Paul Krudman? Doesn’t he claim to be an economist or something? Has he won the No Bell Prize?
Upton Sinclair was about as Wobbly as they come. His "dictum" means nothing.
Stop importing millions of low skill workers, American workers at the bottom might get a raise.
Stop taxing and regulating American businesses to the point where they close up shop or move overseas, American workers might get a job.
Stop spending hundreds of billions on the education and healthcare of the millions of illegals (and their children) and we could cut taxes on all Americans, including the bottom half.
I'd love to see a breakdown, someday, of that 1%, and the 0.1%, as well, to see what occupations are represented.
I'm guessing that the most wealthy are represented by professional athletes and entertainers, while the just plain wealthy are mostly those who have worked their way up to the upper echelons of their chosen professions. The scions of earlier wealth are surely among those ranks as well.
My point is that the VERY wealthy are there because the folks in the lower echelons PUT THEM THERE, by buying tickets to sports events,or watching those events on television, or by buying tickets to the movies in which the stars appear.
Those wealthy are not stealing anyone's money, it's being given freely. There has always been, and will always be, a divide between rich and poor. The only way we know so much about it NOW is because of the media.
Since those are years with big government in control, then the best we can say is that big government promotes a rich/poor society. In Obama's economy, those with the wealth to play in a stock market seriously inflated precisely because of government policies are those who are getting wealthy.
When you give a billion dollars to a software firm for a 5 million dollar job, like Obama did, then someone's getting fabulously wealthy in smoke-filled rooms.
AN EXPERIMENT: Give each person $1 Million dollars.
Check back in 2 years. I would hypothesize that each person would be back financially to approximately where they are now.
Spending and saving habits are like the law of gravity. Ignore them at your own peril.
People who do not save an extra $100 in their pocket will likely not save that extra $1 Million in their pocket. On the flip side, those who go out of their way to save money will do everything thy can to protect that $1 Million.
There are too many unecessary services and money manipulations without the needed levels of production of useful things to support those services. We’re also living in a dump-on-your-neighbor regime that prevents new competition from rising.
So have fun. Enjoy the slide.
Mr Krugman needs to have all his net worth converted to $100 bills and shipped to the noncapitalsit Nirvana of his choice and him with them.
bkmk