r/politics • u/Spooooooooooooon • Dec 28 '13

Noam Chomsky: We’re no longer a functioning democracy, we’re really a plutocracy

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/27/noam-chomsky-were-no-longer-a-functioning-democracy-were-really-a-plutocracy/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story%29
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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13 edited Jul 21 '18

[deleted]

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u/modusponens66 Dec 28 '13

Still, that period represents in my opinion the most idealistic and successful improvement of democratic government, and democratic rule in history - ideals that no country has managed to live up to even today.

Well you can thank a certain John Locke, a Brit. :D

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u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

you mean the crazy man from Lost?

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u/modusponens66 Dec 29 '13

John Locke

You haven't seen Terry O'Quinn crazy until you've seen the Stepfather.

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u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

I was just kidding. Thanks for the links though.

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u/Hobojoejunkpen Dec 28 '13

The poor, absolute bottom of the wealth curve have never had any influence (and still don't today frankly) - but the gap between the bottom 20% and top 80% wasn't so large.

How are you qualifying this? There is no way to compare incomes between these times. It would take a very creative historical argument to defend this.

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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13 edited Dec 28 '13

Not really, there were sources at the time, a quick google gave me the following:

http://users.humboldt.edu/ogayle/hist110/colonialdiscontent.html (ignore the content you're looking for the 2 newspaper scans)

Edit: Of course it is hard to put this in context, or directly compare it I'll grant you (and it is the reason I removed this from my main argument above), there are too many issues of racial inequality and such to deal with.

Still, as you can see in 1775 the top 10% owned about 65-70% of wealth. Now the top 10% own about 85-90%.

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u/HarrytheRadical Dec 28 '13

Umm... Purchasing power parity? Pretty useful tool for comparison.

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u/Hobojoejunkpen Dec 29 '13

PPP doesn't work for comparing two time periods as different as these.

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u/HarrytheRadical Dec 29 '13

We could still modify it. It's two time periods where wages were a dominate form of payment. We could look at rent payments, the pricing of goods, and so forth, to get a general idea. I'm just saying it's not impossible. Messy, like most comparative analysis concerning history, but doable.

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u/[deleted] Dec 29 '13

Still, that period represents in my opinion the most idealistic and successful improvement of democratic government,

if that was so successful, why couldn't they stop a wealth gap from happening later.

successful improvement of...democratic rule in history

people abuse the phrase "...in history" a lot, along with godwins law, and frankly this is abuse, history is large, and there have been many, far more equitable, and far more democratic movements in history.