Well this would be defined as "The free market in action" wherein those fittest and most deserved of all that wealth acquire that wealth.

It the same system that has decided an elephant is worth more dead for its tusks of Ivory then it is roaming the Savannahs or that the Gulf of Mexico is worth more polluted with oil then as a healthy ecosystem.

It has decided there more value in dirty and polluted drinking water that leads to cancer and illness then in water that is clean enough to drink. It that concept of "Value added" when carcinogens are added.

People the world over praise its virtues and all but worship this mythical "free market". Many even insist things like minimum wage and pensions for the elderly and social spending prorgrams be eliminated and that all manner of Government regulations be removed so that the wealth distribution and what the BPs can do in the Gulf or "Art Collectors" with "their" ivory find a more "natural level".

Now a chart I would like to see is this. Take the amount of consumption of all species plant insect and animal as compared to the amount of "value" they add to the world and then compare man to the rest of nature.

That one percent of the species called man would be off the charts as compared to anything else when comparing what they create or add as compared to what they take or destroy.The very poorest of that species called man such as those that see themselves as part of nature in the Jungles of the Amazon and elshewhere would add.

That 1 percent are the true parasites on this earth living off the host and in fact those species that are reffered to as parasites add more "Value" then do these one percent. Capitalism along with that concept of "private property rights" was created to promote this system both unethical and destructive as it serves the masters of finance and consumes all in its path.

Very well said.

As long as wealty men are indifferent to injustice and inequality they are the oppressors, no matter how much the media calls them job creators.

The real bad news is that the government of the United States allows these wealthy men who are indifferent to injustice and inequality to oppress all the other people in the nation. These rich men are also indifferent to the damage they are doing, in their insane search for ever more profit in the short term, to so disturb the eco systems of the earth that she may be unable to support any life here in the future.

This nation claims to be a democracy while obviously it is not. The bad news is that so far there is not a concerted plan to replace this corrupt government with a new government which will change the way we govern ourselves. We need to start over. The first of our revolutions for liberty and justice has collapsed. We must form a Constitutional Convention to write a new Constitution that will serve the needs of the people for equity and justice, as well and protect the earth for future generations.

"the government of the United States allows these wealthy men..."

Small correction: the government of the United States is these wealthy men.

When you say, "we need to do this or that" what you really mean is we need to take power by force. And by force I mean, organized abject total non-violent civil disobedience. (and casting nothing but write-in votes.)

APPLAUSE! spot on.

I'd say it must be time for a 'Jubilee' and use the asshats to mop up the mess they've created. In other words 'occupy' has to go on steroids.

Nothing like a simple graph to put it all in perspective. USA = Utterly Selfish A$$hole$. What I cannot fathom is how come the 99% just sit back and let this happen. Clearly it is some form of mind control. Turn of the damn television. Stop drooling over things to buy. Wake up and stop feeding the beast of insanity. It's time to stop "working in the system" and just take care of each other.

It's not just the USA, it's rich people the whole world over - and not all of them. Just the ones on the take - generally that run corporations.

The 1%'s propaganda machine that divides and conquers and blames the victims is why "the 99% just sit back and let this happen". Blue team (Dims) fans blame red team (GOP) fans and vice versa. Neither group of fans are blaming the 1% who own the blue team and the red team.

George Carlin had a good take on things...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acL...

straight forward TRUTH

Its called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it!

Spot on George!!

I can't help but wonder if the FBI would be after him if he said that today.

I bet they WERE watching him!

there's a new project I just discovered, as the surveillance state is out of hand-

http://www.surveillanceinth...

This is good...but why not go all the way to Socialism? Socialism is just the radical idea of sharing. The problem is that most in the US are afraid of the "S" word...so afraid that in Vermont the Socialist Party is known as the Liberty Union Party.

I think this is tailored to the borderline(we hope) sociopathic retpublicans. It's trying to show them that the distribution of wealth isn't really a problem that stems from the average person being lazy.

I'd go one step further and say that the video is tailored to the Ron Paulists, who think there are two kinds of capitalism (small and big) and who believe that capitalism is a force for good. Or an incentive for work, as the video puts it.

So well said! it's the belief system that keeps them getting
away with everything dishonest and corrupt.

It's all OK . . . very soon we'll hear the battle-cry. Eat the Rich!

That's why the police are getting all of those new toys.

Why is "socialism" such a dirty word to this guy?

Socialism is a bad word because it implies fairness, and social justice. Capitalism, especially how it is practiced in the US HATES both because they impede money from being shoveled up to a very few at the economic top of our society.

CD shared a fine piece from Lakoff recently that also explained the beliefs embedded in words.

There is nothing "fair" about rewarding the lazy with MY money.

The economic system, and its rewards, aren't exactly a meritocracy, JK. And it would be fair to say that most poor people work much harder than CEOs, for much less pay. To carry your vision a little farther, every baby born should just be able to fend for itself. Why allow it to mooch off parental money for so many years? And forget education. If you don't know it, then tough luck. In truth, the only "lazy" people in the United States are the 1%, who don't do any work at all. And most get away with paying little or no taxes. If you're in that crowd, I can certainly understand your defensiveness. Otherwise, what you're saying sounds pretty crazy to me.

Only idiots believe that shit. More losing jobs daily and sliding into poverty not because they don't want
to work and pay their way but because of the rich
calling the shots moving jobs out of the country.
Pricing things so high out of greed. Wake up and
see this and stop thinking anyone is asking you for
anything but a fair chance in life.

"MY money."? You've been bought and sold so many times, my friend, that it's time you were rolled out of the bed of the American Dream.

Isn't asking for a fair deal 'socialism'? He's not really damning the word, he's damned what that word has become thanks to the way that word is portrayed in the media.

I think the narrator is dismissing socialism altogether. He thinks people wouldn't work under socialism.

I do believe I saw an article in this week's Guardian about working hours in the world. Something about the myth of the lazy worker, the article was claiming it was an old fear repackaged. Instead of damning the poor as a ravening hoard or a mob, they now damn them as lazy.

It was interesting anyhow.

You may be right about the narrator.

I don't think he believes socialism is bad. He's just saying that most Americans dread it (thanks to the right's propaganda machine). He's also pointing out that we can achieve fairness even without going all the way to socialism. Socialism can be corrupted also, any system can, but corruption is practically built-in into capitalism.

Unchecked, un-regulated profit motive turns into greed which turns into corruption. Then you have hell on earth. It's ironic that the injustices of predatory capitalism itself bring about socialism. Socialism and capitalism are really two sides of the same coin. We used to have a more equitable balanceed system. But the corrupt rich started eating away at the socialist side of the coin when we weren't looking, starting with Reagan's words: "government is the problem".

I would say that you are very correct in that we used to have a more equitable and balanced system . . . for white men.

It has always been much harder on everyone else. And just about the time that women and minority men and women started demanding and receiving their part of the pie, we began devolving into Mordor.

Because socialism is idiocy. If I am smarter than you and/or work harder/better than you, I deserve and have earned more than you. Grow up.

You may deserve more, but you do not deserve the right to exploit others unfairly. You deserve the obligation to exercise a conscience, to treat others justly, and that means paying them a wage that supports a decent living standard. And it also means not destroying the environment.

Wake up.

If only he would he comes across as rather smug .

define smarter. . .I'm not feeling it.

Define socialism. Then we'll know what you object to. There are many varieties of what is called socialism, so be definite.

Reading history of how the rich became rich shows that it is not the "fittest and most deserved" but the most vial and immoral (from a normal person's view of morality). Some of the lesser wealthy, such as Gates, didn't have to resort to the methods that the real wealthy did, but he also did not get rich due to being the fittest or most deserved but, rather by having the needed education and interest at the right time in history. Never-the-less, it was not Gates, but all of the engineers, programmers, etc., how created software that made Gates wealthy.

".....rather by having the needed education and interest at the right time in history."

Read his history.

Business degree and then rich Dad gave him big bucks, business contacts and access to bankers to go out and start a business.
CAPITAL and Business Contacts were his secret. He was not a computor guy.

That is not quite all of it. Gates' father was a copyright lawyer and they sued the ALTAR computer creator out of existence, for following the terms of the contract for Altair BASIC he hired Gates and Paul Allen to create. In that instance, Gates was "creator" and "the man was ruined by an arbitrator.

This was the Microsoft trajectory for decades. They sued anybody that made anything they ever thought of.

Not to mention that Microsoft stole much of it's "Innovations" or else took over smaller truly innovative companies.

And they still can't get their beta testing right...

Point of Order

Everybody Equal Income = Anarchism
Substantial Equality in Income = Socialism

Yeah, even that's a pretty rough breakdown that I would find impossible to strictly defend in a real argument, but it's good enough here in a short note. But most socialist states of any kind, actual or planned, presume some differentiation of income. Certainly you won't find equal income in nominally socialist states in Europe.

There really wasn't any need for the gratuitous and inaccurate dig at socialism or anyone to the left of market capitalism, really. I think it's self-evident, even as a socialist myself, that the economic system in the US can be substantially improved without changing any of its basic assumptions. This video proves that.

It also offers evidence that if the economy isn't substantially improved in the near future for most of us, the 1% guy isn't going to be able to hire enough of the rest of the 99% to protect him against those folks who aren't his employees. As a socialist, that's a savory idea. I realize I'm in the minority right now, but a whole lot of you will be coming over to my lonely corner real soon unless some of those buffoons who keep getting elected aren't replace by someone smarter, FDR-style.

"the 1% guy isn't going to be able to hire enough of the rest of the 99% to protect him against those folks who aren't his employees."

Not if the Talkers on the Left get their dream come true and get Real Gun Control.

Doesn't anyone on the Left think about what happens when Power/Firearms are monopolized by the 1%?? We went through this in the beginning. Think.
Ban SSRIs not firearms.

It would be nice to have some comparisons with other OECD nations. We would be shocked how we compare to Holland or Denmark or Japan.

Why dismiss socialism? The narrator thinks that socialism is out of the picture because we need an incentive to work, but people have always worked - even before capitalism. The problem with the narrator's argument is that he doesn't address why the weath inequality exists in the first place. It's not just because the tax policy became more favorable for the 1% at a certain point in history. That's a contributing factor, but the wealth inequality actually stems from capitalism itself. Our current malaise has been decades in the making. In essence, our homespun capitalists found they couldn't wrest the same profit margins from U.S. workers and so had our so-called representatives draw up international trade deals (NAFTA, GATT, etc.) to tap cheap labor overseas. The result: millions out of work, and a collapse of numerous domestic industries, with permanent job loss, but high profits for the few.

People don't need capitalism as an incentive to work, but, if the system is capitalism, then people will die in the streets if they don't work. Property ownership is part of this picture, too. It puts everyone born into debt. Property ownership allows the capitalist to extract wealth from labor without the capitalist actually doing anything productive. In short, pure capitalism is not an incentive system - it's a form of slavery. And if profits can be maintained with labor on starvation wages, then that's where capitalism will go, because labor is just seen as a business cost.

So, while the video gets praise for presenting the wealth inequality problem, it is bereft of answers and can't clearly describe the causes for the present decline. It hasn't come to grips with the root problem.

Socialism is villified in the United States because of its identification with Soviet communism because of decades of propaganda and imprinting. However, it's clear that socialism - in which the needs of the people are addressed by the collective wealth of the country (which was called "the commonwealth" by our founding fathers, by the way) - is the way forward. It's important to distinguish the economic model from the political model, so, in addition to socialism, you have to have democracy. Our present capitalist system (with its fake republic appendage) only offers a top-down plutocratic model, in which you do what the boss says, with all decisions made by a select few. That is not democratic at all. There are other more cooperative models out there, but few examples exist in history where socialism was organized at a democratic "state-like" level. The one exception may be anarchist Spain during the Spanish civil war. But that experiment lasted just one year until it was crushed by fascist forces (including Stalin, by the way).

In sum, the video offers only a description of the problem, but did not articulate the reasons why the wealth inequality exists. People don't need a video to know that things are bad. They do need to know the causes of our present plight. And they do need to know the solution, which has always been democracy and socialism.

the answer is the Nordic socialist democracy model; the problem, of course, is that we don't have a democratic socialist party representing working and middle class people.....

Capitalism, the free market at its best.