Opinion: A political-economic perfect storm
By Robert Reich
It’s a perfect storm. And I’m not talking about the dangers facing Democrats. I’m talking about the dangers facing our democracy.
First, income in America is now more concentrated in fewer hands than it has been in 80 years. Almost a quarter of total income generated in the United States is going to the top 1 percent of Americans.
The top one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans now earn as much as the bottom 120 million of us.
Who are these people? With the exception of a few entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, they’re top executives of big corporations and Wall Street, hedge-fund managers and private equity managers. They include the Koch brothers, whose wealth increased by billions last year and who are funding Tea Party candidates across the nation.
Which gets us to the second part of the perfect storm. A relative few Americans are buying our democracy as never before. And they’re doing it completely in secret.