America's Wealthiest Are Just Too Damn Rich to Have a Functioning Society

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/americas-wealthiest-are-just-too-damn-rich-have-functioning-society


Imagine yourself part of the typical American family. Your household would have, the Federal Reserve reported in September, a net worth of $81,200.

That’s not a whole lot of money. But half of America’s households would actually have less wealth than you do.

Now imagine that your net worth suddenly quadrupled, to about $325,000. That sum would place you within the ranks of America’s most affluent 20 percent of income earners. You would be “typical” no more. On the other hand, you still wouldn’t be rich, or even close to possessing a grand fortune.

So suppose your wealth quadrupled again. That would bump your net worth — your total assets minus the sum of your debts — all the way up to $1.3 million.

[Half-Century Man]

1. Does anyone have a valid argument in favor of allowing Billionaires to exist in our society?

Here are some of mine against allowing them to exist.

They are to our economy, what a blood clot is to our arteries. Just referencing money, they freeze capital in place stopping it from moving through our society. Other portions on our society are becoming withered by being cut off from vital stimulus. Money in politics can be viewed as a blood clot in our brain. The concentration of money in specific elected offices is akin to having a stroke, it limits our actions, communications, and even our ability to detect damage with certain issues.

Too much power concentrated in too few hands is why we broke away from England in the first place. "We the People" took the power over our lives for ourselves. "We the People" means the collective lot of us, each casting a vote of equal significance. We formed the first and currently most successful, what would later be called, socialist society. To allow power to once again be concentrated in the hands of the few is throwing away what we claim to hold dear. Do not cast off the yoke called the Divine Right of Kings, to accept the chains of the Sublime Right of Money.

We should not deny the needs of the many to fill the wants of the very few. Those persons trying to survive too little food, too little health care, and too little shelter are of greater significance than those who have to suffer though too small a yacht.

If we actually value the efforts of the individual. If we actually believe we should be justly rewarded for our hard work. If we really insist that the sins of the first generation not be passed on to the second. Isn't the flip side of that, the power of the first generation be, at the very least, restricted from being passed down? "We the People" rejects the very concept of dynastic Houses. I have no problem with successful successive generations from a family. I just don't believe in inheritances raising exponentially.

[get the red out]

2. Not as far as I am concerned

It's a blight on civilization to have the wealth of our country so concentrated while people suffer, and hopes for the future are diminished.

[marions ghost]

3. The concentration of wealth today amounts to theft.

The new Robber Barons. Corporatocracy.

This exercise of greed and avarice never leads to a healthy functioning society.

And certainly does not support Democracy.