America's 1% Has Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%

1) It has nothing to do with luck (good fortune), it's entirely a function of self-discipline. It has nothing to do with how much you earn, but of how much you spend.

2) If you're saying there are people out there who haven't bothered adapting to ever-changing economies since the 1940s, then clearly they're already mentally ill. No idea why you include such people in your argument. Let's work with the majority, who are not that crazy.

3) They are wrong to blame anyone BUT themselves. See point 1), above. It's all a function of self-discipline.

 

And it's also VOLUNTARY. No one is forced to be an employee.

 

Exactly. It's true in most areas outside of big cities, at least in my country. Increasing financial security, if not disposable cash.

 

There wouldn't be massive deficit spending and a run on gold without central control of currency.
It makes government massive and powerful, and an elite few very rich

Also it is Marx's fifth plank.

 

50 trillion eh?

That's like scrooge mcduck money. Where is this 50 trillion today?

 

So you believe and I think it is 50% of the population of the US are feckless well do ners. You do not think well of your people.

You cannot speak of a 'majority' when that is 50%. Technology alone needs less and less workers never mind other things. In this age it was predicted moving into a form of fascism would be much more simple and not require violence as, as part of neo liberalism, Unions were decimated leaving people with nothing to bring them to gether to form resistance. Hence it was believed it would be relatively simple to bring in a form of fascism while everyone was asleep. The US after the killing of George Floyd showed itself to be made of stronger stuff. Then the state had to get rough as is common with soon to be fascism when meeting resistance. We shall see how it ends.

The situation with US white working class previously was that they were always able to feel a bit above those beneath them - black people. If they were prepared to work they could get a job which would alow them to give their family a good life, a little better than they were brought up with. This is no longer possible because the jobs are not there. Your unemployment figures do not give an accurate picture of the unemployed - well maybe they do at the moment which I think is around 40 million? I live in the UK and I have seen documentaries here about the State of the US and jobs and I have seen documentaries about the mass of sucides that have resulted from this. If I am educated about this in the UK it is concerning that people in the US are unaware of it.....but then I was hearing that whereas 40 years ago, the US had 50 sources from which it got its news allowing for a free press and many points of view to be expressed, now it is only 5. 5 Monopolies feeding the populance what they want them to think.

Now to get back to the wwc committing suicide and misusing drink and drugs. Black people have found themselves in a worse situation regarding inability to get jobs - that is why they are now warehoused in jails. Why then are they not also seeing a massive increase in suicide and misuse of drink and drugs. It is because they never believed the American Dream was for them. They hence do not take responsibility for their inability to find work and that is what is destroying white working class Americans. They believe that if they are prepared to work hard they will be able to get a good job and look after their families well. When they fail to be able to do this, they blame themselves. There have been studies which have found this out. It is not my opinion. It is so sad that people are so misinformed that when their own people are dying because they wrongly believe it is possible for anyone to make it if they only are prepared to work and they feel unbearable shame because they cannot find that work, their own people shun them telling them it is true, it is all their own fault. It is because many people in the US do not have empathy, do not have the ability to join together and fight for rights that they leave open the door for their fellow citizens to be harmed and for fascism to come in.

 

The countries that don't have their own currency rely on a strong foreign currency like the dollar.

You are using microeconomic thinking in a macroeconomic environment.

We used to have sensible economic distribution, some other countries still do.

IOW, that's a political choice, more than an economic one.

 

Ignoring reality doesn't make it go away.

 

Poor people usually have crappy health care. That not only means they have a higher death rate, it also means they spread the disease more than areas with decent health care.

This was a problem before Covid. Diseases you expect to see in a poor country, we have a problem with a number of them like TB. But countries with a good national health care system, for the most part, don't have to deal with it. They nip it in the bud.

 

After the fall of the Weimar Republic, before the rise of Hitler, Germany was hit with superinflation.

People burned through their savings buying basics like bread. Not much fun when a loaf of bread hit's a hundred bucks, and will be even more expensive manana.

What we have been seeing in houses, for a long time, is that you have one, it's building wealth for you. But that same rise in value keeps making it harder for kids to get their first house.

This all comes down to speed and distribution.

A small amount of inflation is not particularly damaging. But things can get worse.

 

The topic is wealth flowing to the top.
Financializing the economy via a central bank produces great wealth for a few and a massive government.

And the wealthiest of the wealthiest get bailed out and given trillions in QE when the **** up and destroy their banks

 

Others prefer the rotten communist system.. Blahhh

 

Repeating yourself does not constitute a counterargument.

In fact, it looks more like that's all ya got...

We didn't get a central bank because we wanted one. The economy got too big for Mellon's bank to handle, and they were getting the crap kicked out of them, and that was over a 100 years ago when our economy was tiny by today's standards.

 

which was deliberate.

I am not talking about what has been going on with house prices for some time. That itself is a racket. What I was talking about was the time when people were able to have social mobility, when for a short while Western Countries ran under genuine democracy - and working to work out what it was, when most countries of the West had mixed economies and what I heard is that during that time the wealth of the many increased noticeably, while the wealth of the few decreased slightly. During that time inflation helped everyone with things like buying their home while Unions were able to look out for their members and work to get wages to rise with inflation. I am not in any way saying this was ideal because I do not believe it was but it was the one time in history when the wealth of the many was going up while that of the few was very slightly going down. This is what Thatcher and Regan changed to get neo liberalism going again which has got the West financlially to much the situation it was in prior to WW2.

 

1) Not really.

2) You've got part of it. You need to read The Price of Inequality.

 

I don't work for wages. I am a capitalist.

Understand it? Sure. Believe it? I don't know. Since it was posted by an anti-capitalist I would assume it is inflated. But the top 1% have a huge percentage of overall wealth so one would expect them to earn a huge percentage of total private sector income.

 

You failed to grasp it the first time.
You needed help

 

According to Mark Blyth, Professor of Political Economics at Brown University yes and for the same reason as in the 60's and 70's people knew that buying a house meant having two or three tight years but then it would become much easier.

Ok, I was around at the time as an adult so experienced things first hand but the reality that this gave to the many and took from the few was something I did not know. You sound somewhat patronising there. I suggest you tell me what you agree with and tell me what you do not agree with.

 

You are incorrect. "Tax the rich" is a common position. The living wage argument is an interesting one. I live in Los Angeles and the min wage is $15. Is the worker better off?

Here in CA, the government controls the gold. Results show that we are worse off than the rest of the country.

 

1) OK, you were saying something quite different from what I thought you were saying.

2) "He sees inequality as for the most part politically created. It is the outcome of “rent seeking” behavior by elites. Instead of manufacturing things or performing useful services, rent seekers take advantage of the rules to collect payments from society at large. They may capture the agencies meant to regulate them, or use connections to exploit government-controlled resources, or buy the obedience of elected politicians. Stiglitz argues that the markets most culpable for inequality — finance, agriculture, pharmaceuticals — are hardly free. In fact, he proves it, by resorting to basic free-market principles. “The laws of competition,” he writes, “say that profits (beyond the normal return to capital) are supposed to be driven to zero.” Because successful businesses attract imitators, building a fortune ought to be a Sisyphean game. Huge and sustainable profits are not something one tends to see in open markets.

Stiglitz writes that “the magnitude of America’s inequality today and the way it is generated actually undermine growth and impair efficiency.” Rent seeking in the finance industry has drawn more and more Americans to where the money is, leading to a “misallocation of the country’s most valuable resource: its talent.”

You still need to read the book.

https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/book-review-price-inequality

 

Those 40-50% are incompetent at managing money.

 

☝

 

Full-time minimum wage workers can't afford rent anywhere in US - Business Insider

Almost half of all Americans work in low-wage jobs - CBS News

Low-wage work is more pervasive than you think, and there aren't enough "good jobs" to go around - Brookings Institution

 

Well yeah, sure, that goes without saying..

Capitalism and the rich are interdependent. It takes people with surplus income that they can loan out for a return on that loan. They make money the easy way by ursury.

Capitalism depends on capital invested
And most of the investing comes from rich folks. 80 percent of investment comes from the top one percent..So the rich getting richer has to happen!

So the richer get richer while the poor get poorer. But I remember when rising tide raised all boats . And the poor saw great improvement. Hell I saw the poor here move almost overnight into the middle class! You have to see it to believe it happened! Lots of people in Mississippi in the 50s were poor. An agricultural economy of small farms. Small farms that used mules for power and work. No indoor plumbing or AC!

Then all of these factories started appearing. And people stopped mgrowing a few acres of cotton or soy beans . Went to work for Bosch, General Tire or one of several chemical plants, who made various products.

New brick homes replaced shot gun shacks.

Then in the 80s onward we started losing the good jobs.. Got worse each year..Didn't matter if a dem or Republican was in the ovall office. They were both selling out our workers. We stopped making stuff and became servant workers. Part time work and the gig economy. 1099 jobs.


We are back in the poverty of my youth. Before we got manufacturing. But people keep saying we ain't po' cause we got smart phones!

But hell I saw some pot belly kids half nekkid in Africa toting a cellnphone around!

I am a populist nationalist! For I agree with Bannon in regards to globalism and what it has done to our people. And how it is turning people into serfs..As it concentrates wealth like never before. By doing to us what Perot said it would do!

If we don't reindustrialize and bring supply chains back to serve our markets we are

I was responding to not taxing wealth. I support progressive income tax..A high tax.rate for income over a few million.. In order to finance the Commons.

Our middle class once paid in more income tax than the rich. That is because there was higher average middle class income from labor..The top took less of the income pie. When the rich started keeping more the middle lost and lower income means less taxes paid by the low income middle. Progressive taxation.

I wish my tax rates were high. Means I would be a rich fat cat and live richly. Lobster anytime I wanted it. Luxury. Live like a king!

And can't take the wealth with you! Indeed that wealth will keep you out of heaven! Lol

 

No that is not the problem. The problem is the share of the money they get has changed due to the change in the economic system which seems to have begun around 73. From the second world war until 73 productivity and wages went together. As people increased their productivity their wages also increased. In 73 Capital revolted because of the changes in the wage share (workers getting more) and hourly wages stagnated despite the reality that productivity went up. This is very much what Horney has been saying. The gap which has arison between productivity and wages and it is an ever increasing gap, is the rise in inequality. In the US Labours share of income peaks in 73 then gradually goes down from there until the tech dot bubble from 97-2001 and after that goes down like it is on a high slide. Labour's share of the income in the US is massively down now to what it was in 73.

From 79 -2015 unless you were in the top 60-80% or 80-100% you got no increase in wages. If you are in the bottom group you have lost wages in real terms since 1979. For those up to the top 60% it has been basically stagnation just a trivial amount of growth. Even when you get to the US Middle Classes those in the top 60-80% the growth in wages since 79 is only 10% but the people in the top group have made a massive amount.

Globalisation has caused the top 60-90% of the world which is the working and middle classes of US Canada, Aus etc and Western Europe a decline in wages. From there on however there is massive growth. The top 1% get 27% of global growth and the bottom 50% get 12%. The return on Globalisation for the West in general is flat or negative until you get to the top 10% but it is the top 1% who have made the killing. All the money really did go to the top.

We are currently run by financial markets despite the reality that as a system this has been defunct since 2008. Finance people hate inflation and claim their has been very little maybe 2% ....bit of a strange claim given that in the US since 2001 things in general have gone up by 40%. Medical bills have gone up 80% and education has gone up 120% and since 2008 the American worker has recieved hardly any pay rise. Hence in this situation technocrats are telling people that there is only 2% inflation but the rise in what people have had to pay without a similar rise in their wages is as above.

Source Mark Blyth - A Brief History of how we got here and why - Youtube.


That you expect people to be able to cope with a loss in real wages at the same time as things they need to buy have gone up massively in price suggests somehow you make your money in a different way to the vast majority. American workers have lost money in real terms since 1979 while things they need to purchase have gone up massively. That is the reason why in the richest country in the world half of the people canot afford to put $500 aside for a rainy day. For those who make more money or live in their parents homes to claim it is all their own fault is something trully yucky and as I said totally lacking in empathy. Where I live, the UK, having lost most of the rights that those who came before us fought for and sometimes gave their lives for, people are finding themselves needing to work three jobs just to put food on the table.