Wednesday, July 23, 2008

V.B. Price: false equation of wealth with virtue

marjorie says...

V.B. Price's column today in the Independent is a must read.


Hidden Oligarchy

by V.B Price


Is the American economy undergoing a historic readjustment from powerhouse to a ne’er-do-well nation down at the heel, on the brink of social trouble with a financial aristocracy thumbing its nose at vast legions of the working poor?

It may well be.

And if it is, this decline stems in large part from one simple source – what I like to call holier-than-thou-art economics, a false notion in which the rich are seen as unfailingly good and the not-so-rich and poor are suspects of unworthiness, or as one politician put it recently, “whiners.”

The false equation of wealth with virtue emanates from the self-importance of those who have lobbied Congress for decades to let them go to any extremes to make higher profits. Their logic runs that those who make money are smarter, wiser, better than those who do not.

Continue reading here.