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America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

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Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#151

Post by Seanambers »

JamesLeonis wrote: post #122
natenthe wrote: post #57

Correction: The Fed's policies have taken $50T of wealth from the Bottom 90%. When you bail out irresponsibly over-leveraged and nearly bankrupted banks and corporations, and pay for those bailouts with tax-payer money, you steal from the poor and give to the rich. Most importantly, when the Fed decides to print money ad nauseam, they create massive asset inflation, which steals from the poor and gives to the rich. T…

Except this wasn't the federal bailouts. Those are an entirely different beast. It's talking strictly about income stagnation. The study shows that if wages kept up with productivity (as was the case in the immediate post-WW2 era) the bottom 90% would earn $2.5 trillion per year more. > We document the cumulative effect of four decades of income growth below the growth of per capita gross national income and estimate…

Some nice graphs to go along; https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#152

Post by stickyricky »

pmiller2 wrote: post #142
natenthe wrote: post #57

Correction: The Fed's policies have taken $50T of wealth from the Bottom 90%. When you bail out irresponsibly over-leveraged and nearly bankrupted banks and corporations, and pay for those bailouts with tax-payer money, you steal from the poor and give to the rich. Most importantly, when the Fed decides to print money ad nauseam, they create massive asset inflation, which steals from the poor and gives to the rich. T…

Potato, potatoe. Who do you think controls "the Fed?" Cui bono ? Your comment would also imply that before there was such a thing as a Federal Reserve, income and wealth inequality didn't exist. This is false.

It does not imply "wealth inequality is the result of federal policies". It implies that the current transfer of wealth is a result of federal policy.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#153

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

tengbretson wrote: post #30

In my lifetime some sort of switch has flipped, where the people advocating for more taxes no longer do so with an explicit intention to pay for something greater or something new, but simply on the assumption that the act of taxing people will inherently make them more equal. Is there a coherent philosophical basis for this train of thought? Is there any historical precedent that increased taxes is what we need to b…

I think it's just a corrolary of Congress's extreme slowdown in passing bills. When new programs are always part of a massive omnibus touching a thousand things, it becomes pretty hard to draw links between specific programs and specific tax increases.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#154

Post by mindslight »

JamesLeonis wrote: post #122
natenthe wrote: post #57

Correction: The Fed's policies have taken $50T of wealth from the Bottom 90%. When you bail out irresponsibly over-leveraged and nearly bankrupted banks and corporations, and pay for those bailouts with tax-payer money, you steal from the poor and give to the rich. Most importantly, when the Fed decides to print money ad nauseam, they create massive asset inflation, which steals from the poor and gives to the rich. T…

Except this wasn't the federal bailouts. Those are an entirely different beast. It's talking strictly about income stagnation. The study shows that if wages kept up with productivity (as was the case in the immediate post-WW2 era) the bottom 90% would earn $2.5 trillion per year more. > We document the cumulative effect of four decades of income growth below the growth of per capita gross national income and estimate…

Even with income remaining stagnant, the prices for goods and services should have been continually going down due to technology and outsourcing. Price optimization is the fundamental mechanic of any market! For example, when most manufacturing was moving to China the promise was that it would benefit consumers via lower prices. However the Fed's overt policy is to erase these gains by printing money via low interest rates, and injecting it into the nonproductive financial sector. This made sure that the cost of living continued to march upwards, while all those manufacturing jobs still went away.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#155

Post by bmlpl »

pmiller2 wrote: post #142
natenthe wrote: post #57

Correction: The Fed's policies have taken $50T of wealth from the Bottom 90%. When you bail out irresponsibly over-leveraged and nearly bankrupted banks and corporations, and pay for those bailouts with tax-payer money, you steal from the poor and give to the rich. Most importantly, when the Fed decides to print money ad nauseam, they create massive asset inflation, which steals from the poor and gives to the rich. T…

Potato, potatoe. Who do you think controls "the Fed?" Cui bono ? Your comment would also imply that before there was such a thing as a Federal Reserve, income and wealth inequality didn't exist. This is false.

The comment implies no such thing. It says that post Alan Greenspan, who started printing money in an unprecedented manner, the Fed saw that it could get away with it and continued the bubble.

Ironically Greenspan also spoke about irrational enthusiasm. Words are cheap.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#156

Post by jrsj »

natenthe wrote: post #57

Correction: The Fed's policies have taken $50T of wealth from the Bottom 90%. When you bail out irresponsibly over-leveraged and nearly bankrupted banks and corporations, and pay for those bailouts with tax-payer money, you steal from the poor and give to the rich. Most importantly, when the Fed decides to print money ad nauseam, they create massive asset inflation, which steals from the poor and gives to the rich. T…

The Federal Reserve is just one tool used to achieve this. One of the most important ones sure, but to put too much emphasis on it is missing the forest for the trees.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#157

Post by seppin »

stickyricky wrote: post #152
pmiller2 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potato, potatoe. Who do you think controls "the Fed?" Cui bono ? Your comment would also imply that before there was such a thing as a Federal Reserve, income and wealth inequality didn't exist. This is false.

It does not imply "wealth inequality is the result of federal policies". It implies that the current transfer of wealth is a result of federal policy.

All they do is regulate the flow of new money, they aren't responsible for tax codes that ensure a widening gap of wealth via the return on capital vs the return on labor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce...

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#158

Post by findthewords »

hrktb wrote: post #44
h3rsko wrote: post #2

Inequality 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…

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.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#159

Post by _gohp »

And the bottom 90% are told by the reps of the 1% that it will trickle down. This is like urinating on their heads and saying it is raining.

I remember to be in the global 1% an annual income of 45k usd would be the qualifier. However, this is an US centric article so the following applies... "To be among the top 1 percent of U.S. earners, a family needs an income of $421,926, a new report from the Economic Policy Institute finds."

On the bailouts, every time I hear a passionate right winger saying the bail outs are necessary, I know they would turn into fully fledged communists if it would be the trendy thing to do and if that kinda government were in place.

It was never left center or right , people do not care beyond maybe closest family. They care about money, net worth, assets , power and status. How they get hold of that was always secondary.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#160

Post by nknealk »

natenthe wrote: post #57

Correction: The Fed's policies have taken $50T of wealth from the Bottom 90%. When you bail out irresponsibly over-leveraged and nearly bankrupted banks and corporations, and pay for those bailouts with tax-payer money, you steal from the poor and give to the rich. Most importantly, when the Fed decides to print money ad nauseam, they create massive asset inflation, which steals from the poor and gives to the rich. T…

It’s worth noting that, while this is true, the reason the fed exists is because if they didn’t do that, we’d have bread lines.

I’d argue that recent fed actions are the reason supermarket shelves aren’t barren which is in the interest of all Americans.

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