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How the Legal System Favors the 1 Percent

Wall Street tycoons have destroyed the economic security of millions of people around the world—yet they haven't faced the slightest legal repercussions.

| Tue Oct. 25, 2011 1:29 PM EDT

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.




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In addition, substantial wealth inequality is so embedded in American political culture that, standing alone, it would not be sufficient to trigger citizen rage of the type we are finally witnessing. The American Founders were clear that they viewed inequality in wealth, power, and prestige as not merely inevitable, but desirable and, for some, even divinely ordained. Jefferson praised "the natural aristocracy" as "the most precious gift of nature" for the "government of society." John Adams concurred: "It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the…course of nature the foundation of the distinction."


In the 1980s, this paradox—whereby even those most trampled upon come to cheer those responsible for their state—became more firmly entrenched. That's because it found a folksy, friendly face, Ronald Reagan, adept at feeding the populace a slew of Orwellian clichés that induced them to defend the interests of the wealthiest. "A rising tide," as President Reagan put it, "lifts all boats." The sum of his wisdom being: It is in your interest when the rich get richer.





While the Founders accepted outcome inequality, they emphasized—over and over—that its legitimacy hinged on subjecting everyone to the law's mandates on an equal basis. Jefferson wrote that the essence of America would be that "the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their rights seem to jar." Benjamin Franklin warned that creating a privileged legal class would produce "total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections" between rulers and those they ruled. Tom Paine repeatedly railed against "counterfeit nobles," those whose superior status was grounded not in merit but in unearned legal privilege.


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