Economist Joseph Stiglitz points out the top 1 percent are tied inextricably to the bottom 99 percent and the USofA is beginning to look a lot like the Middle Eastern states that are erupting in revolt against the top 1 percent

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/joseph-stiglitz-fate-top-1-bound-how-


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Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that America's top
economists are running around with their hair on fire? (Or whatever
passes for it with economists.) Nobel Prize winner Joe Stiglitz in
Vanity Fair sounds the alarm about growing economic inequality in
America. I wonder if anyone in a position to do something about it is
listening?

America?s inequality distorts our society in every conceivable way.
There is, for one thing, a well-documented lifestyle effect?people
outside the top 1 percent increasingly live beyond their means.
Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviorism
is very real. Inequality massively distorts our foreign policy. The
top 1 percent rarely serve in the military?the reality is that the
?all-volunteer? army does not pay enough to attract their sons and
daughters, and patriotism goes only so far. Plus, the wealthiest class
feels no pinch from higher taxes when the nation goes to war: borrowed
money will pay for all that. Foreign policy, by definition, is about
the balancing of national interests and national resources. With the
top 1 percent in charge, and paying no price, the notion of balance
and restraint goes out the window. There is no limit to the adventures
we can undertake; corporations and contractors stand only to gain. The
rules of economic globalization are likewise designed to benefit the
rich: they encourage competition among countries for business, which
drives down taxes on corporations, weakens health and environmental
protections, and undermines what used to be viewed as the ?core? labor
rights, which include the right to collective bargaining. Imagine what
the world might look like if the rules were designed instead to
encourage competition among countries forworkers. Governments would
compete in providing economic security, low taxes on ordinary wage
earners, good education, and a clean environment?things workers care
about. But the top 1 percent don?t need to care.

Or, more accurately, they think they don?t. Of all the costs imposed
on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the
erosion of our sense of identity, in which fair play, equality of
opportunity, and a sense of community are so important. America has
long prided itself on being a fair society, where everyone has an
equal chance of getting ahead, but the statistics suggest otherwise:
the chances of a poor citizen, or even a middle-class citizen, making
it to the top in America are smaller than in many countries of Europe.
The cards are stacked against them. It is this sense of an unjust
system without opportunity that has given rise to the conflagrations
in the Middle East: rising food prices and growing and persistent
youth unemployment simply served as kindling. With youth unemployment
in America at around 20 percent (and in some locations, and among some
socio-demographic groups, at twice that); with one out of six
Americans desiring a full-time job not able to get one; with one out
of seven Americans on food stamps (and about the same number suffering
from ?food insecurity?)?given all this, there is ample evidence that
something has blocked the vaunted ?trickling down? from the top 1
percent to everyone else. All of this is having the predictable effect
of creating alienation?voter turnout among those in their 20s in the
last election stood at 21 percent, comparable to the unemployment
rate.

In recent weeks we have watched people taking to the streets by the
millions to protest political, economic, and social conditions in the
oppressive societies they inhabit. Governments have been toppled in
Egypt and Tunisia. Protests have erupted in Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain.
The ruling families elsewhere in the region look on nervously from
their air-conditioned penthouses?will they be next? They are right to
worry. These are societies where a minuscule fraction of the
population?less than 1 percent?controls the lion?s share of the
wealth; where wealth is a main determinant of power; where entrenched
corruption of one sort or another is a way of life; and where the
wealthiest often stand actively in the way of policies that would
improve life for people in general.

As we gaze out at the popular fervor in the streets, one question to
ask ourselves is this: When will it come to America? In important
ways, our own country has become like one of these distant, troubled
places.

Alexis de Tocqueville once described what he saw as a chief part of
the peculiar genius of American society?something he called
?self-interest properly understood.? The last two words were the key.
Everyone possesses self-interest in a narrow sense: I want what?s good
for me right now! Self-interest ?properly understood? is different. It
means appreciating that paying attention to everyone else?s
self-interest?in other words, the common welfare?is in fact a
precondition for one?s own ultimate well-being. Tocqueville was not
suggesting that there was anything noble or idealistic about this
outlook?in fact, he was suggesting the opposite. It was a mark of
American pragmatism. Those canny Americans understood a basic fact:
looking out for the other guy isn?t just good for the soul?it?s good
for business.

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best
doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money
doesn?t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound
up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is
something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.

Sounds like a bit of an implied threat there, Joe! Of course,
predicting something is often confused with a recommendation...
-- end quote
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