Income Inequality

[Hastur]

I think we had a thread on the DCF on Income Inequality. What is the opinion here?

Is a a non issue?

If not;

What made the trend change?
Can you fix it?
or
Can only a major disaster such as a big war, natural disaster or pandemic break the current trend?

I think of what John C Dvorak says about globalism on the No Agenda Show. He claims it's ultimate goal is to protect the rich people from the things that can take away their wealth.

Anyway the American middle class is getting screwed. Biggly.

[apeman]

IMO at least part of the answer is that we have intentionally inflated the price of assets as high as possible for decades now -- and its get more and more transparent, and bigger and bigger efforts are needed to inflate -- which makes the asset owners richer, and prices out new entrants into the world of owning assets. And because it takes money to make (real) money, the cycle is vicious.

We will not allow asset owners to suffer any loses (all loses to be subsidized), we have taken every step to eliminate risk. Global central banks will do "whatever it takes", in their own words, to maintain these high prices.

TLDR govts and quasi-govt actors (possibly primary) priority is the inflation of asset values, and none of this tremendous energy is directed towards helping non-asset owners.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Oh come now. Current non-asset holders can invest what little surplus income they have into bullshit penny-ante stocks that MIGHT pace inflation. Or they can double down on loans for property with interest rates inversely commensurate to their current lack of resources.

I am still waiting for the Beanie-Baby market to come back around so I can offload my warehouse of Mystic Unicorns.

[SuburbanFarmer]

It's the biggest issue in our society, IMO. And I don't think anything is going to stop it, so long as our politics are distracted by social issues.

This is how civilizations collapse.

You can trace the political history, and see how it changed. 1981 = Ronald Reagan and "Trickle Down" BS, along with the birth of the modern GOP and redefinition of the term "Conservative". Then Clinton manages to fuck a duck and remove financial controls like Glass-Steagal, and the brakes are removed. We hurtle into corporate madness, and dot-com bust happens in 2000. Then Bushie 2 does the same thing, letting the banks go apeshit with mortgage lending. We crash hard in 2008, and Obama bails out the banksters with our money.

All of this was enabled by the tech revolution, exponentially increasing worker productivity, and covering up the fact that workers are paid a fraction of what they were for what they do. So, corporate-backed politicians tell them it's their fault, and social issues, and some nonsense about the Constitution dictating that corporations should reign supreme, lest we become Communists.

Now the nation is broke, the citizens are broke, and a few fatcats control everything. Let freedom ring.

[apeman]

It's the biggest issue in our society, IMO. And I don't think anything is going to stop it, so long as our politics are distracted by social issues.

It's not that "politics are distracted", its that the entire retirement Ponzi scheme (the literal backbone of society, if the retirement schemes collapse, IMO that is the event that forces massive change, and incredible pain) is based off the inflation of assets. It is intentional, there is no fix coming.

Remove the hope of retirement and break the promises, people take to the streets for real.

[SuburbanFarmer]

It's the biggest issue in our society, IMO. And I don't think anything is going to stop it, so long as our politics are distracted by social issues.

It's not that "politics are distracted", its that the entire retirement Ponzi scheme (the literal backbone of society, if the retirement schemes collapse, IMO that is the event that forces massive change, and incredible pain) is based off the inflation of assets. It is intentional, there is no fix coming.

Remove the hope of retirement and break the promises, people take to the streets for real.

I am not against this.

I think Occupy Wall Street needed a few more pitchforks and bonfires.

[Xenophon]

It's the biggest issue in our society, IMO. And I don't think anything is going to stop it, so long as our politics are distracted by social issues.

This is how civilizations collapse.

You can trace the political history, and see how it changed. 1981 = Ronald Reagan and "Trickle Down" BS, along with the birth of the modern GOP and redefinition of the term "Conservative". Then Clinton manages to fuck a duck and remove financial controls like Glass-Steagal, and the brakes are removed. We hurtle into corporate madness, and dot-com bust happens in 2000. Then Bushie 2 does the same thing, letting the banks go apeshit with mortgage lending. We crash hard in 2008, and Obama bails out the banksters with our money.

All of this was enabled by the tech revolution, exponentially increasing worker productivity, and covering up the fact that workers are paid a fraction of what they were for what they do. So, corporate-backed politicians tell them it's their fault, and social issues, and some nonsense about the Constitution dictating that corporations should reign supreme, lest we become Communists.

Now the nation is broke, the citizens are broke, and a few fatcats control everything. Let freedom ring.

What is your definition of broke?

[SuburbanFarmer]

It's the biggest issue in our society, IMO. And I don't think anything is going to stop it, so long as our politics are distracted by social issues.

This is how civilizations collapse.

You can trace the political history, and see how it changed. 1981 = Ronald Reagan and "Trickle Down" BS, along with the birth of the modern GOP and redefinition of the term "Conservative". Then Clinton manages to fuck a duck and remove financial controls like Glass-Steagal, and the brakes are removed. We hurtle into corporate madness, and dot-com bust happens in 2000. Then Bushie 2 does the same thing, letting the banks go apeshit with mortgage lending. We crash hard in 2008, and Obama bails out the banksters with our money.

All of this was enabled by the tech revolution, exponentially increasing worker productivity, and covering up the fact that workers are paid a fraction of what they were for what they do. So, corporate-backed politicians tell them it's their fault, and social issues, and some nonsense about the Constitution dictating that corporations should reign supreme, lest we become Communists.

Now the nation is broke, the citizens are broke, and a few fatcats control everything. Let freedom ring.

What is your definition of broke?

Broke = heavily indebted, unable to invest in anything new, beholden to creditors and hoping to "get by" as a best-case scenario.

[Xenophon]

It's the biggest issue in our society, IMO. And I don't think anything is going to stop it, so long as our politics are distracted by social issues.

This is how civilizations collapse.

You can trace the political history, and see how it changed. 1981 = Ronald Reagan and "Trickle Down" BS, along with the birth of the modern GOP and redefinition of the term "Conservative". Then Clinton manages to fuck a duck and remove financial controls like Glass-Steagal, and the brakes are removed. We hurtle into corporate madness, and dot-com bust happens in 2000. Then Bushie 2 does the same thing, letting the banks go apeshit with mortgage lending. We crash hard in 2008, and Obama bails out the banksters with our money.

All of this was enabled by the tech revolution, exponentially increasing worker productivity, and covering up the fact that workers are paid a fraction of what they were for what they do. So, corporate-backed politicians tell them it's their fault, and social issues, and some nonsense about the Constitution dictating that corporations should reign supreme, lest we become Communists.

Now the nation is broke, the citizens are broke, and a few fatcats control everything. Let freedom ring.

What is your definition of broke?

Broke = heavily indebted, unable to invest in anything new, beholden to creditors and hoping to "get by" as a best-case scenario.

Gotcha.

[PartyOf5]

I think that it is an issue without an easy solution. It's complicated.

The tech revolution completely changed the relationship between pay and productivity. Just because I can now do things on a computer in 1/100th the time it used to take my using paper and pencil doesn't mean I should now get paid 100x as much. Another factor that changed the relationship (partly due to technical advances) is the globalization of the workforce. A US accountant is no longer just competing with other accountants in the physical vicinity of his workplace. That person now has to compete with accountants allover the world in many cases. That is going to bring down the wages of those in the "well-off" countries while it lifts up the wages of those in poorer countries. For individuals this can be either very bad or very good. On the whole it just is.

Personally, I think there are a lot of people that get paid way too much for what they do. But what do you do about it? Politicians can talk of taxing the rich, but the end results is always the no-so-rich (i.e. middle class) who get stuck (in the rear) with the bill. The truly rich can afford to "reconfigure" their earnings in ways that shields them from actually paying what was intended to be their fair share.

There are a lot of facets to this topic, those were just a couple.