Is Marie Antoinette waking up from her beauty nap?
by digby
David has a nice catch over at Political Animal today that addresses one of the big questions I've had since the beginning of the financial crisis: what in the hell do these wealthy jackasses think will happen once people get desperate? It just seemed absurd to me that these allegedly brilliant financiers and businessmen couldn't see that spreading just a little of their vast wealth would go a long way to preserving what they have. It's as if they have nothing to live for if they aren't on a quest to get every last penny for themselves. David finds an unlikely enlightened plutocrat:
While Blankfein argued that one way to fix income inequality is to “make the pie grow” and grow the economy, he also acknowledged that “too much of the GDP of the country has gone to too few of the people.” He added, “If you grow the pie but too few people enjoy the benefits of it, the fruit, then you’ll have an unstable society.”
David observes:
The smarter denizens of the plutonomy know that it’s unwise to court civil unrest. Many on the right seem to believe that economic insecurity will lead people to simply work harder; cynical operatives on the right work to ensure that any anger is directed outward and toward the “others” in society. But that doesn’t always work, and once a racist, populist prairie fire has been ignited, it’s very difficult to stop until it has scorched everything in its path—including the people who set it and thought they could control it.
You may have made a killing on pitchfork futures but that won't keep the mob from using them on you.
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