A stagnant economy has undoubtedly put a lot of financial stress on the middle class. And that is bumming out America’s 1 percenters. “Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society,” entrepreneur Nick Hanauer wrote recently in Politico, in an open letter to “my fellow zillionaires…. “If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us,” he writes. “One day, somebody sets himself on fire, then thousands of people are in the streets, and before you know it, the country is burning. And then there’s no time for us to get to the airport and jump on our Gulfstream Vs and fly to New Zealand.”… The economic trends Hanauer identifies are, in fact, real problems. America as a whole will suffer if the fortunes of the middle class don’t improve. There are solutions, however, and they’ll probably materialize in the usual American way — right before disaster strikes. It’s nearly inevitable there will be government spending cuts and, yes, tax hikes, when the government’s finances become unsustainable, which could take a decade or more. When it happens, the politicians in Washington will find ways to spread the pain around and America will muddle through. The rich will have to pay more, but they’ll still be rich. And they still won’t have to worry about pitchforks. SOURCE:  The rich can stop worrying about a middle-class revolution | Daily Ticker – Yahoo Finance.

This is an interesting article about the words of a rich guy and the income inequality.  If you want to skip the commentary and go to the original article click here.

I think to some degree Mr. Hanauer has it right. He talks about things that need to be done to stifle a possible revolution against people like him and that includes returning to pre-Raegan tax rates for his segment of society. We as a country have at least in the past  been able to avert crisis right before disaster strikes but I kind of think if we count on that strategy working every time we are might be in for a severe disappointment.

It might appear otherwise from some of my posts  but I personally don’t have anything against rich guys, at least those who earned their riches themselves. I do have a certain degree of disdain for those who came by their wealth through the work of others, even family members. To me that is unearned income and should be very thoroughly taxed as such.

People like Bill Gates become rich by discovering a “better mousetrap”. He gave us a means to quickly advance our business technology.  I grew up near the Army Finance Center at Fort Benjamin in Indianapolis. The building was a huge complex. It took hundreds of thousands of square feet of desks for thousands of workers to process and pay military wages. Today, thanks to Mr. Gates and others that task is now handled by a mere handful of working using computers. Mr. Gates deserves every penny, minus taxes of course, that he earned.