[ExI] the formerly rich and their larvae...

[spike]

> Lee Corbin
...
> 
> Despite my attempts to explain how some of us prefer to look 
> at it, y'all keep coming back to 
> 
>    i n e q u a l i t y
> 
> as some kind of fundamental problem... Lee

When one is tempted to see things this way, consider all the ways in which
inequality is some kind of fundamental solution.  If you have a few people
with a ton of money, they can do cool things that governments cannot do,
because they cannot agree on what should be done.  The gigarich can sponsor
a particular area of stem cell research for instance, or take on a
particular orphan disease.  They can build big cool stuff, such as
Disneyland.  Big concentrated piles of wealth create bigger piles of wealth.

A classic error is to assume that we compete with the super rich for wealth,
but we really don't.  We compete with the other proles next door for wealth.
In a similar manner, low level workers see the enormous salary of the CEO
and feel resentful.  They assume they are competing with her, but they are
actually competing with the prole in the next cubicle.  The CEO is competing
with the CEO from the other company that makes a similar product to yours.

Someone quoted:

The rich now live in their own world of private education...

(Which we do not pay for.  But they help pay for ours.)

...private health care...

Which we do not pay for.

...and gated mansions...

I would live in a gated mansion too if I had their money.  I would be afraid
of people like me.

...They have their own schools...

Which we do not pay for.

...and their own banks...

Ja, they would need bigger banks than I do, to hold all that money.

...They even travel apart...

Couldn't blame them there.  If one can afford it, why not eliminate the risk
of travelling with the proletariat, and possibly catching the flu?  Hell I
travel apart: I don't take people with me when I drive somewhere.  Don't
you?

... - creating a booming industry of private jets and yachts...

Prime example of what I spoke of in the first paragraph.  The rest of us
make our living building the jets and yachts, or perhaps serving the needs
of those who build jets and yachts.

... Their world now has a name, thanks to a new book by Wall Street Journal
reporter Robert Frank which has dubbed it 'Richistan'...

In the valley here we are ringed by rolling hills.  The really rich build
houses up there, in sight of everyone down here.  This can serve as an
inspiration to the young, an inspiration to all of us.  I can tell my boy:
See there Isaac?  Study hard, be smart, work like a madman, get in with the
right bunch, be lucky and someday you may live up there.  I will cheerfully
and proudly tell the neighbors that is my son up there.  You can wave at us.
Or them rather, since you will be generous and build the old man an annex on
that nice house up there.

The super rich are our friends.

spike