[Florin_Andrei]

> The government only needs to do less and society will fix itself.

And by "fix itself" you mean it will shift even more wealth from the lower 75% to the top 1% - who will step in to fill the power void.

"Money begets money, power begets power." Society is full of self-reinforcing feedback loops like that. You need a damping factor that prevents any single individual or corporation from amassing too much power.

[meric]

Look above and you see the more rich and powerful stacked one after another, wealth and power increasing seemingly infinitely the higher you look.

Look below and you see the poor and powerless, stacked one after another, poverty and powerlessness infinitely desperate the lower you look.

Unless you're near the very top or the very bottom, at every level of this power ladder the view is the same.

"I recently asked a wealthy political donor why he was supporting Bill de Blasio and his attacks on the wealthy."

"Because inequality is a problem in New York," he said. "The rich have gotten their way for too long."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2013/10/...

Compared to the poor in developing and undeveloped countries where people earn $5 a day, your wealth and power relative to them might as well be the same as the wealth and power from 0.1% percenter relative to you. Them looking at you would feel the same as you (assuming $100,000 income) looking at a CEO making $5 million a year.

The only question is, with your wealth and power, how will you diffuse your power to reduce the world's inequality? If you can solve this problem, you can show the example for your family and close friends. If your family and close friends can solve this problem, so can your community, your neighbourhood, the rest of your city and nation.

[Florin_Andrei]

It's not a problem that can be solved by my "wealth and power" (both of which are in rather meager supply).

It's an issue of mentality. A society is what it is because its members share a set of assumptions, ideas, mentalities. The one-percenters get even more one-percent-y every year because we all hold certain "truths" to be "self-evident".

For starters, we need less individualism. I'm not saying less individual freedom, mind you.

[meric]

> It's not a problem that can be solved by my "wealth and power" (both of which are in rather meager supply).

You have an observation shared with thousands of millionaires in NYC.

I'm helping my company setup a software development office in South Africa. It won't do much, but it'll provide half a dozen individuals with well paying jobs and diffuse some wealth we collect from Fortune 500 companies.

I'm also planning a trip to a developing country, paid for by that government, to deliver a class to local CS graduates there on how to become a contractors working with projects paying $50+ an hour. It won't do much but if I can help one or two individuals do this I'd be very happy. I was lucky when I traveled there for vacation, managed to talk to someone who works with the government's ministry of education.

I've only been working full time as a software engineer and formally graduated only last May and this is what I'm doing.

My wealth and power is likely more meagre than yours - but it is a lot less meagre than many others.

I hope one day you'll find your own way to help solve problems you see in this world, too.

> It's an issue of mentality.

I agree with you. See my reply to SwellJoe.