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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhy conservative billionaires have started talking like Bernie Sanders...
http://www.salon.com/2015/08/11/why_conservatives_billionaires_have_started_talking_like_bernie_sanders_we_are_creating_a_caste_system_from_which_its_almost_impossible_to_escape/Tuesday, Aug 11, 2015 07:59 AM EST
Why conservative billionaires have started talking like Bernie Sanders: We are creating a caste system from which its almost impossible to escape
This is Kenneth Langone, the founder of Home Depot and a longtime GOP donor. His biggest fear? Income inequality
Matthew Pulver
snip//
Georgescu writes:
In June, Cartier chief Johann Rupert worth an estimated $7.5 billion delivered the same message to his wealthy colleagues, telling them that the intensifying inequality and what it portends keeps me awake at night. He told his fellow elites that We are destroying the middle classes at this stage and it will affect us. Like Georgescu and Langone, Rupert feared unrest and asked, How is society going to cope with structural unemployment and the envy, hatred and the social warfare?
But while Rupert only mused about the prospects for continuing to hawk jewelry and the restfulness of his nights amid the tumult, Georgescu and Langone are being proactive. Georgescu writes that he and Langone have been meeting with chief executives, trying to get action on inequality, taking advantage of Langones tremendous access to business leaders. Youd be hard-pressed to find a major CEO that wouldnt take his call, said a close associate of Rudy Giuliani of Langone in 2012. Georgescu and Langone are telling their patrician peers that if inequality is not addressed, the income gap will most likely be resolved in one of two ways: by major social unrest or through oppressive taxes. The word seems to be getting around at the global aristocracys water cooler, and Georgescu writes that they find almost unanimous agreement on the nature of the problem and the urgent need for solutions.
It is remarkable that Langone is partnered with Georgescu on this crusade for social justice. Langone served on the board of a leading populist philanthropy group called the New York Stock Exchange, and his deep concern for the downtrodden led him to chair that gang of do-gooders. Hes a longtime generous contributor to Republican presidential candidates who have been on the front lines of the battle to institute supply-side and neoliberal economics. [T]heres nobody better than him, said Rudy Giuliani last year about Langones prowess as a bundler for GOP politicians. And when he isnt giving money and raising funds for the political friends of big business, Langone gives the invaluable gift of his careful insight, last year comparing progressives attention to income inequality to Hitlers political project in 1933.
The only thing Langone had right was the year: 1933. It was in that year that President Franklin Roosevelt took office at the height of the Great Depression, inequality peaked to record levels, and fears of revolt circulated among that eras fat-cat elite. Capitalism, unreined during the 1920s, had hit another of its cyclical failures, this time its worst yet. The powerful feared revolution, and the New Deal constituted a sort of bargain made between capitalists and the people: A bit of socialism to save capitalism from itself.
That year, John Maynard Keynes issued an open letter to the newly inaugurated Roosevelt in the New York Times, whose two opening sentences of the more than 2,500-word manifesto defined the stakes and posed revolution as the price of failure of severely altering capitalism as it was practiced. Keynes was no radical. He urged the new president to work within the framework of the existing social system, that is, to reform capitalism without allowing it to be abandoned or abolished.
Alittleliberal
(528 posts)Last edited Tue Aug 11, 2015, 11:55 PM - Edit history (1)
What happens to a system based on consumerism when no one has any money?
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)Aerows
(39,961 posts)Raise wages across the board so that everyone who works has a livable wage, see to it that every American has access to quality health care without bankrupting themselves, and reinvest in America's infrastructure.
Do those three things, and you have nothing to fear.
Warpy
(110,907 posts)First, they're afraid something is going to cost extra money. It doesn't matter if they have enough for a thousand profligate lifetimes, they're terrified of losing anything.
Second, they're afraid of inflation that will mean their wealth is eaten up by those higher prices.
They think increased labor costs fuel both and they couldn't be more wrong.
Depressing wages was their idea to end the inflation built into fiat currency, about 2-4% per year. It didn't work because it's built into the currency and every time a business borrows money, the inflation rate is built into their prices. Most businesses borrow money constantly to keep their cash flow steady.
It didn't work, but now they're trapped by their own lack of success between inflation that never abated and the bogeyman of increased labor cost making it all worse. They've choked off the demand side of the economy and anyone who knows what's going on hates their guts. They also know this can't be sustained much longer, that it will end in meltdown and/or revolution.
You bet your ass they're scared.
Aerows
(39,961 posts)Someone undeservedly earns more than the capitalist in question undeservedly earns.
Another point is this one:
If you have one goat, and your neighbor has a goat, these types of people won't go after the man with a thousand goats. They will do everything in their power to impede the growth of the neighbors goat and steal it if they can. If there is a way to force the neighbor into poverty so that they have to sell the goat for pennies, they will.
It's the philosophy of steal from the poor (bastard that lives next to you) vs. steal from the rich.
I hope that makes sense.
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)Close corporate tax loopholes, change the tax system on the super wealthy investment class, slash the military budget and there's more than enough money to pay for all sorts of good things.
Aerows
(39,961 posts)That too, my friend!
LiberalElite
(14,691 posts)Home Depot can make a killing selling torches and pitchforks to the peasantry.
PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)meow2u3
(24,743 posts)but you'd have to go to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to get the feathers (from the pillows).
PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)Lavish Home Feather Down King Pillow
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Lavish-Home-Feather-Down-King-Pillow-64-13-KP/205577836
meow2u3
(24,743 posts)I didn't know HD sold bedding.
MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)I laughed at this one!
LiberalElite
(14,691 posts)ananda
(28,782 posts).. only about themselves.
"My entitled fears for a society that the criminality of my peers and political party helped create is more important than actually changing anything."
PatrickforO
(14,516 posts)1. Strengthened Social Security
2. Stronger unions
3. Better pensions with stronger rules preventing their theft by corporations
4. Medicare for all Americans
5. Much more affordable postsecondary education
6. Wage hikes matching the productivity curve
7. Minimum wage tied to inflation
Geez. My kitty got on the keyboard and held the space key down...
I think retraining the police departments, body cams, strengthening the voting rights act again and more equitable funding for K-12 would be good too.
GoneFishin
(5,217 posts)Borrowing from the Fed for 0.25% then loaning it out at 29% should be a jailable offense.
PatrickforO
(14,516 posts)PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)GoneFishin
(5,217 posts)lid doesn't blow off. They are not going to open the lid and let us out of the pot by choice. Those used to always getting their way are not going to willingly leave one extra cent on the table.
And since they substantially have taken it all, they have to give some of it up if inequality is to be reduced.
Hydra
(14,459 posts)And then be surprised when it comes right back as soon as they try to steal it from us again.
GoneFishin
(5,217 posts)annabanana
(52,791 posts)Hydra
(14,459 posts)The middle class has always been a great shield for the elite. The Middle class thinks they will one day be in the upper tiers, and so defend and excuse their lawlessness.
And then the elite erased the middle class. A lot of Republicans think they are 1%ers, but other than those morons, everyone else knows they're not getting a slice of that pie, ever.
It's easy to control someone by dangling a carrot like that- but when there is only the stick, then something else is likely to happen.
hatrack
(59,439 posts)The one where I walked in, couldn't find anyone to answer my questions?
The one where I saw exactly one guy trying to help about nine people stacked up at the self-check stands, on a Saturday afternoon in summer?
That Home Depot?
Sure, it's one store in one city, but I have my doubts as to just how fucking concerned he is.
NCjack
(10,279 posts)1. Shut down the donations by the 1% to RW Republicans. (Put those assholes out of business.)
2. Shut down the buying of advertisements by the 1% on Fox News. (Put those assholes out of business.)
closeupready
(29,503 posts)In the face of colonial repression, this was a grass roots movement to unite arabs against colonial invaders. Their founders were persecuted, arrested, tortured, and killed. And that was about 100 years ago. And it is now one of the most popular political factions in Egypt, and popular all over the arab world. It's tragic that violence has been used to achieve some of their aims, whereas people like Gandhi were even more successful against colonial Britain through means of nonviolent resistance.
Are there parallels, however, between what happened in Egypt and what is happening here? As I say, it's an imperfect analogy, so who can say, but for those who enjoy studying history, it's an interesting exercise.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)Talking like Bernie Sanders (sort of)