Gar Alperovitz at Seattle Town Hall

“The number that I find most unusual and gives you a sense of what is systemic about it is:  The top 400 people, individuals — you could get them in this space if you squeeze just a little bit — have more wealth now than the bottom 180,000,000 Americans taken together.  That’s a medieval number. I don’t mean that rhetorically.”

Thirty years ago we had 50 people per 100,000 in jail; now it’s about 740. “We have eight times as many people in prison or jail per capita than any other advanced country, including Russia.”