The King Midas Touch
By Tom Toles
The rich have managed to accrue unto themselves such a pile of money that the rest of humanity has to make due with debts. This of course is the second last stage of the game. When the regular folks are tapped out because of bad wealth distribution, we get to go one more round as the rich LEND the others some money. The borrowed money makes the people feel prosperous, and the rich have all this S&P-rated AAA debt that looks like even more wealth in the making.
But the clock ticks forebodingly. Meanwhile, the wealthy have engineered the government into cutting their taxes, because, after all the portfolio can NEVER bulge too menacingly. Obligations to society? Oh you Marxist you! But then the clock chimes and comes the finale. The precious daughter, the economy, turns into a metal statue! What the??? She can’t move anymore, because daddy’s special powers have become just a little TOO special. People can’t pay back their loans because they don’t have any money anymore! They can’t get a job because nobody wants to hire them because they’d just make things they can’t afford to buy!
So there the rich sit, in their self-created gilded world, in which nothing moves, and a tax of a very worse kind is paid.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/tom-toles/post/the-king-midas-touch/2011/08/09/gIQA5mto4I_blog.html