When Being Rich Makes Us Poor, People Should Occupy Wall Street

[a kennedy]

by Dean Baker

The Very Serious People in Washington are busy trying to find creative ways to cut Social Security and Medicare and take other benefits from middle-class and moderate-income families. The refrain here is that we just can't afford this level of generosity any more.

There are two parts of this story that should drive the rest of us crazy. And it is difficult to determine which one is the more infuriating.

The first is that we know that many people in this country are fabulously rich. And as Elizabeth Warren beautifully reminded us, none of them did it on their own. But Professor Warren is actually far too generous in her account.

While some number of the wealthy may have succeeded by working hard and being smart or creative, many of the very wealthy got their money directly or indirectly through the big hand of the government tilting the playing field in their direction. Their hard work involved rigging the rules to ensure that they ended up on top.

Nowhere is this better seen than on Wall Street, which is chock full of multimillionaires and billionaires who got to the top by taking advantage of items like "too big to fail insurance" for their banks, gambling with government insured deposits, ripping off state and local governments on pension management fees and, of course, the trillion dollars in bailouts bucks given at interest rates that were way below market levels. These people know the role of government very well, even if they pretend this is all about a free market.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/when-being-rich-makes-us_b_1004128.html

[truedelphi]

1. Wish I could rec this a dozen times.

Very good points.

One other thing is that the richest of the rich who own the banks profit the most from the endless wars that this nation always is engaged in.

Since the Korean War, our battles are more about helping the banks out. The government cannot afford the wars, so the government borrows the money for the wars.

I used to make many attempts to talk to Vietnam soldiers about their experiences, and to a man, they described inadequate provisions for fighting a war. They were grateful to talk about the conditions they had faced.

And then came Iraq, where the only policy and military strategy the US had was for our GI's to drive up and down dangerous roads, waiting for an IED attack to let them know where the enemy happened to be. Some strategy!

But every IED taking out our soldiers was another Big Ka-ching for some Banker.

[valerief]

2. The 1% ARE the government. As long they can buy men to shoot at citizens and

beat citizens and flip citizens' votes and pollute citizens and let citizens die in the streets, they ARE the government.

[Sherman A1]

3. K&R Well Said

:applause: