Please Look at This One Chart

This one. As per the reader who sent it to me: “It reveals the capture of government by the extremely wealthy more simply and powerfully than anything else I’ve ever seen.”

Many businesses, including mine, can’t afford to close for May Day. What I can do is shout from the pixelated rooftops that this level of capture* is the single biggest threat to democracy that we face. 

Those of us who are not in that group of 400 or so have all sorts of differences that divide us, in some cases bitterly. One thing that should unite us all is the prospect of losing our voices and our votes in a system shaped more and more by the very few.**
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*A level of capture that is poised to become even more dramatic in an AI-driven, winner(s)-take-all economy.

**I’m not going on at length today, because I’d love for you to spend the three minutes you usually spend with me with the very animated Robert Reich and his equally animated chart instead. Here again is the link. But very briefly: thank you all for reading and special thanks to those of you who take the time to write back. I love the global salon of it all.