The Thieving Rich - in More Ways Than One

It's bad enough that we set our tax and spending policies, as E.J. Dionne says, as if rich people will work harder if we give them more money, but poor people will work harder if we give them less money.

Let's consider why we're giving more money to the people proven to to be more likely to commit crimes with it.

From Firedoglake:

A University of California, Berkeley and University of Toronto research team conducted a series of studies and reached a major conclusion:  ” the rich behave more unethically and greedily than lower-class individuals.”

And the share of the national wealth the rich are hogging is far greater than you think.



Meanwhile:

We have an unemployment (and underemployment) crisis. There are 13 million fewer jobs in the economy than there should be. We have an income inequality crisis. And we have a climate crisis.

The solution should be obvious. It is obvious. But it's just not apparent to the the policy makers and media figures at the top of the political food chain, because it's very difficult to convince a person of the necessity of doing something that interferes with his own income. The rich and comfortable are making a whole lot of money off the status quo. Well, "making" is too kind a word for it. "Legal theft" would be more appropriate.

The rest of us, however, aren't doing so well.