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- Apr 5, 2009
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Memo From A Rich Guy: "The Pitchforks Are Coming
For Us Plutocrats"
the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats
Memo: From Nick Hanauer
To: My Fellow Zillionaires
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I see pitchforks.
At the same time that people like you and me are thriving beyond the dreams of any plutocrats in history, the rest of the countrythe 99.99 percentis lagging far behind. The divide between the haves and have-nots is getting worse really, really fast. In 1980, the top 1 percent controlled about 8 percent of U.S. national income. The bottom 50 percent shared about 18 percent. Today the top 1 percent share about 20 percent; the bottom 50 percent, just 12 percent.
But the problem isnt that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.
And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It wont last.
If we dont do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didnt eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. Its not if, its when.
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