Two concerns with how the socially concious wealthy might respond:
1) There's a flavor of the paranoid stories that seem prominent in that community (where do they hear this?) and popular on the right wing in general. Remember when Tom Perkins wrote a letter to the editor of the Wall St Journal saying that the wealthy are facing a "Kristallnacht"? [1] The French Revolution comparison and others like it reflects a similar mass paranoia, which is dangerous.
2) It's essential to maintain democracy, i.e., that each citizen has an equal vote. As taxes and public funding have been driven down, recipients have turned more and more to the wealthy donors, with gives the donors the only vote. And as the wealthy few provide more of the funding, they have more arguments to drive taxes down further -- look at what we're doing with our wealth! The problem is, we live in a democracy; we decide by vote how we want our society to change and progress.
For a simple example, a new park in NYC is being funded by a wealthy donor; is the land use, design etc. decided democratically by the citizens or by the donor? I read that state universities in CA are forming partnerships with corporations in lieu of lost state funding; can they risk offending those corporations? Finally, the Koch brothers funded some economics institute at a U. in Florida (FL State?) and greatly influence the research, including the selection of faculty (IIRC; my memory of the story is imprecise, but you get the idea).
1) There's a flavor of the paranoid stories that seem prominent in that community (where do they hear this?) and popular on the right wing in general. Remember when Tom Perkins wrote a letter to the editor of the Wall St Journal saying that the wealthy are facing a "Kristallnacht"? [1] The French Revolution comparison and others like it reflects a similar mass paranoia, which is dangerous.
2) It's essential to maintain democracy, i.e., that each citizen has an equal vote. As taxes and public funding have been driven down, recipients have turned more and more to the wealthy donors, with gives the donors the only vote. And as the wealthy few provide more of the funding, they have more arguments to drive taxes down further -- look at what we're doing with our wealth! The problem is, we live in a democracy; we decide by vote how we want our society to change and progress.
For a simple example, a new park in NYC is being funded by a wealthy donor; is the land use, design etc. decided democratically by the citizens or by the donor? I read that state universities in CA are forming partnerships with corporations in lieu of lost state funding; can they risk offending those corporations? Finally, the Koch brothers funded some economics institute at a U. in Florida (FL State?) and greatly influence the research, including the selection of faculty (IIRC; my memory of the story is imprecise, but you get the idea).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht