Concentrated wealth: bad for democracy?

[SimpleDon]

You're ignoring the cost in reducing the incentive for success.

I'd love to see some examples from history where the people at the other end of the wealth spectrum (of whom there are far more) suffered more from the reduction of wealth disparity than they did from abject poverty prior to said reduction of wealth disparity - if that has ever happened.

It's not a matter of the suffering of the rich, but of the reduction in incentive. Those rich almost all got that way by doing something that improved society.

The majority of highly paid jobs that have been created in the last few decades has been in the financial sector, the people who are moving around the vast amount of money that the rich have accumulated. The people who run and sell hedge funds, the people who design and sell derivatives like the ones that caused the Great Financial Crisis and Recession, the financial consultants, the insurance executives who are driving up health care costs, the tax consultants that convince people to offshore their wealth, etc. The rentiers who live on taking a few percentage points of everything.

Once again, capitalism works best when people have to work to make money. This includes corporations. The majority of the huge amount of profits that the corporations have earned come from the suppressed wages that they pay to their employees. They don't have to innovate, they don't have to automate to improve their productivity. They just have to move more of their production to China or some other low wage country. Or they hire more illegals. Or they bust another union. Or they gain another tax break by threatening to relocate. Or they buy another politician to gain another tax break or relief from a troubling regulation that costs them money.

So tell me, which of these do you believe improved society?

Which of them provided the corporations with incentives to improve society?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You're ignoring the cost in reducing the incentive for success.

I'd love to see some examples from history where the people at the other end of the wealth spectrum (of whom there are far more) suffered more from the reduction of wealth disparity than they did from abject poverty prior to said reduction of wealth disparity - if that has ever happened.

It's not a matter of the suffering of the rich, but of the reduction in incentive. Those rich almost all got that way by doing something that improved society.

The majority of highly paid jobs that have been created in the last few decades has been in the financial sector, the people who are moving around the vast amount of money that the rich have accumulated. The people who run and sell hedge funds, the people who design and sell derivatives like the ones that caused the Great Financial Crisis and Recession, the financial consultants, the insurance executives who are driving up health care costs, the tax consultants that convince people to offshore their wealth, etc. The rentiers who live on taking a few percentage points of everything.

Once again, capitalism works best when people have to work to make money. This includes corporations. The majority of the huge amount of profits that the corporations have earned come from the suppressed wages that they pay to their employees. They don't have to innovate, they don't have to automate to improve their productivity. They just have to move more of their production to China or some other low wage country. Or they hire more illegals. Or they bust another union. Or they gain another tax break by threatening to relocate. Or they buy another politician to gain another tax break or relief from a troubling regulation that costs them money.

So tell me, which of these do you believe improved society?

Which of them provided the corporations with incentives to improve society?

People have been talking about Forbes-level wealth. That's not from the financial sector.

As for the financial sector, rather than worry about salaries I think we need to do something about some of the industry practices. I'd start with imposing margin requirements on all forms of debt.