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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe Btfsplk who wrote (50316)	8/6/2013 11:31:02 PM
From: Bread Upon The Water	Respond to of 85487

TR's attack on wealth wasn't simply because it existed. It was because it concentrated economic power in so few hands with either the potential of immense harm, or actual harm being done to the national economy by this concentration of power. The trusts back then were a little bit like the banks too big to fail in these days.

To: Joe Btfsplk who wrote (50316)	8/7/2013 12:57:45 AM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

>> TR's attack on concentrations of wealth simply because it existed was a serious flaw that left rotten consequences. It wasn't as much an attack on wealth as it was on abuses of monopoly power created by wealth. He was focused on trusts that he believed were abusive; those that weren't, he wasn't concerned with. What we're seeing today is attacks on wealth as though it is somehow ill-gotten, even though a great number of wealthy people got it through above-board commerce. This, to me, seems like a really fundamental difference, in that the vilification of wealth constitutes a kind of demagoguery, whereas vilification of abuse of monopoly power seems to me a legitimate function of government. IMO, at least.