Wealth concentration a peril to our free country

Wealth in America is held by fewer and fewer people. The great American middle-class—the people who built this country—is being pushed aside.
Lots of talk of the 1 percent, but it doesn’t matter if you’re a conservative, liberal, or somewhere in between, you must see there is something wrong with so few people controlling so much of the planet’s wealth.
Several years ago I had the opportunity to spend a couple weeks touring Turkey. I went to the ruins of numerous ancient cities. The most revealing was Ephesus. Beautiful place. Hard to believe it was built in 1000 B.C. But to me the most interesting point is that the city was built for about 500 people.
These were the Aristocracy. These people didn’t work. They just made decisions and ran things. Mostly did very little. Meanwhile, thousands of people lived in hovels outside the city. These were the farmers and stone masons and all the people who built the beautiful city for the Aristocracy.
Has anything really changed?
Karl Marx saw it in the mid-19th century. The interesting thing is that his theories may be more relevant now than they were when he wrote them.
Now, before you accuse me of being a communist, I’m just quoting what Marx said. Believing that he knew what he was talking about does not make me a communist. Although to be fair, real communism, as Marx saw it, has never been implemented. The corrupt regimes in Russia, China and other places in the world are not what Marx perceived nor advocated.
James Madison saw it in the early part of the 19th century. He said, “We are free today, substantially, but the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility. It will be an impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of few. A Republic cannot stand upon bayonets, and when the day comes…we must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to readjust the laws of the nation to the changed conditions.”
Now, to be fair, there are lots of people who don’t believe Madison said this. Snopes, the truth-seeking group, could not verify or dispute it’s veracity. In the context in which I use it, it doesn’t really matter.
Someone wrote it. It makes a point. Did Shakespeare write the plays and sonnets attributed to him? Does it really matter at this point? Someone wrote them and they are quite remarkable.
This quote can be traced to Madison:
“The great object (of political parties) should be to combat the evil:
1. By establishing a political equality among all.
2. By withholding unnecessary opportunities from a few, to increase an unmerited, accumulation of riches.
3. By the silent operation of laws, which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme wealth towards a state of comfort.”
If he said that, which has been verified, then he probably made the first quote. What Madison and Marx are saying is that wealth in the hands of a few will result in the degradation of the quality of life among the middle class.
It is estimated the Koch family is worth $93 billion, and they aren’t even the most wealthy family in America. That distinction goes to the Walton family. If you’re not familiar with the Waltons, think Walmart. Both families have been eclipsed by Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon, who is now estimated to be worth more than $105 billion. It is estimated 1 percent of the people own 35 percent of the wealth in the United States. And that percentage grows larger each day.
The next 19 percent own more than 50 percent. Thus, the top 20 percent of Americans own 85 percent of the country’s wealth. That leaves 15 percent of the wealth for the other 85 percent of the people.
And, it’s getting worse. The recent tax bill will save Bezos, the Waltons, and the Koch family billions of dollars. In fact, the one percenters will receive 83 percent of the tax benefit. Is that really watching out for the little guy, as the president has said?
Thirteen days after the tax bill passed, the Koch brothers gave Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s political action committee $500,000.
Interesting timing. A payoff? If it was, it’s a legal payoff. The Koch brothers did nothing wrong—according to the law.
By the way, did you know the new tax bill includes “a special deduction for oil and gas investors?” That is one of the things the Koch brothers do. Imagine that. The Koch brothers waited 13 days before giving the money to Ryan. Others weren’t so discrete.
Just two days after the tax bill passed Ryan received $330,000 in contributions from other sources. Now that Ryan has announced his retirement from Congress, I wonder what he’ll do with the money?
If you had $93 billion dollars what would you do with the billions of dollars you’d saved because of the new tax bill? How many billions of dollars does a person need?
Corruption? You decide.
Marx believed capitalism fosters wealth, congregated with a few people, just like the statistics suggest. He said it was inevitable that a few people would hold most of the wealth. It’s built into the capitalist system. He believed the only way to change that is revolt.
He called the ruling class and holders of the means of production bourgeoisie and the working class the proletariat. I’m no economist, but what I don’t understand is if the bourgeoisie has all the wealth, how can the proletariat buy what the bourgeoisie is selling?
Eventually, Marx said, wealth would be so concentrated with a few that the proletariat would rebel. That is the only way to change things — and inevitable.
Are we there yet?