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For a rundown of the policies that have exacerbated wealth inequality, consider the following excerpts from Time magazine, September 2020: The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90% — And That’s Made the U.S. Less Secure.
“There are some who blame the current plight of working Americans on structural changes in the underlying economy–on automation, and especially on globalization. According to this popular narrative, the lower wages of the past 40 years were the unfortunate but necessary price of keeping American businesses competitive in an increasingly cutthroat global market. But in fact, the $50 trillion transfer of wealth the RAND report documents has occurred entirely within the American economy, not between it and its trading partners. No, this upward redistribution of income, wealth, and power wasn’t inevitable; it was a choice–a direct result of the trickle-down policies we chose to implement since 1975.
We chose to cut taxes on billionaires and to deregulate the financial industry. We chose to allow CEOs to manipulate share prices through stock buybacks, and to lavishly reward themselves with the proceeds. We chose to permit giant corporations, through mergers and acquisitions, to accumulate the vast monopoly power necessary to dictate both prices charged and wages paid. We chose to erode the minimum wage and the overtime threshold and the bargaining power of labor. For four decades, we chose to elect political leaders who put the material interests of the rich and powerful above those of the American people.”
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Here’s the data on our asymmetric distribution of wealth again. You can skip this if you’ve already seen the charts.
The RAND study Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018 concluded that capital siphoned $50 trillion from labor from 1975 to 2018.
Using data from the Federal Reserve’s FRED database (series A4102E1A156NBEA), correspondent Alain M. calculated the actual sum for the period 1970 to 2022 (2022 being the most recent data available) was a staggering $149 trillion: his spreadsheet is available here as a PDF: Employees Share of Gross Domestic Income 1970-2022.
If wage earners’ share of Gross Domestic Income had remained at 51% instead of declining to 43%, wage earners would have received an additional $149 trillion over those 52 years.
Read more
https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-seeds-of-social-revolution-extreme.html
The basis for this was uncoupling of the U.S. dollar from tangible collateral to pure hypothecated fiat. Fiat backed only by debt instruments and the tax revenue used to collateralize it. Debt atop debt.
the ONLY beneficiaries of this sort of system are the ones closer to the fountain source of this hypothecated fiat currency, and those which craft the laws / regulations further benefiting their donors. Which I might add, those donors are the very same people which gluttonously drink from the fountain of fiat first.
To hell with the rest of us… the plebes.