Some times the bastards win and some times the good guys win but being a bad guy doesn't guarantee anything either.

The solution to this in the USA is the heavily graduated income tax. It won't completely solve the problem but it will go a long way toward lessening it.

This probably sounds like a solution from far far out in left field. It isn't because it strikes at the root of the problem.

The real problem is the huge all out of proportion rewards for monetary success and the severe pauperization of the loosers in the race for riches.

If the lowest 10% income group was able to get sufficient food, clothes, shelter and health care for a reasonably pleasant life then it wouldn't be a problem. But that's not the case. That lower 10% and possibly even higher percentage is unable to get a bare minimum of health care, and often must sacrafice a meal or room for the night because the meager amount of income. Meanwhile, the top 1% gets a huge amount of buying power, can afford to throw away good food and clothing, be fawned over by doctors, and have two or three houses just waiting for him/her.

With this kind of a differential, grinding boring poverty to wasteful, excessive rich life, it's no wonder that many of us will say. "To hell with being a good guy, I will do anything to get the money." It's no wonder that a guy looks around and sees that he is poor, and the best he will be able to do is a $5 per hour not steady job and then he sees how easy it is to steal something worth a month of his work in five minutes. It's no wonder that a guy seeing the job of a executive that pays him hundreds of thousands of dollars if he is willing to do a little backstabbing to get guys out of his way. In the current system, its no wonder that backstabbing, violence and cheating are common.

What would a heavily graduated income tax do. Simply make this large difference smaller and more palitable and hence inspiring less jealosy and violence.

Not all company's are bad. PG&E, the one I worked for for almost thirty years, in the construction end and in the engineering end. In both places I found the good and the bad. It was spread out from the lowest end to the highest end. There were more good men than bad men. It almost seemed to be irrelevant to their position. However friendship was the biggest reason for why a bad man got, maintained and rose. There was a definite don't rock the boat feeling everywhere.

How can we really do anything about this? We have to be willing to evaluate a person fairly, reguardless of wether he is a friend or not. We have to keep working for a system that doesn't have large differences in real income. Is eight hours of hard work by one person equal to three months of hard work by another person?