Fucking commie. Some people are smart, some are not. Does he really think that everyone deserves to be rich? Wealth distribution in US is natural and it is similar to IQ distribution. Yes, not all smart people are rich but if you are smart you will not be poor unless you choose to be.
This is natural order of things.
BILL MOYERS: There are people who disagree with us on this, as I'm sure you know. They even celebrate inequality. When former Senator Rick Santorum was running for the Republican nomination for president last year, he made a speech at the Detroit Economic Club.
RICK SANTORUM at Detroit Economic Club: President Obama is all about equality of results. I'm about equality of opportunity. I'm not about equality of result when it comes to income inequality. There is income inequality in America. There always has been and hopefully, and I do say that, there always will be. Why? Because people rise to different levels of success based on what they contribute to society and to the marketplace and that's as it should be.ROBERT REICH: Well, first of all, let's be clear about what we are arguing. Rick Santorum is exactly right in saying that nobody should expect or even advocate equality of outcome. The real problem is that we don't have equality of opportunity. What do I mean by that? Number one, the schools available to poor and lower middle class and many middle class families and their kids are not nearly as good as the schools available to the wealthy.
The tax laws are weighted increasingly in favor of the wealthy. Therefore a lot of middle class and poor people actually are paying, particularly through social security taxes, which nobody talks about. They all want to talk about income taxes. They're paying a much larger share of their income.
The laws governing almost everything we can imagine are tilted toward shareholders away from those whose major asset is your house. So it's not equality of opportunity. That's the problem. If we really had equality of opportunity we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
I think again, it's important to bear in mind that some inequality is necessary if we're going to have a capitalist system that creates incentives for people to work hard and to invent and to try very hard. The question is not inequality, per se.
The question is, at what point do you tip over, do you get to a tipping point where the degree of inequality actually is threatening your economy, your society, your democracy? When do you reach a point where inequality is simply too much? Where most of your people feel like the game is rigged.
BILL MOYERS: The film makes it clear. You think we are reaching that tipping point, that we're just right there.
ROBERT REICH: I think that in terms of the economy, we are very close. In fact, the Great Recession-- it has many causes. But one of the major causes was that the last coping mechanism that the middle class used, even though their wages were flat or declining, to continue to spend and keep the economy going was to borrow against their homes. And that, of course, exploded in everybody's face. You couldn't do that.
So there's no longer a coping mechanism. One reason why the recovery has been so anemic is that you don't have enough purchasing power in your society because all of the gains are going to a very small number at the top. So you don't have to wait and say, "Well, we're going to get that tipping point economically, 'cause we're already there."
Fact of the matter is, most Americans now are losing faith in our democracy. Which seems to me, you know, is our most precious gift, the most precious legacy that we have to hand down to our future generations.
