I started this series by identifying the major causes of the problems we face with the MAGA movement spawned by Trump and glommed onto like leeches by fascists, Christian Dominionists, White Supremacists, anti-vaxxers, the grifters behind the manosphere and so many other creeps and perverts. In this post I offer a thought on dealing with the filthy rich.

My suggestion is to unlearn the stupid ideas about capitalism that dominate our education system and our political discourse. Replace them with something approximating reality.

Background

Since the beginning of this country, the filthy rich have hated democracy, arguing that the masses would use the power of government to seize their wealth and reduce their power. The filthy rich of the day hated FDR, and worked to destroy his legacy.

As part of that campaign, they linked capitalism to democracy, so that if you didn’t support their views of capitalism, if you even asked questions about it, you were a commie, an enemy of democracy. They became vocal advocates of the simple-minded economics we were all taught in high school and/or college, and spent massive sums to eradicate all alternatives. My first econ course was taught out of Samuelson on Economics, editions of which are still standard in colleges.

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Now it’s time for those of us who can to start thinking about these foundational idea. They were given to us by people like Adam Smith or William Stanley Jevons, as are all our ideas. And mostly they no longer describe reality. When they’re gone, replaced by something better, how can the filthy rich justify their wealth and power?

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