and i work for a living and. that i haven't really looked back i mean but for me those inequalities that was really the motivation i didn't want to be part of that very very small little elite were all the wealth was funneling to the top and what's what as as somebody who came from that world of the top as it were what's your observation of the world view of most people who are born into that george w. bush of the world the people who are born with great wealth and just never had the experience of getting out. you know i feel in a way i got a front row seat into that world view and and i would describe it is is very much kind of that the i knew and. prime mover you know that people at the top actually believe that all the wealth that sort of flows to them is a function of their work and intelligence and and that they deserve it and that other people who don't have that kind of wealth. haven't worked as hard or smart or

haven't applied himself and so i think that there is a high tolerance for these grotesque inequalities because people feel like they're based on deservedness not everybody and in fact that was you know part of the fun and inspiration of meeting people like bill gates his dad and warren buffett and others who believe that that they didn't do it alone. but i think that that world view pretty much govern in zero then is reflected in even in public policy today that reflects the interests of very wealthy individuals that you know the economy is fair the picking is that it's a level playing field and people are where they are based on something linked to deservedness and that's the big myth that i think holds it all in place i'm curious about your thoughts and experiences the the. the lineage of that should always.

be a piston ology here how did it well it did back up you mentioned iran and iran and based the prototype character the fountain head and of another work that she wrote the less well known it was i don't think she finished it when she was alive based on a fellow by the name william edward hickman who was a serial murderer a serial killer and she wrote in her diaries and publicly stated that he was a superman because he was willing to ignore the conventions of society and she just you know. much of fountain head in at was shrugged and many of her works are basically. embraces of sociopathy of you know this belief that compassion is a sign of weakness and that the superman you know she is like nietzsche on steroids that the superman is is what we must become and i thought was particularly ironic in atlas shrugged that the heroine of the story inherited all her money and.

how to code how has this story and then you go back to you know the calvin calvinists of one hundred years ago or fifty years ago two hundred years ago who said you know people are fundamentally evil but we've got to have good people to rule us so how do we know where the people are god is likely to rule as well it must be people who are rich. that you know that kind of world view we had for a long time that justified kings and lords and dukes and things i'm just i'm astounded and how you think it continues to exist and in a more egalitarian world but and in a country based on the enlightenment. yeah well you know i think that in a way the dominant religion in the business media is the great man theory of wealth creation that that somehow it's mostly men who who bring their individual gifts and somehow make amazing things happen and i i also like an atlas shrugged thinking about the i think it's the daphne kaye tagger character who runs the

railroad that well where did the railroad come from where did they get the land you know where did the railroads come from in the united states there was at the conception of that company a huge public subsidy in the in the form of of the land gift and i think that's the thing that's curious as people see the role of the individual but they don't see the whole web of social supports the death they don't see the fertile ground that made that wealth creation possible in the form of society so it's a very warped you call that sociopathic later kind of warped individual ism and i think the challenge is to say well you know actually individuals do matter people of effort and creativity and the gifts that individual bring to any art for whether it's you know writing a book or creating a work of art or or running a t.v. studio matters that matters but let's not forget that there's this whole web this is whole society of infrastructure and education and mentors you know i've

interviewed a bunch of people for a book i'm working on about the people's sort of attitudes about wealth and what makes it interesting is when the when you meet people who are wealthy take a bill gates or warren buffett but who actually i would describe it they see the web of support it's like the matrix they see the matrix of social supports that makes it entirely possible and they are humbled by it and they actually believe that they have an obligation back to the society as a result of it that they would be nowhere and they would be nobody without a firm. well ground that made it possible so it's sort of like how do we balance celebrating the individual recognizing that it also seems a huge. wealth that we as a society create that makes individual success possible but all of those people who you named are people who started with not fabulous well you know bill gates father was fabulous lee wealthy he was born to an upper middle class family. bill gates

was. that i believe came from the middle class basically sam walton's did but sam walton's kids are the ones who were hiring frank luntz as i recall to come up with the term death to invent the derm term death tax and and get it out there as widely as possible i mean they basically busted for that you know there's been this multi-year underground campaign to change the way we thought of inheritance taxes. i just i guess just noting that the subtitle of your book or one of your books is why america should tax accumulated fortunes why should we. well for that reason and in one way you know bill gates and i talk about how the inheritance tax the estate tax is an economic opportunity recycling program people accumulate if you if you've accumulated fifty million or fifty billion dollars in the society you didn't do it

alone it really is a function of that web of social supports you probably did something important to does or could help create that wealth but you didn't do it alone and and so an inheritance tax is where you say it at the end of one's life this is the way you pay back to society and pay back the infrastructure and what's interesting is you do have then what happens in a plutocracy is you get greater concentrations of wealth and power and some of those folks use their wealth and power to change the rules of the economy so that they can perpetuate in accumulate more wealth and power so you have the walton family trying to eliminate the laws that limit the buildup of concentrations of wealth and lo and behold here we are you know two thousand and one or two thousand and eleven with a wealth distribution that looks like the first gilded age one hundred years ago and in fact i want to get into that in some detail here the boston consulting group calculates in its newly released eleventh annual global wealth report that wealthy

households worth over a million dollars increase their share of global wealth in two thousand and ten from thirty seven to thirty nine percent of all the money in the world how does that happen well the world is in a slowdown and unemployment at an all time. i think it's because the rules of both national economies and the global economy have been tilted to benefit large asset owners at the expense of wage earners and the poor so the inequalities we're talking about are global trends you have a fabulous lee wealth the tiny little you know couple hundred thousand households really that have huge percentage of a global wealth and they're using that wealth and power to perpetuate that male distribution of wealth so it's sort of like a dynamic situation where the more wealth concentrates the more power concentrates the more wealth concentrates until the bottom ninety nine percent but out of ninety

eight percent sort of wake up enough to push back or you have an economic meltdown on the scale of what we had in two thousand and eight where those imbalances become lifted up and revealed and people say we've got to change the rules of the economy the rules of the economy have been taught that the benefit the top and until the rules are really jiggered so that we have shared prosperity we're basically going to keep moving that way chuck i've had a couple of economists and more than one politician on this program agree with the notion or suggest the notion sometimes that even without being asked that we now live more in a plutocracy than a democracy that the basically the plutocrats have taken over and that in till that changes we go back to being a democracy rather than a police ocracy we're not going to have small democracy in our nation isn't going to resemble what the founders had in mind. where do you fall on that. well i think

that's i think that's the right story and actually i think one piece of good news is that to put the particularly in the united states that the public is waking up you know we as a society have a pretty high tolerance for inequality because of the kind of to follow g. that people are where they are because of their reserve there are where they are because of who they deserve to be where they are but. i think the economic meltdown in two thousand and eight was that public opinion really began to shift more people are saying oh the economy is tilted the rules of the economy are tilted to benefit the very wealthy and and they are starting to see the relationship between extreme inequalities of wealth and income and instability in the economy so the economy more people are saying hey this isn't working for me so i think that's the first stage you know of waking up is to see that actually the things that we care about

the quality of life the stability of the middle class are actually tied into these inequality trends they're undermining all that we care about we're talking with scholar and author chuck collins will be back with more in our conversations with great minds after the short break. let's not forget that we have an apartheid regime right. i think. either one well.

we have a government says there's. if. all of the are all. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you don't i'm sorry the big picture.

we're back with more conversations with great minds and speaking with wealth inequality expert and author chuck collins a senior scholar at the institute for public policy studies here in washington d.c. and co-author of the book wealth and our common wealth by america should tax accumulated fortunes welcome back chuck d. the the i.p.s. your organization and the scholars there have tracked back fifty years of tax breaks and how they have benefited the wealthiest americans i'm going to show our

viewers this first graph its income inequality data from tax returns show that the top one percent of households in the united states received eight point nine percent of all pretax income in one thousand nine hundred eighty six but by two thousand and eight that top one percent sure had more than doubled to twenty one percent how did that happen it was the consequence of that. well in the late one nine hundred seventy s. we started to see a number of rule changes in the society we stop taxing the top we stopped actually making the kind of commitments to investing in economic opportunity you remember in one thousand nine hundred eighty we had ronald reagan came in and they were both tax cuts for the rich and also a kind of a shift in priorities so i think that that's you could kind of be the beginning of those policy changes that then led to really thirty years of growing inequality and a piece of the story behind that graph i think is the middle class so if there were if the wealthiest one percent share of wealth more than doubled over those thirty

years what happened to the share of wealth owned by the middle and that's where that's where when people say the middle class is shrinking or collapsing that's an active description that the incomes the share of income that went to the middle has has declined and that's so that's the other piece of that story and that's where the income went and went for the top walter mosley was on this program last week and he made what i thought was a really interesting comment i've never seen or heard of before said exactly this way that the middle class are people who if they lost their jobs could probably get by for six months or a year without a disastrous change in lifestyle the working class are the people who if they lose their jobs within a month they're radically changing their lifestyle he was making that differentiation and and it seems that these policies what we were just talking about this redistribution of wealth outward in society has caused so many more

americans who are in at least as moseley describes it the middle class to become the working class that makes sense to you. it doesn't and you know it you know a financial planner tells people you know you should have six months of your expenses set aside so that if something bad should happen you lose your job you get sick you have a reserve well half the us. population has three months or less of financial reserves so that's the bottom half but if you look at it by race eighty percent of african-americans seventy nine percent of latinos have three months or less of financial reserves to fall back on so you know when the economic meltdown hit you were seeing people whose nest savings evaporated lost the job lost their home all of a sudden a lot of people moved right to that brink and maybe were just surviving thanks to additional borrowing or. support of friends or fell off the edge so it's

a tough one here's another graph this is the source of this is forbes magazine is the total wealth of the four hundred richest americans the forbes four hundred from one thousand nine hundred five to twenty one and what it shows is that among america's richest individuals that wealth rose from five hundred seven billion in one thousand nine hundred five to one point six two trillion in two thousand and seven before dropping back to one point three seven trillion in two thousand and ten again the could be the per the how this came about and what its impact is well. you know i think that there's been a power shift the decline of unions advocating for reasonable wages the the rising power of wall street to sort of shape the rules in the environment around economic policy. you know we're talking about four hundred households four hundred households that have such a huge share of wealth that is our royal that's our those are our economic

royalists no one point three africa and i mean if our g.d.p. in the united states is fifteen trillion so that's that's. just put those numbers next to each of the entire country produces fifteen trillion and four hundred families have one point three trillion. it's an interesting thing if you think about now there's not you know the forest the highest income four hundred highest income households so we're looking at wealth here but there's obviously a correlation have seen their income tax weeks go down just did a study to see here that shows that the top four hundred paid about eighteen percent of their income in federal income taxes which is down from almost fifty percent that was the effective rate. in one thousand nine hundred sixty one so the year barack obama was born fifty years ago the top tax rates were higher and the top four hundred paid close and a half of their income and now they're down to less than you know nineteen percent

and that that that's an example of how that the rules of the tax system have benefited that that that tiny pinnacle of wealth holders and my my wife makes the joke that when i die on my tombstone so say it all started with reagan because i'm constantly coming back to this but this is. we if you look at the u.s. debt from george washington until today from literally from george washington till till ronald reagan it was all pretty manageable i mean we had a spike during world war two we paid that off within a decade without cutting anything i mean you know eisenhower just threw a lot of money at highways and the g.i. bill and things and poof we grew our way out of it now we've got these republicans running around saying we've got to squeeze all this blood out of the middle class of the poor and we can't raise taxes when tax rates are at historic lows i mean lower than than even been since the great depression. what we do about this is how

do we wake people up to the fact that really it's this explosion in in wealth and in national debt all began with the reagan administration and what is the meme the thinking the thought by or is that in fact that our nation with the reagan administration that hasn't left us that we needed to extract or cure. well i think that they did a good job sort of selling the idea that everybody's on their own and get out there and get your own and any increases in taxes on the wealthy is going to kill jobs and hurt the economy and so that monster that drumbeat has been being pretty solidly and now here we are in this you know we're broke i mean that's sort of the narrative of the republican leadership there's no money we we have these huge debts and deficits and yet the whole discussion about revenue is completely off the table we have to put revenue back on the table you know there's there's all kinds of interesting grassroots movements percolating like the other ninety eight percent in

the u.s. uncut movement and others their message is kind of simple look we don't have to cut budgets first step before we talk cuts let's just restate or. progressive income tax and estate tax on millionaires and let's make corporate tax dodgers like general electric pay their fair share there's there's you know hundreds of billions of dollars a revenue could be raised yet that isn't on the table. curiously that again the public opinion now is moving ahead of where washington d.c. politics are a lot of people are like no no no don't make budget cuts whether at the local or federal level make the corporate tax dodgers pay up and make the millionaires pay their fair share so the public now is moving in that direction and i think we just have to keep saying look we're not procure that most of the wealthiest countries in the world there's huge pools of wealth at the very very top as a friend of mine who runs a food pantry says we're not broke we're just twisted or morally bent but we're

we're not we're not broke by any means yeah i think. thomas frank on this program some time back might have been the person who quoted forgetting who it was. and how he said that while europeans may realize that you know the european working class understands who they are in relation to the rich americans don't because the american working class thinks that there's temporarily embarrassed millionaires. although that's that's actually one of the things that i think it's has shifted in just three years that there are more and more if you ask people because inequality matter you know used to be how rich the rich are that doesn't really matter i don't really care in fact i want to be there and as long as the level the field is level the rules are fair. don't mess with how concentrations of wealth how concentrated wealth is now if you like hate those those plutocrats are going to keep me not only

from being wealthy but even from having a decent stable middle class life and so my interests now you know the interests of people in the bottom ninety eight percent are starting to be quite different and they see that their interests are different than the top two percent now this isn't just a phenomena that's happened in the united states the globally we have a problem with the inequality as well it is not as bad as the united states in most of the european countries certainly the northern european countries but if you look at the entire planet as a whole as an american quite a credit crunch credit suisse research institute they were released in october two thousand and ten show the richest half of one percent of global adults hold over well well over a third of the world's wealth is there a worldwide recognition of this problem is and effort to do something about. well it really differs by different countries and regions but i think that you know

that that in each country even in the global south and in mexico that the extremes of inequality are are. you know just even unthinkable to us in the united states you have you know if you're if you're in a global elite in brazil and mexico you live in an entirely walled off. enclave you drive your bulletproof mercedes benz with your bodyguards to the restaurant in the rich enclave restaurant area that's where the united states is kind of heading i mean that's where without any break or reverse these inequalities were were moving to that level of apartheid society but but you have powerful global elites and they're much more it's much more recognized in some countries that it's sort of like the looting is going on not that the mythology of deservedness doesn't exist it's really about a power baldfaced power struggle so but you know what's interesting about that

statistic you mentioned half. one percent of the world's population has thirty five point six percent of all the private wealth and in the united states who have top one percent has thirty five point six percent it just happens that this year it's sort of lined up in this way that the mirrors each other in third world america it's third world america really that's where we're heading health in some research done by the equality trust and in the u.k. equality trust is word that you get was or was it shows that based on ten different indexes life expectancy math proficiency literacy infant mortality homicides imprisonment teenage births trust of others in society obesity mental illness and social mobility that social in this collection this cluster of social and health problems are worse in countries with the highest inequality and the u.s. tops that list how do we wake people up to this and what do we do about those. well

here's the here's an in here's one where the u.s. is such an outlier. inequality is making us sick but your middle class or even upper class living in the united states with these levels of inequality actually undermines public health for everybody and and i so this is actually a place where you can make a self interested appeal. because what the reason why any qualities making us sick is that any quality leads to a breakdown and social solidarity that sense that we're in the same boat if you and i are you know in the same town maybe across the tracks we're we're we're still connected but now we're in this like you know one little hill leaders on the top of the skyscraper and they don't even take the elevator down to the bottom floors and that's where any quality actually really deeply undercuts the quality of life for everybody even for rich people you know you can you can live on an island but your

children and grandchildren are going to want to go out into the world and if it has these kind of apartheid inequalities it's bad for everybody so i think that's that's that's that's where it's self interest for everybody to pay attention to these inequalities i wish the republican party in mass would reach for and not if not more than a few democrats as well thanks so much for it very much for being with us tonight. thanks for having the conversation pleasure to watch this conversation as well as previous conversations of the great minds go to our website conversations with great minds dot com and that's the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we cover this is our website it's on arbonne dot com and. also check out a you tube page if you've got a consolation for sure r.t. and egypt. and this entire show is available as a free podcast on i tunes and don't forget democracy begins when you get out there and get active tag you're it will soon lodger.

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