Punaperson, I didn't present ANY argument at all.
I presented a perspective on the boy's point of view that was related. Sure, he's a young liberal nutcase. But the ideas he is articulating (poorly) are actually quite valid. Its the very same dynamic that CAUSED the French Revolution, the Soviet one, and to a lesser degree the American Revolution.
If I were to present in argument as I have been invited to:
There is nothing wrong with richness and I don't think the 1% (for the lack of a more accurate term) are thieves.
I DO think it is a Problem when someone caught with just a little too much pot goes to jail and someone who is responsible for tanking the economy gets a raise after his failing bank is bailed out with tax dollars. I think its a problem when Wall Street's economic indicators say we've pretty much recovered from the sub-prime lending crisis of 2007 but the vast majority of that "recovery" has gone to the top 10%. Meanwhile, unemployment is down but wages - adjusted for inflation - are LOWER. The buying power of the lower, middle and even lower upper classes has diminished ~significantly~ while the wealth accumulated at the top has increased even more significantly. CEO's make 331 times the wages of their ~average~ worker and that continues to trend up even though we know that during our best economic times it was more like 15:1. Compared to 5 years ago, company's are making 38% more profit per employee - and paying them LESS.
I think its a problem that GE hasn't paid a cent in federal taxes for the past few years but we want to cut SNAP benefits to people who generally aren't lazy - the just have fewer living wage options since companies like GE have moved most of their manufacturing overseas. I think its a problem that Walmart employees are also the largest single group of welfare recipients - and that the Waltons seem fine with being more outrageously wealthy than ever and letting the tax payers pick up the slack left by their low wages. Federal minimum wage is about $15,080 a year, full time. (Each member of the Walton family makes roughly that amount in the time it takes them to shower.)
I think its a problem that we know economic challenges cause increased crime and that our response has be to privatize prisons and incarcerate a higher percentage of the population than all but 1 other country in the world. Is that being hard on crime or weak on trying to eradicate poverty? Hell, the impoverished are now a commodity: that's even better than trying to eradicate poverty and crime.
There are people who benefit from these problems. The 1% aren't thieves. What they are doing is legal - in part because they have so much influence on making laws. But it is NOT ethical to increase the wealth inequality gap to the extreme degree that we have. We now compete with 3rd world dictatorships for wealth inequality. We have the highest level of wealth inequality of any 1st world nation.
Money is power. Always has been. If those with the money and the power don't chose to reverse the extreme trend of wealth going only to the top then the bottom will eventually get out the pitch forks, light the torches and sharpen the guillotines.
Our wealth inequality hasn't been this high since 1928. Does that year seem ominous to you? I think that is a problem, too. But the very people who stand to benefit from (yet) another financial collapse are the ones who are wealthy enough to weather it well. They'll just soak up what little of the real wealth they don't already own when the rest of us are scrambling to find work. That's exactly what happened during the Great Depression and it took the extreme need (and near socialistic governmental control of the wartime economy) of WWII to start bringing us back from it. Collapses are the mechanism by which wealth flows quickly from the middle class to the upper class so why would they want to keep another one from happening? Or even have a problem with another World War afterwards?
Meanwhile, its not like the percentage of wealth that is leaving the lower and middle classes is matched by a corresponding drop in the prices of essentials. Food costs are a higher percentage of income, as are housing and energy. And nothing indicates that trend is changing. If it continues too far everyone of us here is likely to be far more closely related to that mugger than we are to the silly young fellow who at least has the good grace to realize he isn't too much of a victim.
Do you want to wait until your only option is a pitchfork before doing something about the raging wealth inequality trend we are currently "enjoying?" Or do we still believe that if you just work hard enough you, too, can be part of the smaller and smaller group of people that is actually getting ahead?