Are you saying self interest is a bad thing? I could even construe that to mean self responsibility is also "bad" Unless maybe you want to live in a place like N. Korea where all "workers" are "equal" individual starting conditions will always be "different". The "wealthy" do and as you point out always have had a big influence. Until relatively recently the wealthy, comparatively speaking , were also the most educated as well. Were not most of the framers "wealthy" by the standards of the day? I do agree that there is a group of people with too much influence and power. Congressional term limits would have a positive impact on that problem, though it would not solve it completely. I think it's wholly unrealistic to expect or even want everyone to be financially equal. Look back in history. Take the communist revolution in Russia for a perfect example. The revolution was sold to the working class as a means for punishing the evil rich people and empowering the down trodden peasants. In reality the power was simply transferred from royalty to the communist "leaders", which lived in grand style out of sight, and the peasants remained - well peasants.
No one but the simple expects "financial equality", even the most egalitarian nations on Earth still have R/P 10% ratios (the ratio of the average income of the richest 10% to the poorest 10%) of, at best, 4.5.
Differences between people are a given, but not necessarily stratification. Socioeconomic mobility is key to understanding the difference. "Too much" is not so much decided (though the various social sciences can indicate probabilities of problems) as it is observed. When is a pot of water really boiling, when the first bubbles form on the bottom? When the first bubble reaches the surface? When 5 bubbles per second are reaching the surface?
So to get back to the point, how are the liberal policies, most of which you seem to support, improving anyone's Socioeconomic mobility? And thereby reducing this "evil" stratification. I mean from where I sit. We've been throwing away untold hundreds of billions of dollars into liberal policy federal agencies for decades. All supposedly designed to reduce this stratification you speak of. I'm assuming you'll admit things are only getting worse ergo what we're currently doing DOES NOT work.
Other societies are clearly doing it, so how? And before someone says "they have oil to sell", I'll just say that we have things to sell, too, to the tune of... making us the biggest trading country around. Granted, our current account is terrible, and consider our GDP per capita. But those other nations spend more on themselves, paid for by taxing themselves more, and yet have less disorder, more innovation, and more mobility than we do. Edit: you've said this time, and before, that the policies are "not working". Is that a qualitative or quantitative failing, though? I mean, we "coulda won Vietnam if we had gone in there like we meant it", right? But look at it from the opposite side, what would our society look like if we did not have any welfare in it? Well, you can look at our own history to answer that question. Here's a history link to the period preceding and including the Great Depression. Look around and definitely have a look at conditions before and during Teddy Roosevelt who, lol, is the real "radical leftist". What was the American century after Teddy like? What was America like when unions were at their zenith? What's it like now, when unions are at their nadir? Coincidence? No. http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade30.html
You mean Europe? Aren't many of them having a financial crisis of their own. So you're saying that they ARE working? Would you care to provide some evidence of that? probably Well...we wouldn't have any worthless lazy ass welfare recipients for one. Theoretically our budget deficit would be much less and or my taxes would be less. Just for starters I AM going to take a look at your link latter. In the mean time yes I think it was coincidence. Unions were a good thing and had a place BEFORE labor laws and safety regulations. Now they're just out of control and provide little intrinsic benefit , not unlike our federal government. There was a lot more going on economically during the time you reference than just labor unions. And the union are certainly NOT helping matters any now. Am I reading this correctly? You're arguing that welfare and labor unions made us a great nation and all we need is more of the same, payed for by higher taxes, and our problems are solved?
Here's a list. Sort it by the R/P 10%. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
OK I did, what exactly it is I'm looking for? Just for fun I started at the bottom of the list, the low numbers, and moved up until I came across a country I would have any interest whatsoever living in. If for whatever reason I were to leave the sates. Australia was the first one I came to. (And even that is a stretch.) It's numbers aren't much "better" than the USA. Now a similar chart that also includes the respective country's debt as a % of GDP along with tax rates and welfare spending levels might reveal something useful. To one of us anyway.
"By the beginning of the next decade the United States had gone from a laissez-faire economy that oversaw its own conduct to an economy regulated by the federal government. The debate over which is the best course of action still rages today." I'm honestly having a hard time seeing how anything on that web page is helping to make your point Ricter.