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Originally Posted by Cynthetiq
If the question is incompetent or corrupt, I'm going with incompetent.
People are just that for the most part. Incompetent. Yes, there is the cream of the crop, but they aren't really what we are talking about, and the corrupt, they are generally eventually caught if they are corrupt enough. Towing the line and such, well fine, that's not really corrupt, maybe more nepotism or "friends" than anything.
I will say that there are many good people out there, and there are many more good people out there who aren't willing to give more than they are already in sense of time and resources. As a member of a BoD, we can't get good people who are interested in running to govern the business. People rather complain that we are a corrupt board and kvetch than actually roll up their sleeves and dig in. I'm taking the same extrapolation to politics and other forms of businesses.
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I realize that it makes sense that they're just incompetent. My first thought was "Reaganomics strikes again". But the truth is that there was something nefarious about the inevitable outcome of freeing up the market and drastically reducing regulation. Considering how rich some people can get off the lack of regulation via less than ethical business practices, is it really so unbelievable that this kind of thing could be intentional?
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
I think we have to be careful of "class warfare". The statistics you cite are a bit misleading. For example, General Motors has a market capitalization (shares outstanding X share price) of about $7.4 billion. The report would show the "rich" owning that. However, the pension liability of GM is $11.4 billion. Most of that is payable to blue collar workers in the form of pension payments, your report excludes that wealth.
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Yes, but GM is just one massive failure among many. Asset ownership is bunched at the very top of income distribution, certainly you can't argue that's not the case.
I know you're a free market capitalist, but surly you can see where there could be a problem with having a small group of individuals owning most of the wealth to an overall society.