The instinctual drive for self preservation translates twistedly into a global capitalist marketplace. The self-preservation instinct originated for self, then family, then community. So the stretch to include a municipality, nation, or even a global community is beyond most people for most of their lives. They amass to support their security drives, and effectively horde, and when the currency of security in industrialized nations is money, the unchecked desire for "more for me and mine" will, left unmodulated by systemic checks, lead to the gross inequity we see in the world today, particularly in the United States.
For a good broad description of the system and its effects, Inequality for All, the documentary featuring Robert Reich does a great job. It doesn't judge the status quo, per se, in my opinion, but someone on the "winning" side could certainly find plenty of the description incriminating, and become knee-jerkingly defensive.
The bigger question to me is not so much how the monetary policy in America needs to change (the default focus of our efforts), but rather how do we raise children to understand the underlying psycho-physiological complex that leads to the disproportionate accumulation of wealth. With the global distribution system, the capability to mobilize thousands in manufacturing, the instantaneous communication with hundreds of millions allows certain phenomena to gather billions of dollars in very little time and multinational conglomerates and interests to amass hundreds of billions in revenue in a few years. A derivative corruption of this industrial complex is the lucrative and opportunistic management of the financial side of these global markets where people can profit to an obscene extreme while providing no real input into the system (talking specifically about robot traders but more loosely about clever machinations of the larger financial industry that works outside actual venture investments and normal debt and basic banking functions). If a biological system becomes overpopulated, natural culling occurs through starvation, or poisoning by waste. When it happens in a bodily tissue, it's called a cancer and we die or treat it through excision, chemical or radiation therapy. When a person sees acute poverty, most through no fault of the impoverished, how can they turn a blind eye? Someone just making it (enough to own a modest house, adequate transportation, enough food, some entertainment and travel, bills get paid) but with no real luxury, might be understood if they are not profuse in helping those hard on their luck from improving their lot. But it makes a body wonder, doesn't it, the mindset that believes their body of work in a year justifies the compensation that would sustain 10 or 20 families. Yes, a person who has invested a great deal in educating themselves, who has worked hard to reach a level of competence that makes their service extra valuable to their clients/customers/employers deserves a handsome reward, but even so, where does the sense of "this is fair compensation" come in?
I wonder if it's getting locked into this idea that the goal is to make as much money as we can after growing up with that in mind and living it with the whole fiber of one's being throughout the early career periods make it almost impossible to think outside that box, even after every reasonable level of "financial success" has been surpassed. How is it that such intelligent people don't see their place in the larger system, where it is clear that the strength of our country and the continued stability that supports more and more people becoming more than comfortable hinges on the strength of the middle class, and that demands higher wages for more people. There are a hundred million people out there working pretty damn hard in their jobs who are making 10 or 100 or 300 times less than the few million people at the top of the hierarchy. Flattening that compensation curve would be way more effective than raising taxes. When the money has to work its way through a huge and inefficient government bureaucracy to make it's way back out the other end in the form of programs to help so many more poor than there would be if wages were more balanced in the first place is an incredible waste of humanity. This is one area where the market fails. What would it take for the leaders to break through their current thinking (I have to make more money) to voluntarily raise the wages of the lower paid workers and reduce their own? Would an appeal by some rich thought leaders change things? Is there ANYTHING that would make a real difference short of some painful revolution?
