The rich making themselves richer is ultimately self defeating

[MrScorpio]

How can economy that works best when everyone does well, survive when only very few prosper above everyone else?

It can't… When the house of cards collapses, everyone will suffer, both rich and poor.

The problem is that all that money is currently insulating them from reality.


Democracy is the only thing that can bring it on home to them.

[Drale]

1. I'm waiting for some bloody heads on pikes

its happened plenty of times over the century's, usually its kings and queens who are killed but the most dangerous people know are the rich.

[baldguy]

2. It's not about the money, it's about the power.

Wealth is just a means to an end.

[Atman]

3. They don't care. They'll die rich, their spawn will inherit their wealth.

Meanwhile, you'll still be standing in line at Wal Mart trying to save $1 on tube socks.

[Auggie]

4. I ask the same question...

I don't think we've quite reached the level of self-defeating yet. And I think they see many of the middle-income yet to be plucked are beyond our own shores.

[Me.]

5. Agree

They've been killing the golden goose and don't even get it. They've ruined Greece and China is in a lot worse shape than is currently being reported. One by one they are cutting off the fingers that closed into the fist with which they wielded their power

[sufrommich]

6. Yep, even Henry Ford eventually figured out that paying his

workers enough to buy his cars was a win-win situation.

[valerief]

7. You could say that about heroin addicts, too. nt

[Trajan]

8. Absolutely correct

The 'minor wealthy' .... The small business owners and entrepreneurial upstarts who want to sell products in the marketplace MUST recognize the folly of the destruction of the middle class ...

Demeaning wages, I believe, is at the root of our current debacle, and has been a long festering issue that has finally cut 'disposable income' to the bone ...

Higher wages = greater sales = greater revenues = greater profits ...

Even the ignorant must see this eventually ...

[provis99]

9. well, that's essentially Karl Marx's argument.

Capitalists wind up cutting their own throats with their nearsighted oppression of everyone else.

[alcibiades_mystery]

10. I was about to say

This is, at some level, the dynamic that Marx described in Capital. Funny how we keep "rediscovering" the "thoroughly obsolete" notions of Marx, yes? :-)

The main difference is this: capital cannot BUT operate this way - the drive to accumulation is axiomatic, as it were. So, the idea that "the rich" (which is to say, the ruling class in a capitalist social formation) would NOT function in this way is itself misleading. That's the very engine of the system.

[MrScorpio]

11. Maybe all that time that I spent in Trier, Germany rubbed off on me

That was Marx's birthplace

[csziggy]

12. The Masque of the Red Death

Keeps coming to mind.