Roger, I will come back later with a more comprehensive reply to your latest post. Personally I think it is a very real and very serious problem that the richest people keep getting not only richer
but so much richer than most other people in their society. And that is one reason why I think it is downright wrong to give the richest people tax breaks, allowing this mega-rich clique to forge ahead even further and leave the rest of society even farther behind. Becoming so rich is like watching the rest of society through a pair of binoculars which are held the wrong way - everything around you shrinks and becomes insignificant.
For now, let me just quote something that I saw in today's USA Today:
Wall Street executives rank among the highest-paid executives anywhere, with 50% of investment bank earnings going to their pay, according to Charles Elson, director of the University of Delaware's Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance.
As far as I can understand, quite a lot of today's current Wall Street mess has to do with the behaviour and risk-taking of investment banks. My impression is that these banks have made huge profits while blowing up a housing, mortgage and subprime bubble.
And
50% of the great earnings of investment banks, whose irresponsible behaviour has greatly contributed to today's crisis, has gone to the pay of those who were responsible for the reckless behaviour of these banks, its executives? That's horrendous! No bank should use more than a quite small percentage of its earnings to pay its executives, in my opinion. The way I see it, the culture of allowing mega-rich people to take huge risks so that astronomical sums of money can be channeled directly into their own pockets while leaving ordinary middle- and low-income people to contribute much of the tax money needed to clean up after this mess - that is the sort of culture that can make a few individuals unbelievably rich, while at the same time it erodes the very foundations of society.
Ann
