Forum Post: Socio-political Management of Wealth

I found this relevant passage in Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. It’s from a 1776 convention to write a state constitution for Pennsylvania. This was a proposal for a bill of rights to accompany that constitution.

[We should oppose the rise of] great and overgrown rich men . . . they will be too apt to be framing distinctions in society . . . an enormous amount of property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the rights, and destructive to the common happiness, of mankind; and therefore every free state hath a right by its laws to discourage the possession of such property.

Many critics of Occupy Wall Street claim we should be focusing on government as the problem, not Wall Street. How naïve. As the passage shows the common people back then were well aware of the dangers of concentrated power in the hands of a few, be it aristocrats, the government, the wealthy, or any combination of each. One discernible trend in the history and evolution of civil liberty is the redistribution of power (and money is power) to a broader social group. That is what the Magna Carta, U.S. Constitution, and many subsequent amendments did. We don’t need to destroy the wealthy, I am not a communist, but we would be fools not to keep them in check.