Dear Mr. Rich Person

Dear Mr. Rich Person:

   I’m not writing to people who are just reasonably well-off, or to people who simply have more money than I do. No, I’m writing to you, the fabulously wealthy individuals who are in charge of our economy. I know, I know, it makes you uncomfortable to hear that, and some of you may not even understand it completely, but you are the straw that stirs the drink, if the straw were your out-of-all-proportion influence in politics and the economy and the drink were the fate of every American who does not share your incredible good fortune. You know who you are, you’re the multi-millionaire on your way to being a billionaire, you’re the person who needs to find ways around campaign financing laws to contribute to your candidate – of either party. You’re the person who is part of the one thing our Founding Fathers loathed more than anything else and tried with all their might to keep from growing upon our shores: an hereditary aristocracy. Multi-generational wealth, unearned and undeserved, has given you a kind of leverage and influence not seen since the Robber Barons of the late Nineteenth Century. It’s you I’m talking to.
   You’re treading a thin line, you have been for the past few decades, and you’re courting disaster. The thin line is the tissue-thin space between dissent and anarchy, and the disaster you’re courting is the breakdown of the very system that made possible the circumstance you were born into.
   You see, America needs a strong middle class. It’s vital to everything we’ve come to expect from our modern economy. A large, thriving middle class not only makes the goods that your company sells, they buy the goods other companies sell. For the most part people don’t need much, but when they feel comfortable in their situation they’re more than willing to part with a few of their hard-earned dollars and line your pockets with even more filthy lucre. A strong, large, vibrant middle class provides the grease that keeps the American economy turning, which provides you the fabulous wealth you in no way deserve.
   When you break down the middle class, as you have done in the past three decades by keeping wages stagnant and eliminating jobs and generally ignoring the fates of most of the human beings in this nation, you erode the very base of the pyramid you teeter atop. This is a lesson the French aristocracy learned too late back in the Eighteen Century – power to govern always derives from the consent of the governed. And if you think you’re not governing just because you haven’t run for or been elected to office you’re making another mistake.
   Mr. Rich Person, if for no other reason than enlightened self-interest, you absolutely must start paying attention to your responsibilities to preserve American society. It’s not all about you, despite everything you’ve come to expect over the past three decades. When the haves get most of the economic pie and the have-nots fight for crumbs, sooner or later the have-nots are going to realize there are far more of them than you, and they can just take as much pie as they want. Mr. Rich Person, you need to realize that we really are all in this together, and in a very tangible sense your continued safety and prosperity requires tending to and assuring the safety and prosperity of those less fortunate than you.
   Don’t worry, even though this newfound and unfamiliar civic responsibility means you’ll make less money than you did before, you’ll still make far more than you can possibly spend in your lifetime. But you’ll enjoy the added benefit of not being the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Sincerely,
-- your friend Don