Wise words from a self-styled Internet zillionaire

[OwlHoot]

The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats; by Nick Hanauer

[BrilloPad]

Let them eat cake?

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.

Not sure I agree. Europe has done a good job in repressing the poor so far. Though it helps the proles don't realize they have a choice between austerity and the Euro.

Nothing in this article about what he is doing to help others. If Zillionaires try to help others then I see no revolution.

[Zero Liability]

As long as there are central banks to shovel money in their pockets and regulatory regimes set to crush competition to any established firms, there will be growing inequality. The governments are aware of this, do not care about the "poor" in the slightest besides bread and circuses for show and don't care about the "rich" outside their favoured few, either. They sure as hell don't care about the middle class so long as it is generating them pelf. Expecting the government to do anything to "solve" this until its very existence is threatened is like expecting the sun to stop rising or water to run uphill. They're not interested in changing their ways until forced to. Most ideas about how to "fix" this by the likes of "geniuses" like Piketty are just more of the same insanity, mostly to justify them shutting down any competition between tax regimes and making sure their cattle cannot escape to other pastures.

[Sysman]

The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats; by Nick Hanauer

I see pitchforks.

Pitchforks. Pitchforks. Get yer Pitchforks while stocks last!

[SpontaneousOrder]

The most ironic thing ...

... If we do something about it, if we adjust our policies in the way that, say, Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression

That's some kind of recursive irony going on there!

[Sysman]

Flaming torches?

Definitely!

[scooterscot]

It happened because we reminded the masses that they are the source of growth and prosperity, not us rich guys.

UK polices are certain to doom the country if there's any truth in this statement. The current government have only assisted the wealthy through QE and favourable polices.

Ask any 'middle class types' if they've seen a wage rise since 2008 or are they on a living wage? Whilst inflation on things that matter have ran out of control.

You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state.

The UK's wealthy few, mass surveillance of the little people. Yeah baby :nazi:

[Zero Liability]

Well they've supercharged and accelerated it, which is a bit more than assisted it.

[Mich the Tester]

Most ideas about how to "fix" this by the likes of "geniuses" like Piketty are just more of the same insanity, mostly to justify them shutting down any competition between tax regimes and making sure their cattle cannot escape to other pastures.

Indeed; Piketty's idea amounts to taxing wealth, and taxing the accumulation of wealth. Now how is the middle class to recover and how are people to give their kids a good start or build up a retirement fund if people get taxed on savings and the wealth they're slowly trying to build?

However, the article makes good points; it's an unsustainable situation.

[speling bee]

Ah, ye good people, the matters goeth not well to pass in England, nor shall not do till everything be common, and that there be no villains nor gentlemen, but that we may be all unied together, and that the lords be no greater masters than we be. What have we deserved, or why should we be kept thus in servage? We be all come from one father and one mother, Adam and Eve: whereby can they say or shew that they be greater lords than we be, saving by that they cause us to win and labour for that they dispend? They are clothed in velvet and camlet furred with grise, and we be vestured with poor cloth: they have their wines, spices and good bread, and we have the drawing out of the chaff and drink water: they dwell in fair houses, and we have the pain and travail, rain and wind in the fields; and by that that cometh of our labours they keep and maintain their estates: we be called their bondmen, and without we do readily them service, we be beaten; and we have no sovereign to whom we may complain, nor that will hear us nor do us right.

John Ball, in J Froissart, Froissart's Chronicles (1385) translated by GC Macaulay (1895)

John Ball (priest) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia