The billionaire hedge fund manager, Ray Dalio, is worried of on an impending revolution. He feels there’s about to be an uprising in America, brought on by the widening wealth gap.
The founder of the world’s largest hedge fund wrote in a new essay on LinkedIn that he has “seen capitalism evolve in a way that it is not working well for the majority of Americans because it’s producing self-reinforcing spirals up for the haves and down for the have-nots.” Capitalism is creating “widening income/wealth/opportunity gaps that pose existential threats to the United States because these gaps are bringing about damaging domestic and international conflicts and weakening America’s condition.”
Wages for the majority of Americans have been stagnant for decades. Those who grew up in the middle class earn less than their parents. Americans are earning less and dying younger. The richest in society live longer than the poor, it is now a lifespan difference of more than a decade on average.
“Disparity in wealth, especially when accompanied by disparity in values, leads to increasing conflict and, in the government, that manifests itself in the form of populism of the left and populism of the right and often in revolutions of one sort or another,” Dalio wrote. He is “worried what the next economic downturn will be like.”
Photo: “DSC_5227” by Web Summit is licensed under CC BY 2.0
If you make so much money that you feel impelled to employ people who will enable you to pay no tax, and as a result become obscenely rich…. isn’t that a a mental problem called obsession?