Making a profit is not a crime. But making a profit no matter the social cost is. It doesn't matter whether rich people want poor people to be poor. What matters is, as a minority class that wields most of the direct power to influence public policies, the rich repeatedly influence public policies in the direction of increasing their own wealth and influence at the expense of the common good, and especially at the expense of the underclass.

The rich person who fails to understand that a portion of his wealth depends on the existence of a substantial class of poor people is practicing elective ignorance.   There is a wealth of knowledge and sound social research to bear this out.

People, including rich people, are responsbile for their choices. They are responsible for understanding the effects of their choices. Like it or not, as members of a society who reap the benefits of living in a society, they are responsible for the effects of their choices on society.

Wealth = power and the ready ability to influence public policies and socioeconomic conditions. Knowledge = power, and the wealthy tend to be well educated and well informed. In addition, there is considerable more cohesiveness among the much smaller class of those with wealth. People with wealth are much more similar to one another than are the individuals who comprise the much, much larger underclass. The upper class is much more able to wield power consciously and cohesively, than any other socioeconomic class.

The conventioanl wisdom is that everyone who works for a corporation benefits when a corporation thrives. Time and again, however, this has proven not to be true. Corporations making good profits will repeatedly make choices to increase profits even more, and enrich themselves in the process, at the expense of the livelihood of the workers who were essential to the creation of the wealth to begin with.

Enron is a prime example. A hand full of upperclass, corporate executives made decisions that cost thousands of workers their current livelihood and their future financial stability in retirement.

There is also power inherent in the sheer numbers of people included in the lower, working and moderate socioeconomic classes. But that power is like lightning. It is wild and chaotic, unorganized unless or until a Union or a Martin Luther King Jr. comes along. At the individual level, much of the power that would otherwise be available for class action is redirected to getting through the day-to-day. As a class, the underclass does not generally have the capacity to operate cohesively, and the individuals of the underclass are less likely to recognize or understand that they are part of a social class.

Being thoughtless, especially when one has power, is no excuse.

Janie