The article doesn’t do anything but point out that wealth inequality is even more egregious than previously anticipated.
I’m as capitalist as they come. The inherent problem isn’t that the head of your company or Derick Jeter makes orders of magnitude more than an office drone or bat boy. The problem is that when a disproportionate amount of wealth is concentrated within a small group those people in that group have a disproportionate amount of power and influence. And people typically use power and influence to advance their own interests.
This might be a bit abstract to your typical right-leaning middle American who thinks they have it all figured out with their suburban home and their $45-175k job they worked so hard to achieve through the sweat of their brow. That is, their suburban home they are paying off a 30 year mortgage on and their job working for a company that demands undying loyalty but offers to equity.
Yes, we all have to work. And those who work harder and smarter should achieve more. But ask yourself who you are working for and who decides what constitutes “working hard” or “being smart”. Who decides that a texting app is worth billions instead of research on solar panels or cures for cancer?
I think wolfpup already addressed this, but let me point out that this is indeed a problem, but I think calling it the problem is a bit narrow. Power aside, extremely unequal distribution of wealth creates its own set of problems.
It might be worth differentiating 2 into “generalized dissatisfaction over time” and “focused anger in specific times or eras.” I think there’s always some level of “dissatisfaction” that there are rich people around, and maybe even that poor people are around. We’re in an era where a lot of anger and resentment is focused on the top tiers of wealth, which seems different.
How about a sort of dissociative disorder? By which I mean the wealthy are insulated from the real-world effects of their actions. A Buffet or an Adelson shifts capital around in ways that can impact the lives of thousands or millions, but to them, the issue is merely numbers on a balance sheet. I perceive that there is a sort of money cloud where financial activity takes place, but much of that money never really leaves the cloud. Financiers and speculators like big numbers, so anything that draws money from the working economy into the cloud provides them with more chips to push around but increases the strain on the majority of people, who are not directly involved in finance. This is rather similar to political influence, but with less government involvement. It may be quasi-democratic n that people can vote with their dollars, but when a million people can only vote with a dollar versus one person who can vote with a million, it starts to look a lot less like democracy – and this is beside the fact that the structure of the marketplace is such that most people really cannot vote with their dollars because the complex chains of ownership obscure the reality of whither those dollars flow.
Not sure how to succinctly codify that concept, if it is in fact valid.
That’s part of social stratification. The very wealthy have the means of isolating themselves from the rest of society. They can live in gated communities and secure luxury doorman condos guarded by private security, send their children to private schools, hire private doctors, and otherwise detach themselves from the rest of society. And the more they separate themselves from the rest of society, they become less empathetic and even full of contempt towards those lower classes. Often they view them as a threat to what they have worked so hard to achieve.
That’s not quite how the system works. Any large corporation makes decisions based on what’s best for it’s shareholders (owners) and that should be based off of unbiased financial analysis. And a lot of financial activity involves big numbers because a lot of projects (like opening a factory) cost a lot of money.
I guess a simplified way to look at it is to look at Walmart. Walmart employs millions of people and provides an economic benefit worth billions in terms of purchasing cheap goods from China and other places and selling them in the US. And while customers do reap the benefit of affordable products, much of the wealth generated by the Walmart corporation doesn’t go back into the greater economy. It stays with the Walton family who own more wealth than the collective wealth of the bottom 40% of the US. And for good or ill, most of that wealth goes towards whatever issues or causes the Walton family thinks it should go towards.
I’m by no means a lefty/liberal type (honestly, even though I’m going to post a link from The Guardian…), but I’m not sure that the uber rich that amass money for the sake of it are happier than those that can afford a more modest, but comfortable lifestyle.
An interesting article about the residents of Kensington Palace Gardens in London, which you may or may not find relevant to this thread.
And, since Brain Glutton is peppering the thread with quotes, I’ll add one…
“Me? I’m just a prawn in the game.”
Brian London (after getting duffed up by the then Cassius Clay)
I doubt there’s much doubt on that point. Certainly being well-off to a point is one thing, but having enough money to buy your own ocean liner or small country doesn’t increase “happiness” further, from all that I’ve seen. It really comes down to “no one ever has so much money that they’ll stop seeking more” even when that goes off a cliff. Greed, active or passive, is its own motivator.
Perhaps the single best comment about having enough and not I’ve ever heard is this: “Life is like a shit sandwich. The more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat.”