, are not the answer. Prosperous raging capitalism, which made the author rich, is.