Re:Just Be Rich
by eevilspock on Tuesday April 13, 2021 @01:52PM
(#26796310)
Exactly.
90% millionaires and 10% billionaires means the billionaires have 99.1% of the monetary power.
Very astute.
Even if you have 99% millionaires and 1% billionaires, the billionaires still have 91% of the wealth.
That sounds like a systemic problem with democracy, not wealth inequality. You want to put people in charge of making decisions both for themselves and for others, but you don't trust them to make those decisions properly. The issue here isn't so much the influence of money on public discourse as the ever-increasing divergence between the myriad things the government involves itself in and the naturally limited qualifications (and standing) of the average voter regarding each of those complex issues.
Isn't it? Even when taken to extremes?
Wealth inequality is in direct conflict with a core value of democracy: one person one vote is reduced to a bit of a joke when there are people who can easily afford to pay an army of hundreds of political operatives to flood public discourse with their opinion.
A little inequality doesn't hurt, but the existence of billionaires (even 100 millionaires, really) is a problem for democracy.