Wealth inequality is the new normal

[TarJak]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-2...ed-age/5403744

I'm surprised Skybird hasn't posted about this yet. TBH the book mentioned in the story confirms a number of things that I think a lot of people have known for quite a while.

[BossMark]

Cant wait for STEEDS comment on this

[TarJak]

Victor will say he's happy of course.

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by TarJak

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-2...ed-age/5403744

I'm surprised Skybird hasn't posted about this yet. TBH the book mentioned in the story confirms a number of things that I think a lot of people have known for quite a while.

Nothing new specifically if some things have been known for quite a while.

[Skybird]

Difficult to judge that book and author by that article alone. I do not know man and book.

As I see it, yes, there are oligarchies of almost feudla nature forming up again, maybe they never really have been gone. On the other hand, our societies almost force everybody to live with his hands in other people's pockets, if you think of it long enough you see that it is very hard in ordinary life to avoid it even if you want to. But most want not anyway. The era since Roosevelt's New Deal maybe is best described as the era of redistribution, which really started rolling after WWII, all get robbed, and all take benefits in return, but it would be naive to seriously argue that those who act clever (meaning immoral here) do not become more successful in taking more than they give, than others. There is no honour amongst thieves, no matter what political parties try to tell you.

The paper money system and fractional reserve system feature inherent dynamics that further guarantee - unavoidably - that more wealth get shifted from the bottom and middle, to the top.

The left claims all this to be arguments against capitalism. That is a fallacy. What I summarised above, all is the distortion of a capitalistic system, made possible by blossoming monopolism. Criticism of monopolism I will always join. Monopolism is in politics and economics what blood and bone cancer is in medicine. You either kill it, or it kills you.

BTW, is there a word "monopolism", or is it always "monopoly"?

Another unsolved implicit problem is the accumulation of wealth by heredity (correct word?). While I oppose inheritance taxes, I do not claim to know a final solution to it. Maybe a culture that succeeds in anchoring certain ethical values in people, thus educating them to act morally, is an answer, but such policies has again risks in itself, as we can see in today's political correctness ideology and thjis unbearable attitude of the "Gutmenschen" that show tremendous signs of totalitarianism and fascism when wanting to impose their "wellmeaningness" on society and every individual.

But somehwere wise men like Ralph Waldo Emerson - just the first name on my mind in this moment - must have come form. Culture around can help or hinder to set ablaze a small spark in the soul - or kill it down, so that darkness falls. Education means more than just the transmission of facts and knowledge.

[TarJak]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

Nothing new specifically if some things have been known for quite a while.

His point around the late 20th century redistribution of wealth is looking like an aberration rather than an ongoing trend is probably right. Though future history may prove him wrong.

I think that the only "new" thing in terms of wealth and income is the ability of an employee (read senior executives), to rise into the top 1%.

Previous eras only company owners tended to hold those roles so even there I don't think much has changed.

[Jimbuna]

Nothing new really...money looks after money and those that have it tend to hang onto it at any cost.

[Dread Knot]

Originally Posted by TarJak

His point around the late 20th century redistribution of wealth is looking like an aberration rather than an ongoing trend is probably right. Though future history may prove him wrong.

An aberration that may have been due to two large aberrations known as World War One and World War Two. I know here in the US a lot of people long for the good old days of the 1950s and early 60s when the US was the predominant industrial and financial power in the world. Often overlooking the fact that industrial plant and capital in the rest of the world had been destroyed or dislocated as a result of WW2, and that this was a temporary state of affairs that could never last for long. Certainly, one thing that has changed is that the super-rich one percent can be found in every corner of the world now, They're no longer confined to just Europe and America. That's egalitarianism of a sort, I guess.

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by TarJak

His point around the late 20th century redistribution of wealth is looking like an aberration rather than an ongoing trend is probably right. Though future history may prove him wrong.

I think that the only "new" thing in terms of wealth and income is the ability of an employee (read senior executives), to rise into the top 1%.

Previous eras only company owners tended to hold those roles so even there I don't think much has changed.

The only changes I see are cost of inflation and taxes. Services we pay for today that was not paid for 20 years ago. Phone was a minimal $9.00. TV was free. Internet did not exist. We wrote letters and paid .03 cent to mail it.

[Skybird]

I spent the better part of two hours for googling this guy and book. Sounds very Marx-leaning to me. Typical European nowaday-mainstream, I would say. If that is true, it would not be surprising anymore that he gets plenty of applause from known left-leaning, Keynesian and socialist theoreticians.

http://pc.blogspot.de/2014/04/pikett...lets-have.html

Needless to say: while I do not judge his empirical data presentation on past eras (I have not gone into that, for that you indeed would need to read that fat book and wopuld need to have m uch more knowledge on the empirical data than I have, after all at best I am an interested layman on such details ), I seem to need opposing his conclusions. He sings of more taxes for the "rich", more social justice for the people, more equality in possessions - don't we hear this chorus every single day in Western politics nowadays? There is not a single party in the Bundestag who does not populistically say the same. And I claim them all to be socialist parties, all of them, without exception.

As one author in another web publication said: the logical outcome of Piketty's suggestions and conclusions must always be the government and original agenda of Francois Hollande.

See how well they do in France.

The French are Europe's biggest socialists by misled intellect. The Germans are Europe's biggest socialists by misled emotions, and social romanticism. It's surreal.

[Wolferz]

Atlas Shrugs.

[nikimcbee]

Peace. Land. Bread.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Wolferz

Atlas Shrugs.

Indeed. And that will mean a well-deserved but terrible justice.

Already in the late 60s or early 70s the French demanded from the Us to be given back their old reserves that the French - like the Germans - were stupid enough to shuttle to America, for the greater safety there. The US simply refused to give back the French gold, which of course is nothign else but betrayal and treason at the highest international level possible. The Germans demand since two or three years to even be allowed to physically inspect their reserves in New York, which again the Americans completely refuse to allow. The German government keeps the ball low over this, to not feed growing mistrust over the diabolic thing named paper money (Nixon'S dollar and today'S Euro), but I am by now absolutely certain that the Americans have betrayed Germany and France and other nations and that the gold that was placed in US safes, simply does not exist anymore, has been consumed and handed away. The biggest bank robbery of all time, with the robbers not cracking the safe from outside, but waiting inside. One could want to bomb Washington into ashes for this betrayal.

Interesting to know is that already in 2010 or 2011, I do not remember exactly, during a meeting of the FED with the biggest banks of the US, the FED internally indicated that they will need in the forseeable future an immense amount of storage space. This can only mean one thing: that the FED is aware of the dollar losing its status of global reserve currency and that this will mean the total financial breakdown of the US - and that therefore plans for implementing a new dollar currency that rates the old one null and void are on the table and are prepared in all secrecy. That will become the biggest expropriation event in the history of the United States.

It does not matter in which order the paper currency will collapse, whether Eeuro or Dollar or any other collapses first - in the end they will fall all in a chain reaction. The losses of the ordinary man will be desperate, and many existences will be wiped out.

The gold and silver currency had a generally accepted material commodity as its basis. The Euro and the Dollar only have misled belief and blind faith. They are a religion, and unbelievers are declared heretics and metaphorically get burned alive.

Once that trust collapses, the game is over. Maybe you cannot eat gold, but with gold you can trade for something to eat. With paper money, you cannot - but you can light a camp fire or wipe your youknowwhat.

After that, if we consider it to be below our standards to wipe out the elites who have been responsible for destroying our money and thus: the fruits of our labour, then they will just do the same again - and give us a new paper money, that way trying to save their privileged status and power and influence. And that paper money will end in the same way, in a couple of decades at the latest.

[Skybird]

People do not learn. Currently they are partying over Portugal being able to emit new state bonds, which previously they could not get sold. The ECB has bought them. And now it is party time!

What does not get said in the mainstream media is that the ECB previously bowed to Greek and Portuguese demands of lowering its already hilarious criterions on what to accept as securities for lending them money. Draghi got a document written that rules that from now on even more toxic assets and thus: Portuguese bonds, could be accepted by the ECB as securities.

There are European elections in a couple of weeks, you see. Polish the shine, hide the rotten, lets all SMILE!

There is no consolidation, not in Greece and not in Portugual. It is a lie, a show, a stage act. German heroic worldsavers want to stick to the Euro, and if all the continent sinks in the waves, the Euro will be upheld until it is the last thing sticking out of the troubled ocean.

And that means this for Greece and others: the net receivers have the net payers of the EU by their balls, with net payers voluntarily having dropped their pants, without any need, and without any reason.

Matching that is new son alleged consolidation of budgets in various states, as well as consolidation of economic and labour markets. There have been several such news reports over the past 1-2 weeks. What usually does not get mentioned it hat in these countries, including Germany, the statistical calculation models and variables have been manipulated, to get data out worstening the impression, and to get data in that may not be relevant, but helps to boost the general impression. Data manipulation, in other words, or in plain English: lying. Especially creative in this have been the US recently, in order to boost their GDP now various entertainment and recreation activities like watching an old movie (!!!), are calculated as increasing the value of the total GDP.WTH?I read it a couple of days ago. I couldn't believe it at first.Shows how desperate they try to hide the real numbers from people, and how mercilessly they will distort and abuse all and everything to hide the desperate state of things.

He who stops partying, stops drinking, and stops dancing, drops dead.

[CaptainHaplo]

Wealth inequality has always existed - so how is it the "new" normal?

If anything, the only "new" thing is that the forces of government are becoming more and more active in the process of "redistribution". Until it all falls down. Even then - its hardly "new" - just ask the Roman Empire. Oh wait - you can't...