... and the problem I have with Occupy's "tax the rich" and similar sloganeering is this:
Given the immense political connections of the financial class, it is a virtual certainty that any attempt to "level the playing field" would end up falling not on them but on the more productive rich and the upper middle class. In other words, the burden will fall on the people who actually earned it. If anything, the financial elites will find a way to benefit from it at the expense of the "lower rich."
It's not the haves vs. the have-nots. It's the connecteds vs. the connected-nots. The connected-nots with high net worth are just peasants in fancy suits.
Really... doctors, lawyers, engineers, business owners, and executives in productive industries ought to be marching in the streets too. This is not the 99% vs. the 1%. This is about a sophisticated, complex, deeply embedded system of financial con artistry vs. everyone else on the planet. What we have here is a worthless parasite class -- a decadent nobility -- that has buried itself into our civilization like a tick.
[EDIT: I may have misinterpreted the parent post as criticizing finance. I'd delete my comment but I'm leaving part of it here because it has already been replied to.]
What we have here is a worthless parasite class -- a decadent nobility -- that has buried itself into our civilization like a tick
The fact of the matter is you will have a very hard time finding a financial person who defends the current state of things. I never have. Nobody considers bailouts or too-big-to-fail optimal, and nobody likes the regulatory mud the financial industry swims in. And the financial industry, and probably my paycheck, would be smaller if none of this stuff existed. And I wouldn't mind because it'd be made up for by living in a more productive nation.
Of course, you'll still see mega-rich financiers because the economies of scale are unbeatable in this industry. And calling the financial system "con artistry vs everyone else on the planet" is a worthless thing to say because trading, investing, credit, and risk management add value and to say otherwise puts you in a very flimsy position, a position by which you'd have to adopt a wildly heterodox economic view--such as classical Marxism--to reasonably defend yourself.
I often play "defender" of the finance industry among my friends, but I think we should separate two claims:
1) finance, as a whole, is "bad" for whatever reason
2) separate from (1) the people and companies involved in finance are "bad"
These are two entirely different claims. It's totally possible to believe that the finance industry provides valuable capital allocation and risk management services, but to also believe that the companies running these services have become corrupt (and that said corruption happens at the expense of the "99%").
I don't think one can reasonably blame the population at large for suspecting something fishy. Between bailouts of "clearing house counterparties" like AIG/Fannie/Freddie, below-inflation Fed Funds rate to which finance elites have exclusive access, a revolving door of GS alumni at Treasury, etc., one could easily be forgiven for suspecting systematic corruption. The only way to overcome this predisposition is an open commitment to transparency and "taking your lumps when you deserve them", which, in my opinion, has not been demonstrated by the finance community vis-a-vis the taxpayer.
I agree with the attitude of this post, but I'm puzzled that you criticize the Fed Funds rate as below inflation. This is how you create an expansionary monetary policy which is the correct response to a credit-collapse recession. This enriches commerical banks, but all monetary policy is distortionary.
A good alternative might be helicopter money. I wonder how well that would do, politically.
Sorry, I didn't mean to align myself with specific monetary policy. I barely know anything about it. The only point is that I personally can't call up Bernanke for a Fed Funds loan, so the expansion of the money happens asymmetrically across society (in particular, preferentially for the Federal Reserve member banks).
I regret mentioning it. I don't want this to become a Federal Reserve or monetary policy debate. My bad. Go in peace :-)
I have no problem creating enriching commercial banks in the short term to stop a credit-collapse, but steps could be taken to correct that distortion later. None have.
I think you misinterpreted the original statement. Both the article and the parent post take a critical view on inherited wealth, which doesn't necessarily come from the financial industry per se.
Article does claim much of the highest tier's wealth comes from investment as opposed to income. The products in which they invest have to come from financial services, including Cynicalkane's employer.
People make a lot of money on wall street from doing one of 2 things either playing the lotto, or taking a modest slice of vary big cash flows. I would argue that much of the current financial system is designed to extract money from people and institutions with capital though fees and Martingale style investments. Consider, few people would trade an extra 1% return for a 1% risk of complete loss of all equity unless they only share in the upside. Yet, plenty of institutions try and 'pickup penny's in-front of steamrollers' because the people making the decisions share the same risk profile as the company.
Also, the risk profile idea is: A company's decision makers tend to act in their own self interest. So, when their risk profile is favors high risks followed by a quick exit the company will end taking lot's of long term risks even if it's not healthy for it to do so. EX: There is a continuum of lean manufacturing where each stage is slightly more efficient, but the risk that supply chain issues cascading increases. If everyone is focused on the next quarters profit independent of all other issues then things may be trimmed past the point of reasons. This carries over into every area, if you can get a 6 months supply of a part at significantly below market rates it may be worth it to do so but again risk reward of decision maker informs what the company will end up doing. What separates the financial industry is simply the scale of risks and rewards offered to low level individuals within a company.
Very roughly the financial sector takes 1% per annum from financial assets, by various means (commissions, fees, spreads etc).
The sector is so huge because financial assets, leverage and debt has grown so much.
Moving back to a non bubble economy, where banks and other financial institutions, the shadow banking sector (and government, and individuals) are not hugely leveraged will resolve the profitability and size of the financial sector naturally.
Currently banking regulation seems to be the most efefctive way of doing this; getting to a state where too big to fail does not exist would help. There is little political will and lots of lobbying though to not get to this point.
As many pointed out the last time this was on HN, it's pretty misleading to consider anyone who sells their company to have made their money via "direct or indirect participation in the financial and banking industries." Disqualifyingly misleading, frankly.
OP here. I was actually surprised to see this accepted as a new post on HN. I thought news redirected reposts to the page of the original post. Google actually shows three links
In summary: Those in the 99th to 99.9th percentile of wealth may be richer than those in the 98th percentile, but they don't enjoy most advantages implicitly granted to the top 0.1% of Americans.
I think this is a very important point. The 1% is not the enemy except for in symbolic terms.
The enemy is a much smaller group of individuals/corporations than that, and perhaps even, the enemy is more of a "process" than it is any group. I doubt Wal*Mart executives sit up at the top of their tower and plan about how they can tear apart society for their own self interest, but rather, there is a whole process and system built up that is doing exactly that.
I was ready to agree until you said Wal*Mart, in particular in the context of 'tearing apart society'.
Economists--including progressives, such as Matt Yglesais--often comment on the bipartisan fetishization of small businesses and liberal demonization of large ones. This attitude often seems motivated by isolated incidents--the tendency of any deep pocketed company to attract bad press and lawsuits--not the general effect of large business on people as accounted for by sound economic data. In general, large businesses tend to offer better jobs and more advanced economies tend to have more, larger businesses. Nor should Wal-Mart be constructed as harming the lower class, as their very low prices are especially important for the lower class which they achieve by real efficiencies of scale for which mom-and-pop stores are generally incapable. I don't have time to find citations everything, but for the last claim you can check out http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dialogues/fe...
In some markets WalMart is losing market share or decreased revenue growth because it has priced itself above what the 'lower class' can afford. This is largely why dollar (or less) stores have done so well in recent years in North America.
Unions in America are broken; no one has problems with a group of people organizing as long as they don't get special rights. For instance, being able to fire a person when they don't show up for work, e.g. firing strikers. Or look at what the NLRB is doing to Boeing as they try to open up a new plant in SC. It's unfortunate, but unions are a cancer - they enshrine an us vs them attitude, they demand special rights, they encourage bad management, and in general act as a parasite sucking as much benefit as they can from their host.
> Unions are a cancer
I don't wish to start a flame war so I shall be measured here.
Unions came in to being to fight massive, widespread exploration of workers that today would be considered criminal. Unions are still required for their original purpose across the globe ( http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides)
I agree that the USA has been curiously free of unionisation (having 5% of your population as illegal indentured servants probably helps) but most western countries have had the unions win their important battles and it will take a while, if ever, before unions as they were in late 19c early 20c will be needed again
oddly it feels like movements such as occupy are going to become the new union movement.
Anyway my point was that unions = cancer is such a self evidently wrong thing to say for billions of workers that it even makes cancer cringe.
Many battles unions claim to have "won" were already transformation that were happening that they took credit for.
Also unions in the US have reprehensible tactics such as advocating - card checks for voting (intimidation), unfunded pensions, forcing nonunion members to pay dues, having closed shops, etc.
In general, as a community gets richer work conditions improve. When a community first starts working it doesn't have access to the intangible wealth that richer communies have and thus they need to work more hours to make up for this deficiency. As time progresses the accumulate wealth - build roads, infrastructure, housing, stores, have savings. And so can afford to work less, as they work less they start sending children to school instead of the factory (housing and food can be earned by the parents), which then increases the wealth as they are able to work on tasks that require more specialized labor. The better working conditions achieved in America vs China are the result of capital investment and not unions.
Often times unions use their power to cement the position in industry, and use labor law to decrease competition (think of it as regulatory capture). For example there is the case of LOCHNER v. PEOPLE OF STATE OF NEW YORK:
"The true origins of the Bakeshop Act lie in an economic conflict between unionized New York bakers, who labored in large shops and lobbied relentlessly in favor of the law, and their nonunionized, mostly Jewish and Italian immigrant competitors, who tended to work longer hours in small, old-fashioned bakeries. “A ten-hour day would not only aid those unionized bakeries who had not successfully demanded that their hours be reduced,” Bernstein observes, “but would also drive out of business many old-fashioned bakeries that depended on flexible labor schedules.” The large corporate bakeries joined the union in supporting the Bakeshop Act. After all, it was in their economic interest to favor regulations that crippled the competition." (http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/14/lochner-isnt-a-dirty-w...)
Now this isn't to say that unions didn't accomplish anything or to say that they didn't have a positive impact in some ways; I just think that 1. unions get a lot of credit for things they have a mild impact on 2. people ignore all of the horrible things that they do
I agree capital investment generates wealth. Unions represent one means of distributing (not re-distribuing) that wealth - ensure that the labour used to transform x into wealth get a larger share of pie so they can for example afford schooling this increasing the speed of wealth creation.
Unions get credit for distributing wealth to the workers faster than owners of capital would do, and for defending individuals against exploration ( and the point isthat without unions (or other organised collective action) each of us is an explotable individual)
As for the bad things, I just ask what I would choose to do in that situation. HN top choice is start up a competing foxconn that treats workers better. But I fully understand the other thought process:
if the other guy has an army and enforces discipline it would be foolish of you if you thought individual spirit and the invisible hand were going to be any damn use
so for my money unions are just the more militant end of a spectrum that has co-operatives and workers collectives
somewhere in the middle and Cadbury on the far end.
All of the spectrum is about how to distribute the new wealth being generated. It does not all have to go to the owners of capital ( frankly I feel the term Capitalism is misnamed. I would prefer unimpededmarketpricesignalling but is suspect it won't catch on:-)
[edit: can't spell on iPhone plus went off on a tangent. But I would be very interested if anyone knows of research on effect on blue collar wages of the massive influx of illegal workers into USA. This is something the UK as an island has little of.
Pre-existing unions that are past their prime, and already served their purpose become a cancer because they don't disband themselves when they become superfluous.
On the other hand, (at least in the past) when Walmart knew that someone was attempting to start a union, they would bring in a team that would wire the store up with a ton of extra security cameras. Then they would attempt to identify the ringleaders and either fire them or harass them (to encourage them to quit). Is this a business tactic that you approve of?
It's tactic I approve of because they're introducing violence into what should be a voluntary arrangement. If they didn't get special legal privileges as a union, then I'd be against it Walmart discouraging it. When someone starts unionizing, unfortunately in the US they're inviting the a man with a gun to the negotiating table - it no longer is a voluntary agreement. For instance the government can force companies to deal with union negotiations even if the company doesn't want to; you can't fire people for striking; you can't file trespassing complaints against union members, etc. I don't know about you, but when I'm working with someone - I want it to be amicable and don't want them strong arming me. If I think they will then I'll choose not to work for them, I see no difference here.
If this is the attitude you have going into a union negotiation, you're not going to reach an agreement. When I'm negotiating with someone, I want them to be amicable and not accuse me of being "the man with a gun".
To be honest, I was just making a point using terms a lot of people could identify with. I would agree that Wal*Mart is actually an effective social wealth creator, probably more so than any government welfare program.
One thing I wonder is if the upper crust of the upper crust are actually losing their wealth in relative terms (globally) by damaging the country. In essence, if you extrapolate the trend big money and assets in a broken country are not as valuable as the same in a healthy country (whatever the definition of that is). Now I know they can move their money overseas but I would guess that much of the US's top .1%'s money making vehicles are tied to the US in one way or another.
What parasitic elites do to their host civilizations is something a little bit like the tragedy of the commons, except that the latter usually refers to exploitation of inanimate resources.
Why? Asia is better for manufacturing, Europe is better for banking.
US is the largest consumer market out there, but when the credit bubble bursts, Asia will provide a pretty good replacement with tons of disposable incomes concentrated there.
One thing that struck me was reading 1984. The inner-party elite of Oceania were barely middle-class by a material standard, and their society was falling further apart every year, but they held a lot of power. Materially, they weren't in an enviable position, any more than kings who died horribly of now-curable diseases are enviable, but the perverse and horrible (like O'Brien) could enjoy the shit out of their power and others' misery. The boot stomping on a face for a thousand years.
Most dictators enjoy their peoples' misery, and they get more out of the power than they would out of the 1-10x bump it would give their financial status (they have enough money, and unlimited means to get it) to be leading a healthy nation instead of a failing one. Kim Jong-il? While he was alive, I bet he was one of the happiest fuckers out there. And the U.S. corporatist-fascist oligarchy isn't morally superior in inclination; it's just that there are social structures (like laws and elections) in place retarding their progress.
Some people judge wealth and prosperity in absolute terms: what we can do, experiences we can have. That's how most of us on HN feel: it's a positive-sum, win-win mentality. But a lot of people see these things in purely relative terms: they like elitism and exclusion, and that others are suffering from bullshit they don't have to deal with. It makes sense when one considers that excessive financial ambitions are usually sexual in nature, and the sexual benefits derived from obscene wealth are based solely in relative social status (being "alpha").
The OP needs to be read by a lot of people (who probably won't read it): people who conflate $400k/year neurosurgeons who got "rich" and startup new-money by working their asses off (who are generally held to deserve their good fortune, and I agree) with an entrenched, culturally underaccomplished, fascistic, and depraved aristocracy of indolent, manipulative parasites that society should be getting rid of+ through whatever means necessary.
(+ To make it clear, I mean we need to get rid of the aristocracy as an institution, not "get rid of" the individual people. I'd find it quite morally acceptable to solve society's problems in a way that finds them bad, if they weren't willing to decline peacefully and gracefully, but I also think revenge is an utterly stupid impulse and find it most useful to not care either way what happens to them, as long as they're removed from power.)
Wow great post. You already touched on this but to reiterate after achieving a certain amount of wealth, freedom and comfort in life, I wonder whats the point of exclusively striving for more. I can understand wanting to not be a slave to your mortgage, employer, etc etc (in fact it is something Im actively trying to do right now to dedicate myself to my own work) and generally wanting to better your life but after a certain point the marginal difference in lifestyle achieved by more wealth becomes negligible and possibly negative.
I know this is going to sound like rainbows and unicorns but its hard for me to understand why the mega rich aren't all motivated to diligently invest a significant portion of their money and efforts into humanistic efforts. It seems like they understand money and investment in monetary terms but they fail miserably at understanding the non-materialistic and 'big picture' returns.
I wonder whats the point of exclusively striving for more.
Some people love the game and it's a way to keep score. It provides a rush, and seems to provide a high similar to drugs or gambling. Then there is the obvious power trips (probably secondary to the money at that point) that come along with continuing to win.
And for some people it's simply all they know. If I suddenly became beyond wealthy tomorrow I imagine I would still program every day and continue to be interested in technology because it's what I do.
Five tiers of material aspiration: Necessities, Leisure, Comfort, Social Status, and Power. The sane place to "get off" is somewhere in the middle of the Comfort tier.
Leisure is freedom-to (travel, be educated), Comfort is freedom-from (housework, annoyances), and Status is mostly about the ability to maintain maxed-out Comfort (about $2-3M per year, post-tax) without doing anything of value, i.e. being able to get all that just for being "special" (the narcissist's dream). Power is the ability to dick up and down peoples' Status on a whim, because a lot of people who've maxed out the other tiers get bored and need something to do.
Of course, these tiers are fuzzy. Most of us would find business-class travel to be enough Comfort, but some people require a private jet. Also, people with severe psychological issues (which can manifest as greed, which is slightly more glamorous than crippling panic attacks, I guess) will never be comfortable, which is why they soar into the Status and Power tiers but are (internally speaking) still trying to achieve basic Comfort.
>entrenched, culturally underaccomplished, fascistic, and depraved aristocracy of indolent, manipulative parasites
The article specifically mentions the "financial services or banking industry" in this context so that's who I assume you're talking about. Now, this sounds great when you use a vague sound bite, but are you really prepared to say that society should strive to "get rid of" anyone who makes a lot of money in the financial sector?
Not in a physical sense -- we're not to guillotine territory yet -- but seriously... how much value do these people actually create vs., say, engineers, doctors, good executives in productive industries, skilled craftsmen, etc.
People get all bent out of shape about pro athletes making too much, but it seems like the financial elite are by far the most overpaid people on Earth. Many of them seem to create negative value -- the systems that they run are liabilities.
I don't think anybody is arguing we dispose of these people. I think the problem is that money is supposed to be in essence a signifier of creating social value. In a well structured society money should be correlated to producing advances or doing something 'good' but in our current socio-economic climate money in the financial sector is being distributed to those who destroy value.
No, of course not. I know some hedge fund managers who grew up middle-class and achieved their wealth through grit and hard work. Whether we like what they do is another story; they're not part of the parasitic upper class, and they're generally not evil people. They have more in common with startup new-money.
The people I'm talking about come from a closed, powerful social network. They're not part of a social network because they're rich. They're rich because they're part of a scumbag old-boy network. And they get their wealth the same way corrupt government officials (notice that corrupt politicians are always rich) do: they steal it from society.
By the way, it's not arbitrageurs (which is what many hedge fund traders are) who are destroying society. Actually, most of them make markets more efficient in a way that's rather harmless. It's investment banking/M&A types-- people like Meg Whitman who make fortunes spinning IPOs (that is, robbing companies during the IPO process). That's another rant however.
Evil? Maybe not. Hard working? Quite possibly. But almost definitely overpaid.
How much value does the banking industry really create? A whole lot of what this industry does could be replaced by algorithms and put on autopilot.
Maybe I'm ignorant, but it really looks to me that the smart and courageous decisions about allocating capital are being made by entrepreneurs, angel investors, and wealthy individuals who earned their money in value-producing industries (Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk come to mind). The banking industry seems to just squat over a lot of toll bridges, and doesn't seem to even do much in the way of bridge maintenance.
It's the many great leaders that end up transforming lives and countries, and so the tragedy of overcompensation in the finance industry is how it has attracted-away the world's smartest and most charismatic. Now these elite college grads hang out with each other instead of mentoring, inspiring, and setting an example for others. Instead of leading teams to accomplish great things, they are figuring out how best to fool the next guy.
Large-scale prosperity is far more likely when more America's smartest and most charismatic are leading instead of wheeling-and-dealing. Decline was inevitable as soon as high-finance ceased being the province of the boring and bookish.
Evil? Maybe not. Hard working? Quite possibly. But almost definitely overpaid.
Absolutely, and most of them will admit as much.
The banking industry seems to just squat over a lot of toll bridges, and doesn't seem to even do much in the way of bridge maintenance.
I have a lot more respect for traders, quants, and quant developers (who do an honest job, if a socially useless one) than for investment bankers ("eye-wankers") and private equity douches.
One thing I as a Brit find strange is how the US taxes it's citizens and companies on income from abroad. The UK certainly doesn't do this and I'm not aware of anywhere else that does it either. It seems to me that if you are doing business abroad, say in the UK, you are not benefiting from US physical or legal infrastructure while doing so any more than a brit working in britain, so why are you expected to fund it?
To put it another way I'm sure Apple's operations in the UK are self-funding by now, so if Apple earns money in the UK and moves it to the US it is taxed by the US, where if a UK company transfers money earned in the UK to the US it isn't taxed. What's the justification for that? It seems nuts.
You don't even need a fancy startup. Interest rates are quite low right now, which makes saving more difficult. But if we assume an average 5%, saving just $6,000 per year once you reach normal working age doing a regular old job will find you with well over $1.2M by the time you retire.
$6,000 is a lot of money, but it's not that much money. An iPhone, for example, costs approximately $2000-3000 by the time it is all said and done and I see a lot of them out on the street in the hands of normal Americans.
With enough time, $1.2M can be made with a regular job. Nobody said you had to be in the 1% of net worth holders by the time you turn 25, or it doesn't count.
The top 1% won't be $1.2M by the time I retire. For your comparison to be valid go ask someone who was born in the 40's how easy it would have been for them to save $6,000/year.
A fair point. I was really just attempting to illustrate how $1.2M is not that difficult to acquire.
I admit, I come with a biased perspective. Everyone I know born in the 40s were farmers. They all pretty much lived a life of poverty, putting all their income into appreciating assets. They're now all sitting on multi-million dollar fortunes.
Assuming you are in the mid-to-high end earning range of the 99%ers, if you want to live a life of poverty, there's a good chance you'll make the 1% list someday too.
That's the problem with blanket statements. I would think someone who made their millions through questionable banking tricks is quite a bit different to the poor dirt farmer who sold his farm at retirement, no?
The article suggests $300K - $400K income and $1.2M in wealth. As far as being in the 1% when you retire, $1.2M now is not the same as $1.2M in 40 years. I doubt $1.2M will put you in the 1% 40 years from now given inflation & cost of living changes.
1. Time value of money. $1.2 million in 40 years will be about $2.65 million then, assuming 2% inflation.
2. 5% average savings. As far as I can tell, interest rates are no longer exceeding inflation, and haven't been for quite a long time in market-time. I would count on your interest to barely have you breaking even, all in, unless you're taking risks with the money.
You don't even need to be an entrepreneur. A nurse/engineer couple could hit $200k in their 30's, and that income would allow a rate of saving that would lead to well over $1.2m in home equity and retirement accounts in their 50's or 60's.
I'm not sure how you mean this. A Series A round doesn't confer any personal wealth - it's investment in the company in order to help it grow.
Do you mean the valuation of the private company that takes place as part of the Series A round typically gives the founders some level of paper wealth that puts them in the 1%? If so, this makes sense. (Of course, it generally takes a lot of work to convert that into something that can actually be realized in a liquidity sense.)
Given a lump sum of cash and annual withdrawal of a certain percentage of that cash (3% per year is safe, 4% is pushing it, 5% is a sure way to lose your money), you would need the following amounts of money to pay yourself $50,000 per year:
$1.67 Million @ 3% (1 / .03 * 50,000)
$1.25 Million @ 4% (1 / .04 * 50,000)
$1.00 Million @ 5% (1 / .05 * 50,000)
Put another way, if you have X Million, how much could you safely withdraw each year at 3% per year?
$1M: $30k / year
$2M: $60k / year
$3M: $90k / year
$10M: $300k / year
Keep in mind you will pay tax on these figures (15% Long Term Capital Gains tax if you're lucky, or more if it's regular income). And this does not account for inflation, so assume the value of money gets cut in half every 25-30 years.
A very interesting article indeed. Not much new, though. I am curious, though .. many co-founders with very successful exits make the top 0.05% or 0.01% in terms of networth, but they're new money. They're not part of the 0.01% closed circle. What happens to them, usually? Are they accepted into the 0.01% circle once they've made enough money to afford it, or are they treated like a wealthier bottom half of the top 1%?
And for the wealthy people who have pledged 50%+ of their wealth to charity - where do they fall in all this classification?
I don't have any statistics to back up my points but I would think the following would be the case...
With the exception of really tremendous exits, let say a pretty successful cofounder gets between .5 million and 5 million (I'm making these numbers up but Id assume these are pretty reasonable guesses for a majority of moderately successful exits). So if thats the case you have a nice chunk of net worth but after an exit you may not have much cash flow to keep up with the big hitters who have a tremendous stream of cash coming in consistently.
Im certainly not arguing that the co-founder with the successful exit is in a bad position - just that their cash flow may be comparatively low compared to someone else who has an ongoing "money printing machine" so to say.
When Google's employees started to become rich, they were taught the best investment was index funds; that investment firms like Goldman were just out to grab their fees and didn't perform any better over the long run.
If the top 0.1% do indeed manage to destroy the US economy, and, say, China becomes the preeminent economic superpower, does anybody happen to know if China's financial system would be able to resist the same sort of abuse? (If, indeed, it's not already too late.)
There's some other fascinating articles on this guys site. I especially like his look into the local real estate industry.
I don't share all his leftist proclivities but his research has been very eye opening and informative (and paradoxically made me a bit more libertarian).
Given the immense political connections of the financial class, it is a virtual certainty that any attempt to "level the playing field" would end up falling not on them but on the more productive rich and the upper middle class. In other words, the burden will fall on the people who actually earned it. If anything, the financial elites will find a way to benefit from it at the expense of the "lower rich."
It's not the haves vs. the have-nots. It's the connecteds vs. the connected-nots. The connected-nots with high net worth are just peasants in fancy suits.
Really... doctors, lawyers, engineers, business owners, and executives in productive industries ought to be marching in the streets too. This is not the 99% vs. the 1%. This is about a sophisticated, complex, deeply embedded system of financial con artistry vs. everyone else on the planet. What we have here is a worthless parasite class -- a decadent nobility -- that has buried itself into our civilization like a tick.