85 richest people as wealthy as poorest 3.5bn

[Mr.Bill]

[Doncorelone]

You'd think the rich types would be of the noblige oblesse thought and actually do something to help the poorer folks (better working conditions higher wages whatever) to ensure a revolt from below would never happen.

But again, what is the solution, I've read alot of articles about the injustices, but where's the action, where's the alternatives being prominently demonstrated, why do people have no balls to against these guys.

Is the neo-liberal system broken? Do we need a new system? If so, what?

[Duchifas]

[Duchifas]

[Medius]

[fstarcstar]

[broken robot]

The problem is we don't live in small communities anymore where consumption and excess are regulated by communal norms. Our political language of rights and obligations is still based in an increasingly anachronistic 17th/18th century British classical liberal conception of society based in artisanal production and incipient commercial manufacturing, rather than the giant transnational enterprises that now subcontract, outsource, and otherwise undermine local livelihoods in places like the American rustbelt. In contrast in feudal Europe while the nobility had many perks and privileges at the end of the day they were tied through a series of moral and collective obligations to sustain the peasantry. When they failed to provide sustenance in the face of economic mishap, were over-exploitative in their extraction of rent, etc. there were peasant rebellions.

Nowadays in late capitalist America the idea is that wealth is a product of individual will power combined with fortuitous circumstances, to use the Bill Gates example. There's a notion that an increasingly individualized "aristocracy of talent" in places like Silicon Valley are generating massive amounts of wealth. But it's a rosy picture that covers over the larger ambiguities and exploitative aspects of the system including the increasing role of financial and speculative capital in creating bubbles. I'd call it not just neoliberalism but rather hyper-liberalism amplified by notions of creative and technological superiority, the idea that through new inventions such as social media, etc. we can invent the resources necessary for our survival in an increasingly desperate epoch.

Mr. Bill's point is a good one but you have to go back one step and ask whether there is in fact a shared assumption in America that we live in a society where we are equal and contributing members. The reason why I'm sure the Walton family doesn't feel guilty about their "extreme" wealth is quite simply they have no measure for evaluating their wealth against the average citizen, and common people don't have a moral language through which to express rights and claims over that wealth. Nevertheless, I see hope in that lately since the financial crisis people have begun developing the idea that banks get government bailouts and exploit the system to their own advantage, showing the hypocrisy, etc.

[The Dharma Bum]

[The Dharma Bum]

[Indy]

What I find so ironic is all the people who get frothy-mouthed at the idea of poor people allegedly living off their hard-earned tax dollars when in fact the astounding, overwhelming and troubling fact is that the transfer of wealth in this country has been upward--not downward--over the past decade or two. Oh and it's not some little amount. It's astounding.

And we're talking into the hands of 10% or less of the population.

The canary in the coalmine should always be the middle class. There will always be rich people and there will always be poor people. When you start wiping out the middle class, I hope you like being a Mexico or a Brazil, because that's where we are heading.