Yup. This has been coming for a long time and it's going to get worse before - if - it gets better.

Last time this happened, it ended with us chopping their heads off, I think. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, anyway.

They're far savvier this time. No one will tell us to eat brioche. Instead they'll tell us we could be eating brioche except for the government/immigrants/.

Ack! Tag fail! Should say insert scapegoat du jour here.

I'm gonna gut me some plutocrats.

So true, so true. I wonder, I just wonder, if maybe by NOW this will become clear to people...MAYBE, this time, by NOW...No??....then, OK, wait a sec, how bout NOW? No? NOW?

...and so it goes, while we all continue to be openly railroaded by the few, the bold, the supperrich.

There are some appalling statistics in there, for sure. I bet they could be applied to most 'developed' nations to a greater or lesser degree. None of this is any secret, though, nor is it news. For decades now, we have sat back and watched the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and we've done nothing about it because we aspired to be like those people with their Porsches and their big houses. Because we aspired to be like them, we saw nothing wrong with the situation. It's only now when people have realised that the dream was more of a fairy tale and that they were never destined to achieve their dreams that they are up in arms about to growing disparity in wealth. The time to act by refusing to accept CEOs being paid extortionate salaries and by voting against higher taxes for the super-rich was years, if not decades, ago. Now, it's too late, because the political will is simply not there to take money away from those individuals who wield enormous political power. I don't know what the solution is, apart from a modern-day revolution.

I get angry when I see billionaires promoting themselves as philanthropists because they are giving away half their fortune and similar statements. Even if Bill Gates gives way half his fortune, he is still going to be among the super-rich and still has resources that all but a very few people in the world have access to. A billionaire giving away half his/her fortune is, in real terms, equivalent to the average person giving $10 to a charity. Even if a billionaire gives away 90% of his/her fortune, they are still far richer than all but a few people in the world. Sure, it's great that they are doing this, but it's not charitable if you do it for self-promotion. I think that, once you have so much money you can't possibly spend it, reputation becomes your currency and there seems to be a tendency to buy back your status as a human being in later life by giving away the spoils of screwing over as many people as possible up until that date. To all the billionaires reading this, here's a suggestion: act like a fucking human being your whole life and don't steal from defenceless people in the first place, then they won't need your fucking hollow charity! Pay them decent wages, use your power to create sustainable products and only take what you deserve, then you become part of the solution.

Of course, a large part of the problem is that we have all come to expect that we can aspire to higher things, instead of being happy with comfort. In reality, we all have to accept our share of the blame.

dg: That's Commie pinko talk, you know. It was nice knowing you. *tongue-in-cheek*

Seriously, though, a few years ago, I realized that sometimes I'm way more socialist than I thought. Sure, I also dream of being uber-rich, and living where I do and doing what I do for a living doesn't help my feelings of financial inadequacy.

The last 5 years or so have pushed me into a much leftier direction than I previously was. I am definitely more interested in socialist ideas, and in lending greater legitimacy to them than they've enjoyed in the political discourse of my lifetime, than ever before.

being happy with comfort

This is an important point - in our encouragement of striving, we've forgotten how to live a satisfying life. Many people make choices about how to spend time that don't actually increase their happiness. I am still puzzled watching the passion with which people chase material goods, the money they're willing to spend on them. And still disgusted at the crappy trade we've been asked to make - free marketeers point to our plethora of cheap consumer goods, as though continually falling prices which allow us to fill our houses with crap clothes and housewares and toys will be a satisfying replacement for secure health care, quality education, functional cities or a clean environment.

I don't take quite as negative a stance as you, dg - the accumulation of wealth in narrow sectors has been a perennial issue in human history, for sure, but there have been times (the Gilded Age through the forties, say) where it reached such extremes that people turned back to an interest in public, shared power. Anyway, I think it's worth talking about; I think it's worth the fight for hearts-and-minds to keep saying "You know, this system isn't arbitrary, it doesn't happen by a force of nature; most economic suffering is caused by human decisions, made by a few, and the public can ask for other decisions - and, on a small (local, municipal) scale, actually implement other models."

I don't think I can quite qualify as socialist after yesterday using credit to buy a 42" LCD TV and TiVo ;-) Also, yeah, I'm part of the problem.