And while we're at it, one could make the argument that the US already is an oligarchy.

Like the argument that the US is becoming an Empirical state you can trace it's beginnings back to the founding of the nation. As far as we know there's been no other nation that has been founded to become an Empire. With it's Manifest destiny and needing to control it's hemisphere, the US started it's infant life as an Empire. Heck you can even see it in the architecture of it's capital.

Same with Oligarchy, the Senate was always meant to have more control and power and be run by the Owners of the Society. However while this isn't a new argument it has rarely in our history been more brazen than it's becoming now. Which is why the Occupy Movement got started, and it's not over by a long shot.

The battles in the coming few years will influence the direction of our country and the world at large incalculably. It's going to get interesting, and honestly I'm quite excited.

*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Saturday, April 19th, 2014 11:36am PDT - promote requested by JiggaJonson.

Educating yourselves and your friends/family is great but if you want to actually do something about it: http://www.wolf-pac.com/

Volunteer or start contacting your state representatives on your own. Might be the only chance we have.

Gotta love Krugman.. not as an economist but as a world class hypocrite rivaling Molière's Tartuffe. He's getting paid $25,000 a month to do zero work, while calling for the end of income inequality. <scoff> I wonder if he's ready to give up 70% of that to the federal government like he says all "wealthy" ought to do.

The headline might as well read, "Rich economist constantly holds forth on the evils of income inequality, while...." You get the point. Here's the back-of-the-envelope math on his recent windfall:

Not counting the $20,000 in non-transferable travel budget, moving bennies, etc. that they offered him, CUNY is paying Dr. Krugman a nine-month salary of $225,000. I presume he won't be working summer semesters, so let's say that's all his salary from CUNY for the year. Now normal tenured senior professors at CUNY make at most $116,364 a year. Adjuncts at CUNY make about $3,000 or so per course; you can teach at most 9 hours a semester. So let's say you're an adjunct maxed out at a 3/3 load; you make about $18,000 a year for that. So if Dr. Krugman wanted, he could pick out 6 adjuncts at CUNY and *double* their yearly income, just by giving away the amount of money he personally makes *over and above what the best-paid senior faculty make*. If he were willing to do the job (*) for a nominal fee (as you may know, Prof. Krugman has another line of work), he could literally pick some lucky adjunct at CUNY and double their entire year's income -- *every month of the year.

And honestly, @radx, what did the "progressives" expect would happen? This so-called "Democracy" can never be anything other than an "oligarchy," if not a governance by "mob rule" (and sometimes a combination of the two). If "Democracy" is the "least bad" kind of state/government possible as some (like Mark Twain) have claimed, then it's high time "the people" climbed out of the dark ages and lived without rulers, altogether.

The resultant "chaos" that would ensue would not be any worse (and in fact far better) than the kind of unintended chaos that results from the centralized power structures of state governance.

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*Which, let's be clear, involves no teaching load, and seems to mainly mean that maybe he'll drop by the office every few months to share his brilliance with whoever happens to be there. The point for CUNY is almost certainly to purchase some of the aura from his name on the letterhead

Okay, I'll bite, how would a society without any rulers or leadership of any kind function? What's to stop just anybody from stepping up and taking power for themselves or their religion / tribe / knitting circle / whatever.

*news *controversy

Adding video to channels (Controversy, News) - requested by MrFisk.

*books

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@00scud00-Well....think about ethics and morality of which there exits some modicum of universally agreed-upon standards and then try to get at least a half-planet full of humans as populous as ours bees today to abide by a fundamental framework based on the same, and you've got yer clusterfuck of a paradigm destined to perhaps survive it's own ignorance after some external or orchestrated deluge, with a semblance of a reasonable outcome for anyone left standing.

I don't get how he differentiates market and investment return. Besides the market returns on stocks, commodities etc, the only meaningfully different options are a variety of government bonds (which return much less than the market at the moment) and cash, which will lose value against inflation.

Unless you leverage investment returns, you can't achieve a higher return than the market on average (evidence shows that passive investors beat active investors, exceptions exist but on average this is true). Higher leverage is just multiplying your risk though, so you're equally exposed to up and down turns over the long term. May have to check out this book but logically it makes no sense.

@Trancecoach

He focusses on inherited wealth, not earned wealth so most of your post is a bit of a red herring.

As far as advocating higher taxes, besides 70% being obvious hyperbole, you would have to assume that if he's publicly writing and advocating for more redistributive tax policies then he'd be okay with slightly higher rates at his income bracket, otherwise he's kind of going against his own interests.

I really don't know how but I'm in favor of trying out Sortition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

So, cross our fingers and hope for the best then? That seems to be the answer I usually get. Getting even half the planet to agree on basic moral and ethical ground rules, much less getting into specifics would be a miracle I think. I hear lots of pie in the sky generalities about how this will all "just work" but very little concise thinking on exactly how it will work.

Probably not very well. But that's not what I'm saying. There will not be a society without "leadership of any kind." Just not a state.

Obviously "people taking power for themselves" will need to be addressed in the absence of rulers. Otherwise, yes, it will happen, as we can see with how all states have developed like this: through such violence.

When there is no effective way to deal with those who are the most violent, then those who are the most violent will form a state to rule the rest.

Please shut the fuck up -- you're embarrassing yourself and the entire phylum chordate.

I love the conservative ideal that the best government is no government, or mob rule. I'd love to drop these people off for a week in a country that actually works that way.. like Somalia. Not that they'd likely survive that week.

Don't forget Moyers. Both are 1%ers.

So they are both evil.

Obviously you don't know jack about the conservative idea. Stop listening to the radical left. They only know how to demonize the right.

Try a listen to Jason Lewis. That's an honest conservative point of view.
Give him 10 min a day to get a sampling of the conservative point of view.

http://www2.jasonlewisshow.com/jasonLewisShow.php

Can we have one discussion on economics without the libertarians derailing it with their nonsense? No-one wants it. Get over it. The rest of the world has learned from history that libertarianism is a fucking disaster when actually implemented.

Earning $200k isn't actually that big a deal. Yeah, you're well off, but you don't have the kind of unbelievably obnoxious level of wealth that the 1% have.

@RedSky 70% isn't hyperbole. Top marginal rate in the US in the 50s was actually 91%.

Ultimately it's an incredibly short sighted position. America has systematically destroyed it's middle class and over time will remove it's own market. Keep going down this track and eventually China owns you.

Wait... it's news that the United States is run by plutocrats? Reeeeaaaaally?

Edit: Would have been nice to see/listen to them discuss more of these beautiful statistics themselves.