Why the 81% to 99% should be worried

Percent of change in share of national income as a function of income distribution percentile.  From http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/inequality-trends-in-one-picture

Those of us sitting in the upper 81% to 99% haven't been doing too badly.  But you can't get blood from a turnip.  When the bottom 80% have nothing left to give, who's next?  After decades of getting a larger and larger section of the pie, will the 1% leave the upper quintile alone?

As proven by the last financial crash, when the 1% can rig the game, it isn't a game anymore - it's simply a show.   And this show ends like the Roman Empire.   Once wealth and power are concentrated, order will be maintained with bread, circuses, and swords.  But be comforted - the oligarchy is smarter than the rest of us.  After all, the 1% got bailed out when they bet on mortgages, but homeowners in the bottom 80% lost their houses on the same bet. 

It's too bad that we don't use Krugman's dictum, which he put very nicely[1], but I crudely paraphrase as:   

If you got bailed out, your ass is ours.

Every major Wall Street brokerage firm would be broke today without the taxpayer bailout.  We have the right, and indeed the obligation to our children, to shake out this industry to prevent this from happening again.   

Ah well, let's go watch the lions eat somebody and be glad it's not you or me.   

Here we are now, entertain us.  

With the lights out, it's less dangerous.

[1] Krugman quoted at http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/10/quote-of-the-day-october-21-2011.html