SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the picthfork-futures-accelerate-to-new-highs dept.
Nick Hanauer, a self-described "plutocrat" says history shows that the current economic and governmental situation can't last, and the USA should should get busy changing before the system breaks down.
From the memo to his "Fellow Zillionaires":
I founded aQuantive, an Internet advertising company that was sold to Microsoft in 2007 for $6.4 billion. In cash. My friends and I own a bank. I tell you all this to demonstrate that in many ways I'm no different from you. Like you, I have a broad perspective on business and capitalism. And also like you, I have been rewarded obscenely for my success, with a life that the other 99.99 percent of Americans can't even imagine.
But let's speak frankly to each other. I'm not the smartest guy you've ever met, or the hardest-working. I was a mediocre student. I'm not technical at all - I can't write a word of code. What sets me apart, I think, is a tolerance for risk and an intuition about what will happen in the future.
If we don't do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn't eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It's not if, it's when.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday July 03 2014, @06:04AM
So how much do you pay your 99% bodyguards to protect you from the rest of the 99%? Not so much that they become the 1%, in which case they will quit, nor so little that they would benefit as much as anyone else from your overthrow. Perhaps if you could breed a group of insanely loyal bodyguards, say children of another religion that you kidnap, we could call them Janassaries, or Marmelukes! And then they would love us, and protect us, and Indira Gandhi would still be alive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03 2014, @10:18AM
Thats not a worry because isn't impossible. You can not get rich just by working, otherwise things like a middle class would still exist. The lack of a middle class proves that people who work will be poor forever.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03 2014, @12:37PM
Just what do you think a "middle class" is? The US middle class has always been workers. Workers and middle management. In the 50s, a factory job was "middle class:" show up with your lunch pail at 8:30, 15 minute break at 10, lunch at 12... The same schedule as a call center; the pay was a little better. You didn't send your kids to private school, you didn't live in a 2000 square foot mcmansion, and you didn't fly to Costa Rica on vacation. Middle class means, if you manage carefully, then you can retire one day. Middle class means, if you're spendthrift, then you can appear upper class at the expense of working until death.
US socialism means most people end up more-or-less middle class, able to retire on their government pension and government health care. But that's not good enough for people anymore. Now they seem to want trappings of wealth - someone to cook for them every night, someone to raise their kids, a big house without boarders, passive entertainment every day. I'm trying hard not to go all "back in my day" here, but I don't think you people posting about the death of the middle class from your smartphones have any idea what "working class" really means.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03 2014, @01:43PM
I probably wouldn't agree with the parent poster in a lot of things, but getting rid of the $200 monkeys of cable and cellphone bill off one's back will do a lot for one's security.
(Score: 1) by ah.clem on Friday July 04 2014, @02:32AM
Respectfully, no one is forcing you to pony up that money for cable or smartphone. If you understand how wealth is accumulated in the US, you could start investing that $200-$400 a month and see very significant returns over the years. I am not being snarky, it took me a long time to figure this out. Unfortunately, it's the way money is made in the US. And it works. No amount of complaining is going to make it any different. You either have to live it, or live with it (to paraphrase the Firesign Theatre).
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 03 2014, @01:58PM
I don't know, but I tend to trust good movies and/or sitcoms to reflect well enough the reality of their times (otherwise how would the audience relate with them?). So, let me pick some examples:
* Bewitched [wikipedia.org] - '64-'72 - single bread earner in the family, wife staying at home with a small kid
* The Flinstones/Jetsons - started early '60-ies. Single bread earner in the family, wifes staying at home at home with one small kid each.
* The Deer Hunter - filmed in '78 with events place in '72. The blue-collar guys have time to go hunting in the mountain every weekend. There's no indication their girlfriends are working
Ummm... looks like a different middle class... was it all smoke-and-mirrors then, or is smoke-and-mirrors now?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:44PM
2000 sq foot a McMansion? Hardly. More like a modest sized rancher.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03 2014, @08:39PM
It was a term made up by lamestream media.
There are only 2 classes: people who make money from labor and people who make money from money--The Proletariat and The Bourgeoisie aka The Working Class and The Idle Rich.
The term "middle class" was invented in pursuit of the elite's Divide and Conquer strategy:
Get non-rich people to squabble among themselves and not to concentrate on the source of their affliction (the rich and politically powerful).
The proper term (if you are going to use such a stupid, useless term) would be Middle INCOME--and the lines can arbitrarily be drawn anywhere.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 07 2014, @02:32AM
A third class is lazy ass movement-co-opting layabout intellectuals who crave power leading people that they themselves have nothing in common with.