We know the solutions to most of our national and global problems. We know many ways to stop global warming, to eliminate poverty, racism, etc. but we can't seem to move forward. Of course there are many reasons, but one stands out, way above the others: Greed.

For example, the burning of fossil fuels is causing global warming, but oil companies and their investors fight tooth and nail against renewable energy because it would mean less profit from oil.

A tiny tax on billionaires could provide everyone with free child care, free college, medical care, and much more, but they have and continue to spend millions in an almost century-long battle to fight any and all taxation because, like a cancer on the body of humanity, they are insatiable: even with a billion, or a hundred billion, they still want more.

And, as we will see, below, it's not just about money, it's about Democracy itself.

Here, we explore greed. Where it comes from, how it operates, and how we might prevent it from consuming us all.

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RIP, Paul Volcker: The Fed Chair Who Thought We Lived Too Well - - This article illustrates what seems to be a fundamental driver of inequality and greed: When a person feels superior to others, that person tends to also feel both less empathy and entitled to more of...everything. Fed chairman Paul Volker thought that middle class Americans were living too well, so he engineered policies that destroyed the middle class while defending Wall Street from its own corruption..See also here and here.

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Does Wealth Rob the Brain of Compassion? - The Atlantic - - To put it simply: Yes. And that's not all it does. There is abundant evidence that wealth makes people greedy, selfish and more likely to cheat, as well.

How Reaganism Turned Ray Rosenberry & Joe Stack Into Terrorists - - Thom Hartmann succinctly illustrates the billonaire-fueled rise of White American disaffection and embrace of terrorism, catalysed by the Powell Memorandum. While the article correctly calls out Ronald Reagan and other conservatives, it fails to mention the substantial part played by liberals in the destruction of the Middle Class. Bill Clinton gave us NAFTA, welfare "reform", and the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which led to the Great Recession and Barack Obama twisted the knife in the back of the middle class by bailing out Wall Street while leaving everyone else to fend for themselves.

Meritocracy Harms Everyone - The Atlantic - - After making it clear that the Meritocracy "deck" is stacked in favor of the priveleged, the author makes the case that even for them, the fruits of meritocracy are essentially. bitter - gained at the expense of mental health and relationships. A better way is possible.

Our Uniquely American Virus - - In this article, Nick Hannauer shows how neoliberalism, our unique American creed of greed, has made the Covid-19 pandemic so much worse than it had to be.

RIP, Paul Volcker: The Fed Chair Who Thought We Lived Too Well - - This article illustrates what seems to be a fundamental driver of inequality and greed: When a person feels superior to others, that person tends to also feel both less empathy and entitled to more of...everything. Fed chairman Paul Volker thought that middle class Americans were living too well, so he engineered policies that destroyed the middle class while defending Wall Street from its own corruption..See also here and here.

The Big Money Behind the Big Lie - The New Yorker - - Greed and wealth enhance each other. Any threat to either one of them inspires action. This article documents the lengths to which wealthy people will go to protect their pile of cash.

The Lewis Powell Memo: A Corporate Blueprint to Dominate Democracy - - Partly due to widespread public disgust at the paroxysm of capitalist greed that led to the economic collapse known as the Great Depression, Greed took a hit during the FDR years. Excessive income was heavily taxed; banks were on a tight leash; labor unions were empowered. Factories provided dependable jobs with good benefits. The GI Bill enabled millions of pepple to attend college and go on to even better jobs. A middle class appeared, who, in turn, sent their kids to college. For a while, America's greediest kept a low profile. But by the 1960's, it all began to change. Thanks to the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, Ralph Nader, Rachel Carson, and others, Americans began to see beneath the veneer of both government and corporations. The New Deal had brought sensible rules to Finance and Labor. Now, we were addressing Civil Rights, product safety, and environmental degradation. In other words, Democracy was blossoming.

Unfortunately, busnessmen didn't see it that way. For Lewis Powell and his cohort of wealthy capitalists, these were existential threats. In 1971, Powell, a corporate lawyer who sat on the Boards of 11 different corporations decided that enough was enough. He sent a confidental letter to a friend, who was then the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The letter was headed "CONFIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM Attack on American Free Enterprise System".

In his letter, Powell laid out a comprehensive strategy to "Make the world safe..." not for Democracy, but from Democracy.

The letter resonated with its intended audience who got on board and invested wisely, with the result that we now have a country where 1 in every 7 children (11 million) live in poverty, where 50 percent more newborn babies die than in all other industrialized countries combined, where over 50 percent of college students now have to go into debt to pay college tuition, which many of them will be paying off for the rest of their lives, putting a massive drag on the economy, where wages for most workers have stagnated, while prices go up and up. Meanwhile, 1 percent of Americans own over 40 percent of the Nation's wealth, with the wealthiest among them often paying little or nothing in taxes.

The Powell Memo will help you understand that where we are today, is the result of a planned, coordinated attack on democratic values and policies. But I found it also to be a window into the uniquely self-serving view of reality shared by many of our wealthiest citizens, both then and now.

Powell noticed that criticism of capitalism was coming from all sectors of society. A healthy person's response would have been to look in the mirror and ask himself, "Do these people have a point? Is it possible that the interests of other members of society might matter as much as my own?" Instead, he saw deserved criticism as all-out attack, perhaps because, as has been shown in a variety of studies, wealth robs people of compassion and tends to make them selfish and greedy.

For 97% of human history, equality was the norm. What happened? - - Greed thrives in most of today's societies, resulting in correspondingly gross inequality and miserable living conditions for the vast majority of people in our societies.the present day . But, for most of the time humans have been on the planet, greed and inequality were kept firmly in check. This article surveys a plausible sequence of cultural developments that may have gotten us here. Unfortunately, it says nothing about how to fix the problem.

If You're so Smart, Why Aren't You Rich? Turns Out It's Just Chance. - - And that has implications in areas of life beyond inequality of wealth. For example, how to fund scientific research in a way that will best promote discovery. Read the abstract for the study or the full study. as a PDF.