The space race was an incredible concentration of wealth and it turned out many technical advances which improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis.
Sure does. It's the concentration of wealth into the hands of a government, which is made up of people.
Oh, you're only talking about the concentrating of wealth into private hands? I reject that arbitrary separation. It still matters where wealth is concentrated, even if you choose to disregard such so long as it's controlled by people in government positions.
You don't think the $236 billion paid out to federal civilian workers every year is concentrating of wealth? Yeah right.
According to the USA Today:
"By 2009, there were 383,000 federal civilian workers with salaries of more than $100,000"
That's not concentration of wealth?
How about: "In 2010, federal worker compensation averaged $126,141, or double the private-sector average of $62,757."
Oh, look how counter-intuitive this reasoning is! It must therefore be deeply insightful.
Except it requires throwing out most normal definitions of "concentration" and "wealth", and requires the belief that government is the "other" rather than government (in a democracy) being some reasonable approximation of public will (I'm not suggesting that government can't, or hasn't frequently within history become a horrible other -- but one has to adopt a rather extreme anti-government position to subsequently see the current U.S. government as the enemy, and equate accountable government power with unaccountable private power).
Which federal employee can spend 0.5% of their wealth and completely change the outcome of an election to the Senate? Or 0.1% of their wealth and get subtle legislation written at a 10x ROI? Or spend 0.05 % of their wealth and fund three professorships at a university whose primary role is to intellectually buttress their own self-serving ideology?
Trillions of dollars controlled by a few hundred men and women in the lower house of the Congress. And even fewer on the subcommittees that controls each of Pentagon spending, welfare benefits, and salary budgets.
... and they can be removed from these positions every two or six years. And they have to glad-hand and defend their positions and votes regularly. And even if you contend that they might be bribed or engage in dubious deals, their compensation for doing so is orders of magnitude less than the kinds of lobbying returns found by industries that generate billions of revenue each year.
Seriously, billionaires and those who have ownership and direct control over billion-dollar-enterprises are accountable to no one. History has shown that wealthy interests have repeatedly exploited their advantages politically and financially to the detriment of everyone else (yes, governments fail too, but rarely democratic ones). You are telling me that I should be more concerned about the power society has decided to give to their elected representatives, and relatively less concerned about the influence of an increasingly wealthy elite, who, with every additional dollar at their disposal, render less powerful everyone else?
Government is ultimately accountable to the people. Private individuals are not.
Talking about the middle class as the concentration of wealth is laughable. It's the super-rich's wealth that is the concentration, because all that power is held by a small group that have interests and priorities different than the vast majority. A large middle class, by definition, is a bulwark against this, because they are a large amount of people with interests more in line with the general populace. They need health care, good roads, various government agencies. The super-rich really, really don't.
Also, if you think a $100,000 salary in the US is rich, you're wrong. It's very nice, but it's not "rich".
