>So when you make a statement like "It doesn't have to come from rich people, it comes, ultimately, from profit," it's a somewhat meaningless distinction becaus

>So when you make a statement like "It doesn't have to come from rich people, it comes, ultimately, from profit," it's a somewhat meaningless distinction because every piece of profit is controlled by a person somewhere. It is not meaningless at all. Rich people are individuals that control large amounts of wealth. This is opposed to groups of people who collectively control large amounts of wealth. A superintendent of a large school district can control a billion dollars of wealth but that doesn't make him or her rich (though they make a good salary I'd still classify them, personally, as solidly middle class). And it certainly does matter if we rely increasingly on fewer and fewer individuals (due to increasing inequality) to make economic decisions for everyone. It is inherently inefficient. What we are talking about is identifying this trend as a problem and implementing policies to counteract it before it becomes intractable.