What the American people really don't understand about the 1%.

[Yavin4]

In the great film, "Chinatown", there's this great exchange between the gumshoe detective, Jake Gittes, and the rich corrupted, Noah Cross:

Jake Gittes: How much are you worth?

Noah Cross: I have no idea. How much do you want?

Jake Gittes: I just wanna know what you're worth. More than 10 million?

Noah Cross: Oh my, yes!

Jake Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?

Noah Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future.

And there it is. Most Americans think that the 1% can just buy more stuff than they can, and that's all. When that's not what the 1% wants. What they want to do is to control the future. They want their wealth to live on forever and have their progeny control the world through their wealth.

The top 1% wants to create an economic royal class whose power cannot be questioned or controlled by anyone, esp. government. If they want us to go to war with another nation, then it's off to war. if they want to pollute the planet, then pollution it is. If they want bailouts from bad investments, then that's what they get.

It's not about buying consumer goods. It's about the future.

[JayhawkSD]

1. What does that actually mean?

It's a big scary phrase, that they can "buy the future," but what does it mean in terms of nuts and bolts? Please clarify.

[Ron Green]

2. I think the last sentence of the first paragraph

says it.

[phantom power]

4. examples:

They can buy politicians (see: Brothers, Koch), so they control the future that way.

As mentioned in the OP, they can squirrel away their money, so their children, and children's children, never need to worry about money. That's another way of controlling their future.

I think it's worth pointing out, a la Krugman, that this is technically more like the 0.1%.

[Octafish]

5. It means their kids are on top. Guess where ours are to end up?

The people who tried to overthrow FDR in 1933 had kids.

[Yavin4]

9. It means that they will be a new royal class whose rule cannot be challenged by democracy

Whatever they want, or their children want, we would have to comply. If they want to take us to war, we would have to comply.

[Orsino]

3. They're not trying to create an economic aristocracy.

They ARE that aristocracy, and are simply behaving the way they always have...which is always to want more.

[The_Commonist]

6. They want to own the planet.

Eventually, they want to kill off most of us. They want a planet with a few hundred families that own and control everything, and a billion or so serfs to cater to their wants and needs.

And they're probably going to get it.

[jwirr]

7. And there is the answer. THE FUTURE. They know that our future has some real problems coming

down the pipes and they think they can buy their way out of it. And it is not just him - it is all of the richest in this country.

[JayhawkSD]

8. And again I will ask, wah does than mean?

Ron Green begs the question. I ask what does “it’s about the future” mean and he says it means “it’s about the future.”

Phantom power says they can buy politicians, which they are already doing, and their kids can be rich, which means they can control their future. Their future, not the future.

Octafish says it means their kids are on top, which is a very limited perception. “The future” is that their kids are on top? What about oceasn, and rivers, and food supplies and global wars and trivia such as that?

Orsino says it’s not about the future because they’ve already done it.

The commonist says they want to kill eight or nine billion people so that the remaining one billion can be servants to the few hundred elite, which is simply silly.

So, let me ask again with a slightly different emphasis. Does anyone have a serious, meaningful answer to the question I posed. What in meant by the statement that the one percent’s accumulation of wealth is “about the future?”

Update: and jwirr adds a reply which makes some real sense; reveals some real thought devoted to the question. Thank you.

[Yavin4]

10. They want to create a new economic royal class who cannot be challenged by democracy n/t