I'm not talking about the rich as a class. I'm in the UK where we have an unhappy combination of remarkably venal politicians (with some notable exceptions), media interests that are either overtly political (e.g. News International and the Daily Mail and related newspapers) or selected from a rather narrow privileged and biased group (e.g. BBC).

I'm not a Labour supporter - but the fact that a hard left party is within striking distance of winning the UK general election (despite the horrendously biased media coverage) shows that there things have got so bad for many people that extremely far left wing policies (by US standards) are starting to look attractive to an awful lot of people.

Not all rich people abuse their positions to obtain disproportionate political influence - but to get disproportionate political influence you have to be rich. Wealth isn't the problem - abuse of the power that wealth can bring is the problem.

Edit: Labour's motto of "For the many not the few" sums up the current political mess rather nicely.