Income Inequality Worries Wall Street

     According to an article by Justin Lahart in the Nov 11, 2013  Wall Street Journal entitled "Worry Over Inequality Occupies Wall Street," Hedge fund managers are beginning to worry about the rising level of income equality in the United States.  Since they are on the receiving end of this outrageous unfairness,  why should they be concerned?   They are concerned because the last year that inequality reached the present level was 1928---just a year before the crash that triggered the Great Depression. When inequality reaches a certain point, the system breaks down and becomes unstable.  But any remedy to this instability would involve  raising working class wages, and raising taxes on the rich.    But low wages and taxes are the main reason that wealthy investors are making their present rip-off profits.  So any action to avert  a financial disaster in the long term would require the super rich to give up money in the short term.  And no matter how worried they get, they probably won't do that.
     There is a short story called "The Monkey's  Paw"  which begins with an anecdote about monkey trapping.    According to the story,  monkeys are sometime trapped by hollowing out a coconut and boring only one small hole in it.  The hole is just large enough so that the monkey can just barely put his hand through it if the palm is open. But if he is grasping something is his fist, it won't fit through the hole.  They chain the coconut in place and place a piece of fruit inside it.  The monkey smells the fruit and puts his hand in and grabs it,  but then he can't get his hand back out.  He could easily extract his hand if he dropped the fruit--but he won't ever do that.  Even as the hunter approaches to seize him, he cannot let go of the fruit once he has it in his hand---he is hard-wired to keep it.  I suspect that the hedge fund managers have the  same problem.