This is in response to dmrdano's comments condemning liberalism and praising capitalism as the solution to humanity's woes:
There have been thousands of books written about the negative impact of greed and materialism and the dangers of excessive surpluses (capital), but I'll list the top 6 that come to mind:
1. Excessive wealth leads to excessive consumption of natural resources. The focus on profits results in a distorted view of the environment, resource extraction, and a blissful ignorance of the effects of their wealth production: pollution, waste, and hazardous materials.
2. The super-rich, like the corporations which serve as the vehicle for their wealth, insulate themselves from risk and liability, through insurance and corporate shields. This occurred through false interpretations of law, primarily the 14th amendment which was inappropriately applied to corporations and giving them all the rights of a person, without any liability. They are able to heavily insure themselves and their property, with their assets actually protected by the masses of middle class people paying premiums.
3. The super-rich contribute heavily to political campaigns, and then get unfair and unequal access to legislators. Bills are passsed which directly benefit the super-rich at the expense of middle-class taxpayers. Do I really need to spell this out in detail? Wall Street bailouts that results in $33 BILLION in bonuses to financial institutions that the FREE MARKET would have let implode. The rich are AGAINST the FREE MARKET! Its a complete ruse, perpetuated by the super rich, that they want transparency and a level playing field. That's the last thing they want ... the super-rich want less competition, the ability to monopolize supplies and pricing, they want no regulation so they can use false and misleading advertising claims, they want collusion to keep prices artificially inflated, etc.
4. The super-rich shelter their income and do not pay their fair share of taxes. They use their wealth to hire lawyers and take their assets overseas into unreported accounts and tax havens. Their enormous wealth gives them the clout to ignore the IRS through layers of shell companies and foreign corporations and bizarre accounting maneuvers.
5. The rich, like most corporations, EXTERNALIZE THE COSTS of doing business, and externalize the costs of their own private and personal lives. Corporations do not truly factor in the pollution they produce, the lives they disrupt when downsizing, the impact of their resource extraction, the need for a taxpayer-funded infrastructure to allow the business to produce and distribute its goods. Taxpayers, mainly lower and middle class people, subsidize these costs, allowing RICH SHAREHOLDERS to simply pocket the extra profit. The super rich do the same thing with their personal lives .... they are able to WRITE-OFF TAX DEDUCTIONS for 2nd homes, boats (using legislation they hand wrote themselves), travel, meals and entertainment, etc which again actually STEALS MONEY from taxpayers and lines the pockets of the wealthy.
6. The rich often focus on ostentatious displays of wealth, promoting conspicuous consumption, and promote a society based on consumerism, environmental degradation, societal inequity, and corrupt moral values. Greed is good, as Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street famously uttered. What's good for GM is good for the country ... more famous quotes. The list of these belief statements goes on forever. The super-rich often pretend to be religious in order to gain some false morality and to be viewed as righteous and ethical ... so they go to church on Sunday, but on Monday order their Midwestern factory to close and to produce all their parts in China in a sweatshop paying people $1/day. Slavery was (and still is) a result of the super-rich justifying whatever it takes to produce a profit.
Jesus was a liberal, and so were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and FDR. So was Martin Luther King, and numerous other people who see that people unrestrained by law or society, will typically run amok with greed and lies and outside the boundaries of the law in order to amass more wealth and power. Government is NEEDED to assure that there is some balance of power between the super-rich, and the people who actually work the farms, build the products, cut people's hair, serve them food in restaurants, etc.
That's also why intelligent, thoughtful people have INHERITANCE TAXES in place. Our forefathers recognized that in Europe, dynasties of wealthy families pass down accumulated wealth over generations, and it will build to the point where they have nearly unlimited power and influence in all areas of society, and the people who wield this power DID NOT EARN IT nor WORK FOR IT ... they simply got it because of their DNA and the womb that they came out of. Many of the people who come from inherited weatlh are dangerous narcissists who can cause havoc for other people and for the planet as a whole. The super-rich create FALSE LANGUAGE CONCEPTS in order to brainwash the masses into adopting their self-serving policies: thus they changed the concept of inheritance taxes to the term "death taxes" in order to frighten and startle the middle class into thinking that their children will not receive any money from all their hard work.
The super-rich can do good in the world, they can help bring about more prosperity, and there are morally upright, ethical super-rich people in the world ... its just that they're in the minority. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Its takes an extraordinary person to withstand the human frailities of greed and excessive ambition once they have tasted the addictive drug of ultra-wealth.
