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This version seems much easier to parse. Nobody would care about the super rich if they felt secure and stable in their own finances. Right now a growing number

by Zikes 11y ago

This version seems much easier to parse. Nobody would care about the super rich if they felt secure and stable in their own finances. Right now a growing number of people do not, and mostly for reasons that are out of their hands. Fix the causes, not the symptoms. Make health care affordable, raise the minimum wage to a living wage (and for gods sake tie it to inflation or something so we're not debating it all over again the next time it's 20 years out of date), eliminate predatory lending practices, fix education costs, etc.

Avshalom 11y ago
- thats assuming those are causes not symptoms - fewer people would care but that doesn't mean they shouldn't. If as an example I am running a business that you really don't like, maybe I'm infamous for hiring death squads or something, so you put together a boycott. Except if I have eleventygazillion dollars your boycott is completely irrelevant to my bank account. I can buy laws even. With enough inequality the sufficiently rich can become entirely unaccountable.
davidw 11y ago
> Nobody would care about the super rich if they felt secure and stable in their own finances. That's probably not true. People are envious creatures, and relative status matters too. I don't believe that that should guide policy, but it's still something to be cognizant of.
- Zikes 11y ago
  That's at the extreme. Sure people will always be jealous of the rich, but there's a big difference between everyday jealousy and getting your house repossessed by the bank that got bailed out with your tax dollars a few years earlier after said bank contributed to the financial recession that caused you to miss your mortgage payment and sink into a spiral of debt and payday loans.
wfo 11y ago
Of course they would still care about the super rich. If a tiny tiny minority of the people in a society control the vast majority of the wealth (equivalent to power in a capitalist society like ours) it is ALWAYS a problem. It means you are effectively living in an oligarchy, not a democracy, which is something most people care about.

by Zikes 11y ago

Avshalom 11y ago

- thats assuming those are causes not symptoms - fewer people would care but that doesn't mean they shouldn't. If as an example I am running a business that you really don't like, maybe I'm infamous for hiring death squads or something, so you put together a boycott. Except if I have eleventygazillion dollars your boycott is completely irrelevant to my bank account. I can buy laws even. With enough inequality the sufficiently rich can become entirely unaccountable.

davidw 11y ago

> Nobody would care about the super rich if they felt secure and stable in their own finances. That's probably not true. People are envious creatures, and relative status matters too. I don't believe that that should guide policy, but it's still something to be cognizant of.

Zikes 11y ago
That's at the extreme. Sure people will always be jealous of the rich, but there's a big difference between everyday jealousy and getting your house repossessed by the bank that got bailed out with your tax dollars a few years earlier after said bank contributed to the financial recession that caused you to miss your mortgage payment and sink into a spiral of debt and payday loans.

wfo 11y ago

Of course they would still care about the super rich. If a tiny tiny minority of the people in a society control the vast majority of the wealth (equivalent to power in a capitalist society like ours) it is ALWAYS a problem. It means you are effectively living in an oligarchy, not a democracy, which is something most people care about.