"If people thought they could get the changes they wanted through that system they wouldn't be camping out all night and waving around signs and marching in the streets. This is what people do when they want to opt out of the existing power structure ... They feel they're not going to get what they want that way."
But what, you might ask, is wrong with the "existing power structure?"
Well, consider what Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says in this Vanity Fair piece, "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%" (his emphasis):
Virtually all U. S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent. When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift -- through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price -- it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.
My concern, like Stiglitz's, doesn't stem from envy or a sense of personal resentment. While I'm not in the top 1% of the country, I'm probably in the top 5 or 10% (and have been there my whole life). Let me stress that I am comfortable, I'm fortunate. My concern is more with a system that doesn't benefit the vast majority of its citizens. And what happens if the vast majority don't have "buy-in" to that system anymore? Revolution, as we've seen in the Middle East this year.
Let's get this country back on track.
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