Posted on 02/20/2024 6:42:09 AM PST by Kaiser8408a
According to mythology, Hades made King Sisyphus roll a huge boulder endlessly up a steep hill in Tartarus. Unfortunately, the modern day version of Sisyphus is the middle class pushing a boulder endlessly up a steep hill while the top 1% (the elite class) horde more and more wealth.
An example of the Sisyphus economy? The top 1% of earners (blue line) have seen an incredible increase in net worth, particularly after Fed Chair Alan Greenspan’s big rate cuts (green line) from 2000 to 2004. Each subsequent rate cuts under Bernanke (2007-2008) and Yellen (who just kept rates too low for too long). The end result? In the red box, the top 1% made out like bandits.
The end result? The top 1% of earners now have more wealth the the middle class.
Of course, asinine Federal government policies (like open borders and making donors wealthy with green energy spending) and the lack of a serious approach to corruption have complicated matters.
So the working class, middle class and low wage workers, are the ones pushing the boulder up a hill while government insiders like Biden make millions through influence peddling. So, unlike the Sisyphus legend, the middle class and low wage workers are being punished by simply existing
Should we end The Fed? Of course! But we can’t even have a rational discussion on why we are funding a war in Ukraine (to protect their border?) while we leave our borders open to invasion?
(Excerpt) Read more at confoundedinterest.net ...
This seems fairly apparent when I visit ski resorts and see dozens, if not hundreds, of slopeside mansions and townhomes owned by people with so much money that they don't even need to rent them out, so they sit vacant for all but one or two weeks a year.
So what if Bill Gates and his ilk have more wealth than middle classers like me? Instead of whipping-up socialist envy, let’s remove socialist barriers to wealth creation so we can accumulate the wealth that our talents and drive allow.
In related news, water is wet.
Right, and this is always the part of the cycle where wealthy people outrun the rest the most. Which is needed since they provide the seed money for employment/new businesses. (Tempted to use an exclamation point there, heh.). The middle class does better as the cycle matures. The more wealth you build the faster it builds, and that’s true of all income classes. If we reach a point where the 1% is not doing well, decline spreads down the wealth scale to where it hurts the most.
“The Cantillon Effect is the idea that money injection may not change the long-term output of an economy, but it affects different sectors and time periods differently. It suggests that inflation favors investors over wage-earners, who face higher costs and lower wages.”
https://fee.org/articles/the-cantillon-effect-because-of-inflation-we-re-financing-the-financiers/
It was not this way when I was a kid; then Nixon took us off the gold standard and “poof” there went the wealth of the middle class.
1971 was this time at which wealth equality in the United States was at its highest. The wealthy actually need a healthy middle class as a buffer between them and the ghetto. It’s just that few of them have figured this out.
If we could just get the megalomaniacs to stop micromanaging our lives, no one would care how much they had.
And the Covid plandemic was a MAJOR transfer of wealth upwards. Just keep buying ammo.
The Fed is simply doing what it was created to do: manage the US financial system and massive federal deficits. Remember when old time conservatives warned that the federal debt would eventually crush the country? They were right, of course, and the bill is now falling due, with the middle and lower classes most heavily affected.
Fun fact:
By definition, the wealthiest 1% can never gain relative wealth beyond 1%. If they did, they would not represent 1% - it would be some other percentage.
Lol.
IBTZ
Inflation adjusted per capita wages have remained flat since ~1970 even as productivity and GDP have soared.
The pie is growing, but the rich ate taking a greater percentage of the larger pie.
You are confused.
Is the 1% “whatever sized group of people, that their cash added up is 1% of all the wealth”
Or
“Rank everybody by net worth, and starting from Elon Musk, count down till you have 10% of the population”
I’m not confused. I’ll admit I was being a bit of a jackass by making fun of the way the article was worded - but I’m mathematically correct.
The way we measure relative or proportional amounts in math - is by use of ratios, fractions or percentages. The 1% wealthiest people can increase their wealth relative to the rest, but then they would no longer be the wealthiest 1% - they would be the wealthiest 1+n% (some higher percentage). Right?
That’s all I was saying.
Oh wait - I see your point (your typo of 10%) threw me off for a moment.
So you are saying it’s 1% of the population, not 1% of the wealth.
Got it. I was confused.
Just in case you want to know where you stand on this ladder:
bump to the top.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.