<story><title>Make elites compete: Why the 1% earn so much and what to do about it</title><url>http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2016/03/25-make-elites-compete-why-one-percent-earn-so-much-rothwell</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>themgt</author><text>This is essentially what&amp;#x27;s known as &amp;quot;rentier capitalism&amp;quot;, but the Brookings paper unsurprisingly limits its scope mainly to the medical and legal fields.&lt;p&gt;The much deeper problem is the degree to which much of &amp;quot;the system&amp;quot; itself is captured by these sorts of dynamics. Look at the amount many large companies and wealthy individuals spend on political lobbying of myriad forms. We&amp;#x27;re talking countless billions of dollars.&lt;p&gt;Money, power and connections are used at every level of government, from local to state to federal to subtly and not-so-subtly tilt the pinball machine in far too many and complex ways to attempt to enumerate, but anyone who has been in or near the workings of power understands intimately how this works.&lt;p&gt;One salient point for me is witnessing similar phenomena in other countries to a varying degree, down to e.g. official government border guards, law enforcement and civil service officials in some countries who openly shake people down for bribes to perform their normal duties, either expeditiously or at all.&lt;p&gt;So my takeaway is, this sort of subtle corruption is endemic and impossible to completely end in any human society, but nonetheless the &lt;i&gt;degree&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;character&lt;/i&gt; of the corruption vary hugely from country to country, and the US seems relatively unique in the &amp;quot;first world&amp;quot; in allowing this corruption to grossly undermine basic foundations of modern western democracy to the point people are getting ready to grab the pitchforks.&lt;p&gt;One of the main things elites and intellectuals took away from the rise of fascism and communism in the 1930s&amp;#x2F;cold war period was the need for democracy, no matter how corrupt and sold out, to provide some sort of floor beneath which it would not allow its citizens to fall, and some sense of forward progress and shared success, even if not equally shared ... a sense of we&amp;#x27;re-all-in-this-togetherness. This is the principle that both political parties in the US have now effectively abandoned, rhetoric aside, and the consequences are unfolding before our eyes.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wycx</author><text>I do not think the US is unique, indeed I would say that all modern western countries suffer the same problem.&lt;p&gt;The elites were closet supporters of fascism until they weren&amp;#x27;t. Then we had this anomalous period from the end of WW2 until the early 1970s when the Keyensians were dominant and governments pursued full employment economies via fiscal policy. The elites really can&amp;#x27;t abide sharing with labour, and capitalised on the early 1970s inflation&amp;#x2F;oil shock to promote their essentially neo-feudalist policies in the guise of neoliberalism&amp;#x2F;monetarism. The narrative of how all this came to pass is largely forgotten by mainstream economics, but there is an excellent series of posts, if dense at Bill Mitchell&amp;#x27;s blog[1] that cover this, and is much better than my crude paraphrasing.&lt;p&gt;The logical end-point for rentiers is feudalism. Without communism as a viable alternate force, I think they are seeing how low that floor can go.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bilbo.economicoutlook.net&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;?p=32776&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bilbo.economicoutlook.net&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;?p=32776&lt;/a&gt; Part 10, 11 and 12 are particularly relevant</text></comment>
<story><title>Make elites compete: Why the 1% earn so much and what to do about it</title><url>http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2016/03/25-make-elites-compete-why-one-percent-earn-so-much-rothwell</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>themgt</author><text>This is essentially what&amp;#x27;s known as &amp;quot;rentier capitalism&amp;quot;, but the Brookings paper unsurprisingly limits its scope mainly to the medical and legal fields.&lt;p&gt;The much deeper problem is the degree to which much of &amp;quot;the system&amp;quot; itself is captured by these sorts of dynamics. Look at the amount many large companies and wealthy individuals spend on political lobbying of myriad forms. We&amp;#x27;re talking countless billions of dollars.&lt;p&gt;Money, power and connections are used at every level of government, from local to state to federal to subtly and not-so-subtly tilt the pinball machine in far too many and complex ways to attempt to enumerate, but anyone who has been in or near the workings of power understands intimately how this works.&lt;p&gt;One salient point for me is witnessing similar phenomena in other countries to a varying degree, down to e.g. official government border guards, law enforcement and civil service officials in some countries who openly shake people down for bribes to perform their normal duties, either expeditiously or at all.&lt;p&gt;So my takeaway is, this sort of subtle corruption is endemic and impossible to completely end in any human society, but nonetheless the &lt;i&gt;degree&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;character&lt;/i&gt; of the corruption vary hugely from country to country, and the US seems relatively unique in the &amp;quot;first world&amp;quot; in allowing this corruption to grossly undermine basic foundations of modern western democracy to the point people are getting ready to grab the pitchforks.&lt;p&gt;One of the main things elites and intellectuals took away from the rise of fascism and communism in the 1930s&amp;#x2F;cold war period was the need for democracy, no matter how corrupt and sold out, to provide some sort of floor beneath which it would not allow its citizens to fall, and some sense of forward progress and shared success, even if not equally shared ... a sense of we&amp;#x27;re-all-in-this-togetherness. This is the principle that both political parties in the US have now effectively abandoned, rhetoric aside, and the consequences are unfolding before our eyes.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pron</author><text>You are assuming a government is needed for the rich to get so powerful, when it is not. The rich had even greater political power under feudalism, when government was far more symbolic than real, and under weak governments (e.g. the US in the second half of the 19th century). If now significant amounts of political power are mediated through politicians who need to be persuaded, weak or nonexistent governments allow this power to be exerted directly, in pure and unmediated form.&lt;p&gt;If anything, democratic governments are able to curtail this power somewhat, though obviously not keep it in check entirely. I think that the US is indeed unique in the  levels of power it affords the rich precisely because its central government is weaker than in other Western democracies. The freedom companies like Google have in the US is getting closer to direct, pre-government political power, as opposes to modern, mediated political power.</text></comment>