Alan: In my 30's I was unexpectedly admitted to a financial nexus where all I had to do was bend over and pick up 100 dollar bills. This largesse lasted only a few days but the experience informed me how the deck is stacked on behalf of the wealthy. Just by being present where "big deals are cut" the rich pick up bags of money blown through the seams of The Deal itself. It's not just "pork." It's The Whole Hog. The biggest fortunes bear almost no relationship to "hard work," certainly not hard work as the working class knows it. As revealed in the above cartoon, "ungodly wealth" falls like manna from heaven.
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"Politics and Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"
"[T]he myth of the undeserving poor persists, and so does a counterpart myth, that of the deserving rich. The story goes like this: America's affluent are affluent because they made the right lifestyle choices. They got themselves good educations, they got and stayed married, and so on. Basically, affluence is a reward for adhering to the Victorian virtues...[T]he main thing about this myth is that it misidentifies the winners from growing inequality. White-collar professionals, even if married to each other, are only doing O.K. The big winners are a much smaller group...Mainly they're executives of some kind, especially, although not only, in finance. You can argue about whether these people deserve to be paid so well, but one thing is clear: They didn't get where they are simply by being prudent, clean and sober." Paul Krugman in The New York Times.
"G.K. Chesterton Reviews Martin Scorsese's Movie, The Wolf of Wall Street"
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