money093.jpgWhen I was a little kid, I would watch PBS’ The Electric Company religiously. One of the skits they did was of a mock game show called "Give It Back", where the contestants were penalized for wrong answers by giving stuff back: Houses, cars, etc. In looking at the ever-growing likelihood of meltdown of our economy — and Republican efforts to push the ‘clap louder!’ theme by gagging those who would speak honestly and openly about how they are suffering because of it — I’d like to see the people who orchestrated the collapse, and who are even now giving themselves platinum parachutes to escape the wreckage, give back everything they’ve gained and then some from their bust-out of the world economy. (Hedge fund managers would be near the top of the list, right after Alan Greenspan and the Bush, Cheney and other neocon ‘socialize the risk, privatize the profit’ families.)

Trying to get reimbursements from those who would profit from hollowing out our society’s substance is not a new idea. And it’s true that those folks like Eliot Spitzer who try to get the greedheads to pony up somehow wind up being targeted for takedowns by those who are themselves in bed with the bust-out crew. Some might see the idea of reimbursement as mere revenge; I see it as a necessity if our society is to continue to function at any level beyond the barbaric.

The first and best thing to do would be to bring back the tax rates that existed during President Eisenhower’s terms in office. In addition, RICO laws could be used in the manner that Greg Palast suggested back in 2005. (Considering how broadly RICO statutes have been interpreted since being put on the books to take out mobsters, this actually would be a lot closer to RICO’s original intent than a lot of RICO prosecutions I’ve seen in the last three decades.)

I can already hear the squeals from those folk who live in gated communities. But if things continue to melt down, they’ll find that even if they pay their security guards in gold bars that it won’t be enough to save them when society collapses. When thousands of angry people with nothing to lose converge on their estates, they’ll wish they’d taken up the comparatively-painless option of coughing up 91% of their wealth to preserve the world we all live in.