Sociology professor G. William Dumhoff recently posted an article by an investment manager about the wealthiest people in the United States. This investment manager (who wished to remain anonymous for obvious reasons) concludes:
I could go on and on, but the bottom line is this: A highly complex and largely discrete set of laws and exemptions from laws has been put in place by those in the uppermost reaches of the U.S. financial system. It allows them to protect and increase their wealth and significantly affect the U.S. political and legislative processes. They have real power and real wealth. Ordinary citizens in the bottom 99.9% are largely not aware of these systems, do not understand how they work, are unlikely to participate in them, and have little likelihood of entering the top 0.5%, much less the top 0.1%. Moreover, those at the very top have no incentive whatsoever for revealing or changing the rules. I am not optimistic.
For those of us who are concerned about people who are poor, the implication is that we will be able to make no real progress on eliminating poverty.