December 10, 2006 at 08:05:17

1% now owns 40%

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By Julian Edney (about the author) Page 3 of 3 page(s)

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But I believe the superrich smell trouble. They are not waiting.

The rich are well educated. They may have studied the classics, and possibly Aristotle, who outlined a lot of durable truths. One was that poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

The very rich are building walls around themselves.

The wealthy are moving into walled, gated communities. These are luxury properties, often surrounded by concrete walls and iron fences, and they are guarded. Privacy and security are top priorities [13].

Walled communities are, on the face of it, incompatible with civic life. And on the face of it, rather than share their 40%, the superrich are going behind these cement barriers.

Historically, the building of walls always means danger is expected. The Berlin Wall, the Great Wall of China. In mediaeval Europe, the countryside was pocked with concrete defenses. Towns still show their battlements and gates which were closed at dusk in an era before police forces, when marauders and mendicants roamed and robbed. A local castle in the middle of a village would draw the villagers and peasants safely inside the walls when attacks were expected from neighbors.

Here, these new walled communities may just be a fashion. They may be a visual of deep new divisions in society.

Or perhaps we should see in them, like a canary in a coal mine, a predictor of what's coming.

But in case of social unrest here, I doubt the superrich will invite us in.

Notes

1. In 1774 the top 1% owned 14.6% of the national wealth. By 1989 it owned 36.3%.
In Gordon J. "Numbers game," 1992, Forbes, October 9 p 48.
2. Sapolsky, R.( 2005) "Sick of poverty." Scientific American, 293, 92-99.
3. Rawls, J. (1999) A theory of justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,. Pp. 32-
34.
4. Lux, K. (1990) Adam Smith's mistake. Boston, MA: Shambala Books.
5. Edney , J J. (2003) Greed at http://www.g-r-e-e-d.com/GREED.htm
6. Housing and poverty in Los Angeles: A report from the Institute for the Study of
Homelessness at the Weingart Center: http://www.weingart.org/institute/research/facts/pdf/JusttheFactsHousingPovertyLA.pdf
7. Nord, M., Andrews, M., Carlson, S. (2005) Household Food Security in the United
States, 2004. United States Department of Agriculture report ERS-ERR-11, October
2005.
8. Sapolsky, R. Ibid
9. See also Rose, S.J. (1992) .Social stratification in the United States. New
York: The New Press,
10. Frank, R.H. (1999) Luxury fever. NY: The Free Press.
11. McKinnon, J.D. (2004) "Many companies avoided taxes even as profits
soared in boom." The Wall Street Journal 6 April 2004. P. 1.
12. Andrews, M. (1999).. The political economy of hope and fear. NY: New York
University Press.
13. Reich, Robert B, (1991) "Secession of the successful." New York Times
Magazine, January 20, p. 16.

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Author: Julian Edney can be contacted through his website, http://www.g-r-e-e-d.com/GREED.htm

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