REALTALK from a super wealthy dude who didn't get that way by ignoring the writing on the wall. Enjoy yourselves while you can, fat cats!

Wow, that aQuantive founder is surprisingly forthright about the facts:

At the same time that people like you and me are thriving beyond the dreams of any plutocrats in history, the rest of the country—the 99.99 percent—is lagging far behind. 

The divide between the haves and have-nots is getting worse really, really fast.

In 1980, the top 1 percent controlled about 8 percent of U.S. national income. The bottom 50 percent shared about 18 percent. Today the top 1 percent share about 20 percent; the bottom 50 percent, just 12 percent.

But the problem isn’t that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.

And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won’t last.

If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.

How do we fix this???

The best way to fix this is nationalizing natural monopolies

Healthcare. We can't transfer trillions to healthcare industry because it doesn't give better outcomes anyway. 

Write off trillion in student debt and bring education costs to clear pricing. 

Massive taxes on communication and energy companies unless they control costs and protect environments. (Threaten nationalization)

Confiscate wall mart Walton  wealth unless they repatriate it. (And others like them)

Keep banks from ripping us off.  

Provide a program to have 1st world child care early education. 

Estate taxes of 90% unless they bring back the cash and do something with it.  

Although your answer is correct technically, it feels impossible politically because it feels like Congress will block the attempts to do every single one of these things. 

Because lobbyists.  

That is why we need super PAC to end super PAC Lessig started. 

What I really think is financial markets implode and no one will bail them out again. 

But how do we keep those in power from bailing them out again? That's all they know how to do.

This article is summed up by this observation:

It makes perfect sense if you think about it: If a worker earns $7.25 an hour, which is now the national minimum wage, what proportion of that person’s income do you think ends up in the cash registers of local small businesses? Hardly any.

The peasants of the French Revolution didn't have porn to placate them.

Or NASCAR. Or NBA. Or NFL...

Those choices aren't alliterative with "peasants".  :-)

But they ARE alliterative to Ninety Nine point Nine percent.