“The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy are to spend money on common needs. The rich don’t need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security. The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.”
Joseph E. Stiglitz
While in principle there is truth is the quote, it fails to appreciate the fact that the 99% in most “modern” (meaning ruled by progressive agendas) societies, get that way ONLY because of government handouts, regulations, subsidies, favoritism, protectionism, cronyism, etc. and NOT through the free market mechanisms that FORCE the success and prosperity of others along the way in the process of becoming wealthy oneself.
In a freer time in this country, folks like Vanderbilt, Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Mellon, and others (though benefiting a degree from government – I’m not naive), endowed universities, libraries, and the like and ALSO vastly improved the lives of everyone in society as they built better and better things for consumers to purchase in the VOLUNTARY exchange of goods that was still free of government meddling.