This was an interesting read, and spoke to my personal frustration with the persistent inequality between rich and poor. While I do not know if we could ever attain the “Shared Security” system you describe, I do want to offer that such a system would work in favor of business interests and the interests of the wealthy, as well as the workers. Critics in this thread need to look at the scoreboard — in the few enlightened countries that have uncoupled health care and education from “jobs,” the business communities enjoy a huge competitive advantage in the healthy, educated workforce that results.

Investing in healthy and educated citizens has benefits — tangible as well as intangible — for the society at large, including the rich. If I were rich, I would support these initiatives, not out of some fuzzy altruism, but out of my own enlightened self-interest. Even from my hard-won middle class vantage point, I find I do not want to be surrounded by ignoramuses with contagious diseases when both conditions are preventable. I myself will work to help others less fortunate, but my resources are limited, whereas I see billions of dollars sitting idly in the pockets of the few, or misspent by government in vile ways that do not bear close inspection.

With regard to the tired old argument that people just won’t work without proportionate reward of some kind, I return to the same old response — still never refuted completely, in my view — that poor people work much harder, on the whole, than rich people. There is no “proportionate” reward in capitalism today; that’s something the well-off tell themselves so they can feel justified in having so much. When the well-off become the very rich, they seek to distract from their disproportionate wealth by calling themselves “job creators,” so everyone will see what great folks they really are. But “job creators” have a responsibility to make those jobs livable. The retailer whose name I don’t even like to say (Waldem*rt) provides a fine example of a giant employer who suppressed wages and now realizes that this was a poor business strategy. We’ll see how that goes.

Finally, Mr. Cassella, I hope you will ignore the criticisms in this thread that end in name-calling, snark, and unsupported “facts” delivered as evidence. Such criticisms are not worth listening to until they display more maturity and depth of thought.

Thank you for your work.