Eye Recommend --- The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent

THE SELF-DESTRUCTION OF THE 1 PERCENT, by Chrystia Freeland -- 
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/opinion/sunday/the-self-destruction-of-the-1-percent.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

A well written and intelligent opinion piece that compares Venice’s decline from one of the richest cities in Europe to its fall from financial grace in the 17th and 18th centuries to what is happening in the U.S. today. Basically, when the rich find ways to keep more for themselves while excluding others from a chance to move up, they end up killing off their own support system.

“The crony capitalism of today’s oligarchs channel(s) the state’s scarce resources in their own direction. This is the absurdity of Mitt Romney’s comment about the ‘47 percent’ who are ‘dependent upon government’. The reality is that it is those at the top, particularly the tippy-top, of the economic pyramid who have been most effective at capturing government support--and at getting others to pay for it….Most lobbying is pro-business, in the sense that it promotes the interests of existing businesses, not pro-market in the sense of fostering truly free and open competition.…the inevitable danger is that (the very rich) will confuse their own self-interest with the common good. The irony of the political rise of the plutocrats is that, like Venice’s oligarchs, they threaten the system that created them.”