Robert Reich: The wealthy have broken society by siphoning all its money to themselves

[The2ndWheel]

1. Obviously 50 years ago there wasn't widely shared prosperity

Civil rights were barely a thing. Women hadn't entered the work force at the same level. Add more people to the work force though, and each individual person is needed less. It's the same with global labor issues. As the rest of the world opens up, Americans of every sex and color are needed less, as either producer or consumer. On top of that, if you add in advancing technological automation, humans in every part of the world are needed less.

As to the siphoning of profits for a small percentage, that's no different than what we humans are doing in relation to the rest of life on the planet. Civilization is a resource concentration mechanism. We privatize the wealth of the planet for our species, and socialize the costs of our actions to whatever life stands in the way of our progress. In those terms, human beings are the 1%.

We're not going to give up those advantages voluntarily, so it's not so hard to see why the other 1% won't either.