Well said, thank you. All people have a drive for more life. Small differences in early conditions result in large differences in late conditions. Money begets power, and power begets more money. Where we're born is utterly random. So long as the serfs are battling each other they forget the lords. Many people's legitimate fear is that if we mitigate the worst of stratification we'll throw the "incentive baby" out with the bath water. I think we're smarter than that.
I'm certainly not agreeing with wealth redistribution. What I am saying is that those who have gamed the system and used fraud, theft and lying to steal their way to riches, as well as those who have "legally" gotten rich off these schemes (like the politicians) deserve to be thrown in jail. The fact that they continue, unabated and even enabled, to commit their atrocities has inflamed the populace into an "us versus them" mentality, as the regular Joe knows they are guilty, and knows the system has broken down and will not prosecute them. As a result, instead of fighting about ways to better all our lives, we get bogged down in the rich vs. everyone else. Unfortunately, the majority of the "rich" earned it and are grouped collectively with the swine. The politicians and bankers, of course, want this.
I agree with everything except your last statement. I do not have faith that the MOB will choose correctly. Collectively, "we" are not smarter than that - and have proven ourselves otherwise.
THAT I can see. And even if I couldn't on first glance, I'd reconsider. What with your expertise in this area and all.
+1 I highly recommend this article by Simon Johnson, which makes a similar point extremely well: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/307364/
You shouldn't be putting that shit in your post even if you are being sarcastic. People like rear_ender, brokenarrow, rectum, trendlover, etc. will blow right past your qualifying statement and start repeating that crap as fact.
This would depend on whether we got all of them or not. If we managed to get all of them in this example of utopia justice, then we would give their assets to the injured parties (people who lost money from their theft). In the case of bailed out financial institutions, that would be the taxpayer. In the case of pension funds that invested with shady fund managers, it would be the fund's participants, etc. If no "harmed party" could be determined, then the US Government would seize all assets. Normally, that solution would not be a good one, save that in this example, all of the crooks were done away with.