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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 04 2014, @08:18AM
He wasn't suggesting that jobs should be created purely for the sake of creating job, but to do things others would find beneficial. Take a look around, around where you live and where you work. Do you really not see things people could be employed to do, or is the environment you live and work in perfect already?
Although that said, it may be beneficial to impose a maximum work week along with a minimum wage, this would help distribute the available work more evenly and give people more free time which they could use to take care of their health (e.g. exercise and get a bit more sleep) or learn something, this would lead to healthier, happier workers who are less likely to need to take time off sick.
I don't think we are quite ready for a basic income scheme just yet, there is still plenty of work that needs doing, though someday, probably in the not too distant future it will be necessary. That isn't to say that people who are unemployed shouldn't get a basic income, but they should be trying to get work if they can work and can't support themselves.