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Why the rich keep getting richer, compared to everyone else, is a topic of recurring debate among the nation’s economists.
“If there were a good answer to that question, I think the policymakers in Washington would be all over it to fix it,” said Scott Hoyt, senior director for Moody’s Analytics.
Just as economists don’t all agree on what is causing the rich to get richer, there is no consensus that the concentration of wealth is bad for the rest of America.
They never understand anything almost as if their jobs depend on it.
It’s like ancient Chinese court astrologers. They know everything they say is bullshit, but they know that they’ll lose their cushy jobs (or their lives) if they admit that.
Interesting how the golden 90’s, right after major capitalist victory, brought drastic drop of wealth for the middle “class”.
That’s the part a lot of people in the west still don’t seem to get. The existence of Soviet Union alone was enough to force capitalists to allow for a relatively high standard of living for the working majority. As soon as the threat of a good example was destroyed, there was no longer any reason to keep up any pretenses. The exploitation could now begin in full.
The fuck is a middle class
Some made up bullshit to fool workers into abandoning their actual class interests.
Wtf is this “middle class” anyway? How do you define it? And where is the line?
The classes I learned from my schools and university is simpler: If you work, you are the worker. If you exploit the worker, you are a capitalist.
We never learned about classes in school. My son was taught explicitly that the US was not a class society. Class is a vibe.
Shorthand for middle class is whether someone owns or could “own” a house
What two red scares and a cold war does to a curriculum.
We never learned about classes either. We did learn about consumer segments, what papers they read and what brands of cigarettes they smoked.
Right, its interesting because a class (by this definition) is an affectation. Its a brand identity, it is a level of access that you can aspire to (or lose.)
Right, middle class is a nebulous idea that doesn’t really have much meaning behind it. I agree that class membership derives its meaning from the relations in society. If majority of the income comes from the capital the individual owns then they’re a member of the capitalist class, and if majority of their income comes from their labour then they’re a member of the working class. These two classes have contradictory interests since capital owners act as employers of the workers.
“earners from between the 20th and 80th percentile”
The top 1% holds $38.7 trillion in wealth. That’s more than the combined wealth of America’s middle class, a group many economists define as the middle 60% of households by income. Those households hold about 26% of all wealth.
Low-income Americans, representing the bottom 20% by income, own about 3% of the wealth.
So it’s more like the top 1% owns as much wealth as the entire rest of the country.
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There’s a 19% gap between the “middle 60%” and the 1% that has a bunch of money.
Idk who has decided these numbers or why they’re significant. Seems pretty arbitrary
This article linked to this page to explain why they chose that definition of middle class. It’s because statisticians like it so yeah, pretty arbitrary.
Put another way: 3.5 million people control more wealth than 210 million people. Each individual of those 3.5 million owns as much as 60 “middle classers” combined.
Lastly, according to this graphic, the top 1% and 60% of middle income earners account for only ~51% of the nation’s wealth? There’s no way the bottom 39% control 49% of the wealth, so where tf is it? Something’s fucky
They defined middle class as the top 80% that are not in the top 20%, not “60% of middle income earners”.
I’m guessing your missing wealth is in the top 20% that aren’t in the top 1%
Ah ok, so top income earners from 2-19% would account for that 39%. Seems right.
https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM?si=uX5nOhWhyStz7VaB this is my basis for comparison. Still one of the best “income inequality explained” videos of all time
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
how did they categorise the middle class
Center 60% of the middle income earners, is the standard definition
I wonder if this correlates with the wealth of the 1% in pre-revolutionary China and Russia? 🤔
Line goes up, so the Amerikkkan economic system is still working as intended. Ignore the other line, just look at the upward line. The only important line. /j
When Richard Nixon was first elected, ‘middle class’ was understood to mean one job supporting a family of four. In those days, $1 million was a vast fortune. Nixon started printing paper money to pay for the massive bombings in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. When the Arab Oil boycott hit, inflation really took off. Carter tried to control inflation, but when Reaganomics came in, the middle class was doomed. By the time Bush Sr. left office ‘middle class’ was two incomes to run a household. By then $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
