Tim J. wrote:
rw typed:

Wayne Harrison wrote:


There will always be rich and poor, but I'm afraid we're becoming an
hereditary aristocracy.


like everything else, this situation is as it has always been in
a seriously capitalistic society: relative. that is, compared to
millions of folks in this country, your own economic condition, as
you stood chatting in silver creek with those pilots, is just as far
fetched to them as that of the pilot's boss's is to you.

You missed the point. The problem (as I see it, anyway) is *inherited*
wealth.


As your contribution to society, you're leaving nothing to your kids, right?

I'm leaving them something, but not millions, let alone billions.

"The essence of the American experiment is our collective rejection of
European hereditary aristocracy and grotesque inequalities of wealth.
When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in the
mid-nineteenth century, he noted that equality of condition permeated
the American spirit: 'The American experiment presupposes a rejection of
inherited privilege.' In the words of novelist John Dos Passos,
'rejection of Europe is what America is all about.'

"The nation's founders and populace viewed excessive concentrations of
wealth as incompatible with the ideals of the new nation. Revolutionary
era visitors to Europe, including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Ben
Franklin, were aghast at the wide disparities of wealth and poverty they
observed. They surmised that these great European inequalities were the
result of an aristocratic system of land transfers, hereditary political
power, and monopoly."

from:
Wealth And Our Commonwealth
by William H. Gates and Chuck Collins
Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes
http://www.thinkingpeace.com/Lib/lib017.html



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