Rich are scared — let's make their fears come true

Stuart Munckton writes that the Rich are scared — let's make their fears come true.

These are certainly interesting times — where growing inequality, ongoing injustice and the threat of climate disaster make a potent brew of deep uncertainty.

Just ask our rulers. A January 23 article in The Guardian titled “As inequality soars, the nervous super rich are already planning their escapes” said: “With growing inequality and the civil unrest from Ferguson and the Occupy protests fresh in people’s mind, the world’s super rich are already preparing for the consequences.

“At a packed session in Davos, former hedge fund director Robert Johnson revealed that worried hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes. 'I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway,' he said.”

But it seems more than just the fear of being targeted by riotous mobs that is keeping the super-rich up at night. In Greece, five years of crippling austerity — imposed to protect the interests of the big banks — led to radical left party SYRIZA sweeping the January 25 elections. Panicked markets started to tumble.

Before the year is out, SYRIZA could be joined in Spain by fellow anti-austerity party Podemos — a new group that emerged out of the mass indignado movement, Spain's equivalent of Occupy, except on a much larger scale.

Emphasis Mine

Inequality makes the Capitalists do stupid things. Instead of trying to placate the masses, they plan to escape instead.