The self-destruction of the 1% (revisited)

The Self-destruction of the 1% (via NYT)

This opinion piece reflects what a lot of writers, and political groups, have been saying about the 1%, the global capitalists:  That they seem to have triggered a self-destructive process in their own economic and political system.  It seems to be a global problem, only getting worse, and it's a struggle to think of any outcome other than this complete collapse-thing. 

Not usually found in the New York Times, but if you follow doomers such as The Automatic Earth, Doomstead Diner, James Howard Kunstler, and of course far more radical groups such as the League of Revolutionaries, etc., you'll by now have heard this self-destruction argument laid out in great detail.

Here's some of what Chrystia Freeland had to say in the article--full article, click the link below.

...the future predicted by Karl Marx, who wrote that capitalism contained the seeds of its own destruction. And it is the danger America faces today, as the 1 percent pulls away from everyone else and pursues an economic, political and social agenda that will increase that gap even further — ultimately destroying the open system that made America rich and allowed its 1 percent to thrive in the first place.

...Historically, the United States has enjoyed higher social mobility than Europe, and both left and right have identified this economic openness as an essential source of the nation’s economic vigor. But several recent studies have shown that in America today it is harder to escape the social class of your birth than it is in Europe.

...Exhibit A is the bipartisan, $700 billion rescue of Wall Street in 2008. Exhibit B is the crony recovery. The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty found that 93 percent of the income gains from the 2009-10 recovery went to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. The top 0.01 percent captured 37 percent of these additional earnings, gaining an average of $4.2 million per household.

...It is no accident that in America today the gap between the very rich and everyone else is wider than at any time since the Gilded Age. Now, as then, the titans are seeking an even greater political voice to match their economic power. Now, as then, the inevitable danger is that they will confuse their own self-interest with the common good. The irony of the political rise of the plutocrats is that, like Venice’s oligarchs, they threaten the system that created them.

Full story here:

The Self-Destruction of the 1%