"The Pitchforks Are Coming.... For Us Billionaires," Amazon Financier, Nick Hanauer

Nick Hanauer's TED Talk

"The Job Creators and Taxes"

(or, 'Why Wealth Inequality Sounds The Death Knell Of Capitalism')

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBx2Y5HhplI

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"This Is Why They Hate You And Want You To Die"
Wall Street Fund Manager Josh Brown, "The Reformed Broker"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/this-is-why-they-hate-you-and-want-you.html

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"Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/01/politics-and-economics-101-curricula.html

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Excerpt: "Dear 1%ers, many of our fellow citizens are starting to believe that capitalism itself is the problem. I disagree, and I’m sure you do too. Capitalism, when well managed, is the greatest social technology ever invented to create prosperity in human societies. But capitalism left unchecked tends toward concentration and collapse. It can be managed either to benefit the few in the near term or the many in the long term. The work of democracies is to bend it to the latter. That is why investments in the middle class work. And tax breaks for rich people like us don’t. Balancing the power of workers and billionaires by raising the minimum wage isn’t bad for capitalism. It’s an indispensable tool smart capitalists use to make capitalism stable and sustainable. And no one has a bigger stake in that than zillionaires like us.

The oldest and most important conflict in human societies is the battle over the concentration of wealth and power. The folks like us at the top have always told those at the bottom that our respective positions are righteous and good for all. Historically, we called that divine right. Today we have trickle-down economics.

What nonsense this is. Am I really such a superior person? Do I belong at the center of the moral as well as economic universe? Do you?

My family, the Hanauers, started in Germany selling feathers and pillows. They got chased out of Germany by Hitler and ended up in Seattle owning another pillow company. Three generations later, I benefited from that. Then I got as lucky as a person could possibly get in the Internet age by having a buddy in Seattle named Bezos. I look at the average Joe on the street, and I say, “There but for the grace of Jeff go I.” Even the best of us, in the worst of circumstances, are barefoot, standing by a dirt road, selling fruit. We should never forget that, or forget that the United States of America and its middle class made us, rather than the other way around.

Or we could sit back, do nothing, enjoy our yachts. And wait for the pitchforks."

The rest of this "Special Report" can be read at http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014_Page4.html#.U69B0PldWLV