Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you understand how poor some people are?
This is a different goalpost. The story is about the top 1 percent versus the bottom 90 percent.
The bottom 90% contains people that are too poor to invest in stocks.
America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
791–800 of 961 posts
Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
#792Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's worth considering the post WW2 period as possibly exceptional in the planet's history, and understanding why that may have been, and what can be done policy wise to extend the best parts of it.
It was exceptional for the US because the infrastructure wasn't bombed out and were very well poised to supply goods to a rebuilding Europe. International shipping wasn't efficient enough to outsource the jobs to countries with low wages so there was actual opportunity for the middle class to grow and get ahead.
And now, the US is more unequal that any country in Europe, according to UN rankings. [1]
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...
Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
#793Earlier quoted context omitted.
or early enough $1,000 invested in AMZN is now worth over $1M. or $10 in Bitcoin would have done the trick.
The thing is there are were a lot of dot coms back then and no one really knew which one would have been the next Amazon. The entire push behind diversifying one's income is to ensure that people who don't have lots of $1000's to spare don't lose $1000s investing it behind few stocks. If you know the future. Tells us a few stocks where investing $1000 today would give you a million in 2 decades.
I feel as if this opportunity is past us. Any company with the potential for that amount of growth is going to get bought out by multi-billion $ corps to further increase their already out of reach stock prices.
Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
#794> It amazes me why most people do not grasp this. I think it is lack of education. Huh? Literally everybody grasps this. This is the most widely parroted mainstream narrative about the economy right now on the internet. Hell, you can't throw a rock at the Wall Street Journal (conservative) or the New York Times (liberal) without hitting a sentence that mentions wealth inequality brought on by fed policy. For further…
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Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
#795Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bailouts are tragic as it undermines the natural garbage collection in democracy - bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is an incredible positive because it allows for the safe and sane dismantling of bad organizations. The question is - how do we apply a mechanism like bankruptcy to government organizations?
Exactly. Bankruptcy and insolvency is an immune response to financial illness in markets. However, instead of removing cancerous growths, we bail them out and thus they metastasize and become much larger and more lethal. This inevitably leads to the death of the host.
One bank (lehman brothers) went bankrupt and the global economy was instantly in a death spiral. If many did, it would have been multiple factors worse.
Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
#796Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet, paradoxically, the economic golden era of post-WW2 United States from 1946-1969 was entirely on a gold standard.
It might be related to the gold standard, but I'd argue that WW2 was a bigger factor. The US was already the strongest economy and the competition was devastated by war. Add on to that the development of the intermodal shipping container and it was suddenly possible for the US to transport their goods cheaply. The reason this golden age ended is that other countries had finally recovered from the devastation of war.
How do other countries devastated by war have to do with US economic equality?
Shipping technology has only gotten better since than too but that just hurts mom&pops and helps online retailers.
Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
#797Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that more people are middle class+ than ever... so while you complain of "decades of waiting" the fact remains that all boats ARE rising. The only difference is that you now have a direct connection to the few that have risen faster - there have always been those people. But you now see them. They are still the 1% but they are in your face like never before. "it's time to try something else" What else…
IMO Capitalism is not sustainable. And if this the best system that mankind can come up with, then the future looks bleak.
Well, honest question... what's the alternative? because all the other options have proven to be worse by magnitudes of order.
Calls that it's not sustainable are like cries of impending starvation and privation... yet "famines" haven't happened because advances created by... capitalism. Better crop yields, better farm results, etc. Driven by "greedy capitalists".
can we do better? Sure... fight crony capitalism? coporatism? absolutely...
But end of day... the alternatives? have proven worse - unless you have proof otherwise and history isn't with you on that...
Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
#798Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the comparison part: > Adjusted for inflation using the CPI, the numbers are even worse: half of all full-time workers (those at or below the median income of $50,000 a year) now earn less than half what they would have had incomes across the distribution continued to keep pace with economic growth. Another aspect is the power that comes with money. People aren’t focusing on inequality in a pure “that’s unfair” v…
Therein lies the rub - The United States seems happy that Bezos, spending capital on whatever he likes, is a better resource allocator than the government itself.
> is a better resource allocator than the government itself.
the gov't isn't known to be a good resource allocator when it comes to efficiency.
Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
#799Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The Fed is stabilizing the price of the USD because of the coronavirus pandemic. If it were not printing money, then there would likely be a deflationary spiral that would cause a depression. And by doing that, we have the Cantillon Effect [0]. > The Cantillon Effect refers to the change in relative prices resulting from a change in money supply. The change in relative prices occurs because the change in money supp…
What's a good hedge against the Cantillon Effect?
Having more injection points, for example, UBI.
Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
#800Inequality seems to be a completely pointless buzzword to me. The only thing that matters is if there are more or less poor people, and how poor are those people compared to similar percentiles in the past. It shouldn't matter how rich the richest people on earth are. I really love seeing people on the Internet try to convince themselves that because Bezos or Musk are worth $100B, they must be stealing it from poor p…
For the comparison part: > Adjusted for inflation using the CPI, the numbers are even worse: half of all full-time workers (those at or below the median income of $50,000 a year) now earn less than half what they would have had incomes across the distribution continued to keep pace with economic growth. Another aspect is the power that comes with money. People aren’t focusing on inequality in a pure “that’s unfair” v…
> now earn less than half what they would have had incomes across the distribution continued to keep pace with economic growth.
but did those workers' productivity grew in line with the same economic growth? If said workers were _still_ doing the same jobs as they did before, and had the same output, does it make sense that their wage growth should keep pace with the economic growth?