On 3/31/2015 10:56 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:
*From:*everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] *On
Behalf Of *meekerdb
*Sent:* Tuesday, March 31, 2015 9:26 PM
*To:* EveryThing
*Subject:* [SPAM]Re: Economic inequality
The SciAm article doesn't even begin to describe how great the inequality is. Like most
statistical presentations it divides the population into quintiles. But that hides the
fact that is not the to 20 to 1 percentile that hold the wealth, it is the tope 1% and
even just the top 0.1%
And that graph describes the source of so many of our social ills; this high degree of
income distortion -- in terms of the US being an outlier, on the global distribution of
developed economies -- is the fundamental driver of pretty much everything else going
wrong with this country; from crumbling infrastructure, to crumbling education, to
crumbling living standards.
But the GDP/person is up. Those things are crumbling because the rich don't use them and
so are not interested in paying for them and the rich control politicians thru campaign
contributions.
Could this be what life is like in a crumbling empire, far out into imperial overreach,
stretched thin across the globe, in the vast archipelago of bases – including places of
true logistical nightmare, like Afghanistan (the logistical nightmare of
nightmares…there is no feasible way to get the heavy armor out of Afghanistan, except
through Russia, with Pakistan definitely not wanting mass transiting US armor.
The cost of bearing empire is breaking our backs, and with each successive cycle of
disaster capitalism – creative destruction, right-sizing, out-sourcing etc. the empire
is in a race to scraping bottom, as all empires do. Inside the bubble of power the
mantra remains “we make history” (as once boasted by one famous neocon), but on the
ground it is not all going as planned… though who is going to ever bring the emperor the
bad news… any volunteers? Naturally we don’t have an emperor (yet), but we do have a
powerful deeply rooted patrician aristocracy that has been ascendant here for the last
four decades.
You seem to have overlooked the fact that what has, in the past, leveled the wealth is
war. Of course that's because the government raised taxes, regulated prices, and invested
in research, development, and technology as part of the war effort.
Brent
Will it swing back the other way, as it has in the past – such as with the New Deal, or
earlier with Teddy Roosevelt’s trust busting of Standard Oil; or is this just the
prelude to… welcome to tomorrow?
Chris
http://www.voxeu.org/article/exploding-wealth-inequality-united-states
Brent
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/economic-inequality-it-s-far-worse-than-you-think/
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