Changing the social paradigm without political oppression

Seeing the constant, raging debate in this country day after day I've been thinking a lot about the futility of political change.  True change in the system of politics is both unlikely to happen and potentially ineffective even if it did.  The problem as I see it is that the American culture is now one of endemic greed.  My observation of the rich is that - despite their behavior as soulless, heartless sociopaths - they appear to be identical to poor people, except that they have more money.  So I theorize that if this is true, you could give money to a poor person and they too would become a disconnected and uncaring plutocrat.  

Unfortunately, the deeply misguided efforts of Lenin, Marx and the other pioneers of socialism, yielded very poor results.  It seems you could remove money from the equation and force everyone to do the common good, yet they still needed leaders.  Once these ordinary human beings were given power, they were corrupted by some unknown force that turned them into monsters in the same way money would have.  So, if you let people become rich, they become evil.  Yet if you keep them from getting rich, the person in charge of doing that becomes evil.  I may have discovered a serious flaw in the human species.  

So I wonder how either Romney nor Obama could possibly be the cure for such a chronic and systemic condition.  If we raise taxes on the rich, they will have to steal more of our money to make up for it.  If we lower taxes on the rich, they will steal more of our money because they can.  And if we kill and eat the rich, we'll be arrested and probably get parasites.

The problem is we love stuff in this country.  Consumerism is a rampant force that has both driven this country into the ground, yet also is the sole thing maintaining our precarious position.  If we stop buying, the economy collapses.  If you're American, you need a big house.  But if you have a big house you need lots of stuff so it doesn't look freakishly empty or give you time to wonder why you would possibly need such a big house when the average American has only one, two or no children and has shoved grandma and grandpa in a gang run death camp (Florida).  We are so lazy that blankets take too much work, so we made the Snuggy, grabber claws so we don't have to get up out of our seats to get another cold beer, and beer to help us forget how lazy we are.  Commercials on T.V., radio, internet, movies, billboards, clothes, tattoos, and even attractive people of the opposite gender paid to be friendly to random strangers and recommend them products (I'm not making that up!)  

The American ideal we are led to believe is exceptionalism.  Anyone can be successful, but we need to be the best.  Anyone can make a good living, but we need to be millionaires.  Anyone can be well-liked, but we need to be famous.  

Mitch Daniels said “We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have nots; we must always be a nation of haves and soon to haves.”  Soon to haves?  
The problem is that there are so few ways to become a true soon to have.  Why is a subjective value job like any of those in the investment industry more important, more valued and more respected than an objective value job such as a carpenter or plumber?  The value of indoor plumbing or shelter is knowable to all human beings.  What the numbers on the stock exchange mean are entirely subjective.  If I told you that the new Hypocrite exchange that I started was trading at 18,000 among my friends and I, what would you ask?  Probably something like "Is that good or bad," right?  Because it could mean anything.  It doesn't represent real countable objects.  It is an abstract concept.  Nothing wrong with abstract concepts, but they are ultimately less important than, for instance, food.  So why is it that if someone wants to be a farmer, they are seen as having less potential in life than someone who is going to the Ivy League to become a make-believe numbers trader?  

As for the job creators themselves, they argue that they deserve so much money because their skills and services are so much more important than other people and work harder (long hours, piles of paper, playing so much golf, etc.)  They are more useful than other people.  So, if a CEO makes 10 million dollars a year and a surgeon makes 250,000 a year and a steelworker makes 70,000 a year, that means that - by the logic I've seen the rich use again and again - a CEO is 40 times more important and harder working than a surgeon.  They are 140 times more important and harder working than a steelworker.  A minimum wage earner in California would make 16,640 a year, so let's round it up to 17,000.  The value of human life on minimum wage is:  588 minimum wage workers equal a single CEO.  

Life will never be fair, but this problem is clearly out of control.  What's worse, if these CEOs work for a bank, even if they fail we will save them with our money, which is what they squandered in the first place.  Now I'm mandated by the government to give my money to a health insurance provider to pay for them to send lobbyists to Congress to get them more money and rights than the rest of us.  

In my opinion, we have to address the problem at its root:  Every American citizen.  We have to curb a culture of money worship.  We all succumb to it in some way during our lives.  We have fallen in love with the dream of one day all becoming millionaires.  Can we ever find a way to take pride in our work, regardless of what that is?  More importantly, can we ever convince the higher ups to respect the work we do?  Our caste system may not be so rigid as India, but we're headed there.  Now 47% of the population (probably for either Romney or Obama) are untouchables.  Something smells bad and it's not just the election.