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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: 4, Insightful) by tathra on Thursday July 03 2014, @10:38AM
everyone should, at bare minimum, be able to survive. being unemployed, through injury, sickness, or whatever, should not be a death sentence for you and possibly your whole family like it is now. there doesn't need to be an upper limit, but "work or die" should not be the basis of society. "survival for everyone, and all the luxuries of the world for those who work for them" should be society's goal.
is it even possible? who knows? nobody can get over their own greed and selfishness to even consider it, everybody just starts at the conclusion of "its impossible" and stops there.
(Score: 2) by khakipuce on Thursday July 03 2014, @12:03PM
At it's peak probably 2 to 3 decades ago the UK welfare system was as you describe if not better. Then a big argument about taxation broke out that the rich won, ever since the social security budget has been under huge pressure.
Even now the state generally provides enough cash and health care to keep everyone who can access it alive (so pretty much everyone).
(Score: 2) by tathra on Thursday July 03 2014, @12:20PM
so it did work just fine in the UK until the rich started getting too greedy, saying "fuck society"? good, so its already been proven it can work and be stable.
this is absolutely the model we need moving forward, since more and more people will be put out of jobs as society and robotics/automation advances (unless we're going to be merciful and simply kill all the unemployed, which would also serve to prevent any revolts).