E. J. Dionne reminds the wealthy elite that it is in their long-term interest, and a well-established American tradition, to temper greed with civic responsibility. “The influence of the ruling class comes from its position in the economy and its ability to pay for the politicians’ campaigns. . . . I am not using the term to argue for a Marxist economy. We need the market. We need incentives. We don’t need our current levels of inequality,” Dionne writes. “If the ruling class were as worried about the deficit as it claims to be, it would accept that the wealthiest people in society have a duty to pony up more for the very government whose police power and military protect them, their property and their wealth.”
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Those not of the ruling class also comprised the civil society and did the work that made any accumulation of wealth possible. But the civic responsibility that would acknowledge that would appear to have been bred out of the upper echelons over the generations. Do the Koch brothers represent an evolutionary mountaintop in the monied class? Or a valley?