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With rising income inequality the difference between the average Joe and the 1% Joe is growing larger and larger. This seems increasingly unfair to more and mor
by raquo 10y ago
With rising income inequality the difference between the average Joe and the 1% Joe is growing larger and larger. This seems increasingly unfair to more and more people. Eventually all those disillusioned poor people will act on this by bringing to power some radicals who will bulldoze the current system much like the Bolsheviks bulldozed the Russian empire.
If you need evidence that income inequality is itself a bad thing, ask anyone who happens to be on the poverty side of the inequality. There's much, much more of such people than rich people. All these poor people hold a lot of latent power.
- maverick_iceman 10y agoHaven't we heard this same spiel for the last 150 years? The revolution is always one week away and this is a time-invariant statement.
- raquo 10y agoHaven't we had revolutions in the last 150 years? Not in the US, but other countries had a few. But that's not the point. You don't need an armed uprising when you have elections. You need populism. Trump / Brexit / far right parties are not "revolution".
- maverick_iceman 10y ago> Haven't we had revolutions in the last 150 years? Not in the US, but other countries had a few. Yes, and it worked out so wonderfully for them. :)
- sanderjd 10y agoAnd that's the point! Armed revolution is really bad, and massive inequality is one piece in a puzzle that can lead to it. It seems really odd to me to shrug this off as at least part of the answer to the original question of why inequality is bad. We have been more or less immune to this in the US for a long time because of our large and strong middle class that has had way too much to lose. But that's the same middle class that the elites are eroding by short-sightedly capturing an ever larger portion of the modern economy's output.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- alva 10y agoNot in a historical sense, but Trump and Brexit are definitely a revolution in my mind. The magnitude at which they are breaking away from the political arc of the last 25 years is massive.