Stay updated with breaking news from Wealth cap. Get real-time updates on events, politics, business, and more. Visit us for reliable news and exclusive interviews.
forbes magazine s latest rich list. throughout the trial, the brothers and hoy maintained they were innocent. translator: i can say personally have i done nothing wrong. and i can vouch for mr. thomas kwok that he has done nothing either. i hope this investigation will clear my name. reporter: but the trial itself fueled a wider debate about the access of big business to big influence, especially in hong kong, a vibrant financial hub where the wealth cap is increasing. if you don t have outright bribery, then you might still have problems with influence peddling through the election system where large conglomerates have large numbers of vote. that tends to result in a government that has to respond to its corporate electorate rather than to the general public. reporter: this isn t the first time corruption in hong kong has hit the front pages. it follows hot on the heels of an investigation into former chief executive donald tsang for taking expensive gifts from chinese busin ....
Honest judges and free elections, but underneath that surface is a floored and malevolent bureaucracy that mostly keeps the rich and poor separate through thousands of tiny, scarcely visible inequities. joining me now, matt taibbi author of the divide, american injustice and age of the wealth cap which debuted in the top ten of the new york best-seller s list. a big constitutional premise we re all supposed to be equal under the law. right. when you look how the law s applied, hsvc launders millions of dollars for drug cartels, nothing happens. first time offenders locked up for months, years decades. feels like the justice system, the law does not treat everybody equally. true. we have the law and under the law we re all equal but there s a problem of prosecutorial discretion where there s wiggle ....
Golf coach, everybody is not going to be tiger woods, or everybody is not going to be payton manning. wouldn t it be better for america if government would do things to level the playing field make the rich closer to poor help the rich pay for the poor? if we decide with moral outrage we want to react to the unfairness the only answer to that is the loss of freedom. freedom and liberty, they are kind of chaotic but they give the little man the best opportunity to win. socialism and communism don t. really this whole discussion is a precursor to moving us toward social ichlg and communism away from liberty and freedom. to reduce the wealth cap in socialism? to reduce it artificially by government imposition taking it from the rich in rob pin hood kd of way and giving it to the poor. we said america doesn t work. the game is rigged. i have got a relative who says it s the corporations. it s the corporations. ....
Fake ticker tape is ridiculous. that s news that unemployment has gone down. that s the big news. what s scary here is we are seeing a split. we can talk about the wealth cap. most of americans are not the investor class. they don t participate in the market. the markets where they have advantages, the housing market. it s gone up a little bit. not so much as the stock market. here is the thing i want to show, we have data on this. good. as ezra was talking, we have difficult the visualizing this. when we look at who was invested in the stock market, 90% of the people with incomes of 100,000 or more, they have investment in the stock market. it declines. most of it is retirement. you see it is wealthier folks, higher income folks. absolutely. over 50% of the capital gains ....
The hydraulic pressure of interest groups that have a certain monetary state. however people identify before they go into these things, they come with a huge agreement with taxes on the wealthiest and the spending. more on education. we are not just like pulling it, there was a long sign with people doing this. sequestration is with the word in spanish that means kidnapping. that leads to the great hope of our political moment to let politics and not just with more latinos who are more left than ever, but with the welfare state being shattered and dismantled and the wealth cap growing to the 80s and 70s, you are now going to see as we saw the kinds ....