Sallow
The Big Bad Wolf.
It costs us by sacrificing the rule of law and basic principles of equal protections. It turns government into a favor-factory - ready, willing and able to offer quid pro quo 'special offers' to companies that respond in kind. It's government via horse-trading and connections rather than principle and law.
It just baffles the crap out of me that it's so hard to see what the problem is in this country. Pure and simple it's the concentration of wealth.
i'm not sure what leap you're trying to make. This is about government colluding with business. That might produce concentration of wealth, it might not. Either way it's wrong. I guess you're trying to push this in to the 'redistribute the wealth' rubric, but it really doesn't fit. In fact, setting government up to be in charge of distributing wealth is what creates the problem in the first place.
It does and it doesn't.
No known sucessful human civilization exists without government. And government is the means we use to collectively distribute goods and services. It's something primordial to our fabric. We figured out long ago the concept of many hands making light work.
Right now, we've been veering from a more sensible distribution of wealth to a less sensible distribution of wealth That's something this country initially fought. The idea that leadership was a mandate from god. And wealth was defined by providence and birthright.
We've had a rocky road until the New Deal which really created the American Middle Class. None existed before. The the same mindset opposed to independence from England has been working overtime to create the same conditions that existed in England in our country.
The idea that leadership is a mandate from god and that wealth is defined by providence and birthright.