I don't want more money; I want more democracy. Treating our highly skewed wealth distribution strictly as a matter of material welfare is a diversion from the

I don't want more money; I want more democracy. Treating our highly skewed wealth distribution strictly as a matter of material welfare is a diversion from the fact that extreme income inequality is evidence of regulatory capture and rent seeking. When war contractors and bankers whisper in the ear of the executive branch to lobby for legislation by executive order and extra judicial legal clarifications (as in the Bush-Ashcroft-Gonzales fiasco), massive anonymous campaign donations are upheld by the supreme court as "free speech", and so on, the wealthy have many times more political influence than you do. Recall the scandals surrounding massive, secret, quid pro quo political donations by the tycoons of the first Gilded Age; now the supreme court has found that when the rich buy an election they have a legal right to do it in secret. The problem is not that I want more money; it's that our votes are counted in dollars. This is how we ended up with a regressive tax system (20-30 percent for earned income, %15 for capital gains, %0 percent for offshore “wealth managed” assets), “Torte Reform”, “Bankruptcy Reform”, and plea bargaining, to keep you from having your day in court, privatized prisons, repeal of Glass-Steagall, and all sorts of other rules that structurally advantage people who control capital. The state arguably sponsors consumer indebtedness: the education, health care, and housing markets are all inflated by government money, and medical and student debts are exempt from bankruptcy. Low interest rates seem to create asset bubbles, and we socialize the losses by bailing out banks but not individuals. A good life means more than just “three meals a day” eaten in prison, on parole, or as an indentured servant. “In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.” Anatole France