A new role for the 1%
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/08/opinion/rushkoff-one-percent/index.html?hpt=hp_bn9
An interesting article that, given my past reading on history, rings true (I am too lazy to do research). I babbled about this earlier, how the rich are not incentivised to grow our economy, but this takes a different view. The above article makes a plausible argument for why our economy has stagnated over the last 40+ years, as the rich get richer the overall buying power shrinks. As I mention in my screed, since the rich don’t care about changing things that puts us, as a society, in a bit of a quandary. Everyone is better off with a widespread and robust middle class, rich and poor alike. Since it really is the middle class that pays the taxes (yes, I know (and complain about) the fact that rich pay less in taxes as a percentage that the 99% do, but even if they paid the same the middle class (at least as it stands today) would still pay more than half of all taxes) as the middle class shrinks (what we have been experiencing for the better part of the last 40+ years) tax revenues inevitably decrease (can’t get blood from a turnip, so the poor will never contribute in any meaningful way and the oligarchy of course owns the government outright, so will never pay the majority in taxes).
I am not sure, though, that the author’s ideas of trying to reassure the 1% that we aren’t out to get them is really going to make a difference. The oligarchy knows that other than torches and pitchforks, there isn’t a damn thing that we can do about it and even with those weapons of mass destruction they can easily afford goons that will hold us off. Even if we attempt to formulate a barter-based economy independent of the oligarchy (like they would allow that), I can’t see that going on for long before it becomes usurped. The only way I can see something like this happening is if a huge fraction of the 99% were to all suddenly agree to operate their lives in a way totally outside of today’s marketplace, something I just don’t think that many cats can be herded to do. Heck the Occupy Wall Street-ers can’t even seem to agree on what their protest is about.
Interesting concepts, though.
