The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats. Story by NICK HANAUER

[DiverDave]

"If we don’t 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 didn’t 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. It’s not if, it’s when."


"It makes perfect sense if you think about it: If a worker earns $7.25 an hour, which is now the national minimum wage, what proportion of that person’s income do you think ends up in the cash registers of local small businesses? Hardly any. That person is paying rent, ideally going out to get subsistence groceries at Safeway, and, if really lucky, has a bus pass. But she’s not going out to eat at restaurants. Not browsing for new clothes. Not buying flowers on Mother’s Day"

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html#.U9eGXeNdVJk

Excellent read. Stuff I've been saying for years.

[FreakinDJ]

1. Its already a Police State

[RKP5637]

2. What he said is all true IMO, so, what has the US done, ramped up DHS and militarized

local police. TPTB know all of this, so, rather than effective solutions for all, we are a police state more than I think many even begin to comprehend.

[FreakinDJ]

16. Anytime the Supreme Court sactions police to kill with impunity

you know your there

[jwirr]

10. Yes and that is why they think they are safe. However they are assuming that the citizenry is the

same as in the French and Communist revolutions. Many of the people in the French revolution were uneducated and in the numbers in the Communist revolution were small.

Not only are most of the 99% educated they are many. And those guns the NRA are so fond of selling - they are everywhere - no pitchforks there. There are also many military educated people in that 99%. Times have changed. Plus they assume the 99% is going to blame the government as they did in the other revolutions but the American people are more angry at the corporations and the rich than they are at the government. The revolution my target the politicians that support the rich but they probably will not be trying to overthrow the actual government. They and their property are not as safe as they think.

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

3. Pretty words....

Now let's see action!

Then I'll believe him. Until then still on the pitchfork, maybe last, but still on it.

[Hotler]

4. The pitchforks should have come out when....

the Wall St. melt down happened. Americans do not have it in them to get up and fight back. Glued to the TV.

[randr]

5. The Pitch Fork Party--Has a nice ring to it

[DeSwiss]

6. Brilliant deduction! However.....

And he said, ''Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country.'' ~Jesus

- Although in all fairness to the Prophet Nicky here, they didn't have billionaire prophets back in Jesus' time. In fact I don't think they thought of a billion anything back then......

K&R

[theaocp]

7. I think this is the most important point:

There can never be enough super-rich Americans to power a great economy. I earn about 1,000 times the median American annually, but I don’t buy thousands of times more stuff.

Whether it's deliberate or not, only cognitive dissonance can explain away not understanding this point.

[RKP5637]

17. Excellent point!!! n/t

[Martin Eden]

8. Inequality by itself will not bring out the pitchforks ...

... unless the standard of living for the majority declines enough to spur action.

And that is where we're headed. If the working/middle class was thriving with a fair amount of disposable income it wouldn't matter so much if a small percentage at the top became fabulously wealthy, but the unmitigated greed of the One Percent is impoverishing the true job creators in our consumer-based economy.

It would be much preferable to bring about the necessary change with ballots not pitchforks, but our democracy is broken. Nothing will be fixed until we fix that -- which means ending corporate personhood, the pernicious influence of Big Money in our electoral system, and laws intended to disenfranchise the poor.

[Baitball Blogger]

9. Does the article identify who the "us plutocrats" are?

Because, "who is 'we', Kimosabi."

[freshwest]

11. As long as the media hypnosis continues, nothing will happen.

It's designed to keep people from creating a social engine with enough power to set back the plutocrats.

And it sends the votes and pitchforks to skewer those who try to do so.

[Populist_Prole]

13. Spot-on summation

Couldn't be more condensed and consise.

[dreamnightwind]

12. One of the best articles I've read in awhile

The oldest and most important conflict in human societies is the battle over the concentration of wealth and power. The folks like us at the top have always told those at the bottom that our respective positions are righteous and good for all. Historically, we called that divine right. Today we have trickle-down economics.

What nonsense this is. Am I really such a superior person? Do I belong at the center of the moral as well as economic universe? Do you?

My family, the Hanauers, started in Germany selling feathers and pillows. They got chased out of Germany by Hitler and ended up in Seattle owning another pillow company. Three generations later, I benefited from that. Then I got as lucky as a person could possibly get in the Internet age by having a buddy in Seattle named Bezos. I look at the average Joe on the street, and I say, “There but for the grace of Jeff go I.” Even the best of us, in the worst of circumstances, are barefoot, standing by a dirt road, selling fruit. We should never forget that, or forget that the United States of America and its middle class made us, rather than the other way around.

Or we could sit back, do nothing, enjoy our yachts. And wait for the pitchforks.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014_Page4.html#ixzz38sOTvRwJ

[90-percent]

14. Isn't the fix already in for the Plutocrats?

Last edited Tue Jul 29, 2014, 10:07 PM - Edit history (1)

Didn't somebody already make a luxury ocean liner rich people can go to live on when the revolution is finally televised?

Or when global climate change renders entire coastal regions uninhabitable?

I mean, they didn't all become giga-rich by being stupid,did they?

-90% Jimmy

[DiverDave]

15. Lets get the PM crowd involved.

What say?

[musiclawyer]

18. Most wealthy neighborhoods are within a stones throw of really bad ones

All it takes is another Rodney King type of thing..... Or video of the murder of an immigrant kid. .... Plus social media .........and most every senator and targeted plutocrats could be taken out over night . But I don't think that will happen. The liberal, weed legal states in the west and northeast eventually will prosper economically by enacting living wage laws, among other progressive measures. They have no choice. Well paid 20th century and pre crash jobs are not coming back.
Then you really will have two Americas -- thriving and depressed. It's already started

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

19. Old editorial

But pretty relevant none the less.

[DirkGently]

20. Think he was on NPR the other day. Talking all kinds of crazy sense. n/t