America: shrinking middle class, growing poverty, the rich are getting richer

boing
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[Read the post]

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I could go all day with graphs and images…

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Or, put another way:

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So wealth redistribution is going as planned…

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It would be interesting to see this report broken down by age demographics. One thing that shouldn’t come as a shock is that as baby boomers–that bubble in the American population–settle into retirement their income drops significantly. An increase in retirees could account for the appearance of shrinking income in the population as a whole. (Yes, it’s more than the appearance of less income, but it’s also expected in retirement.)

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just like the 1% wants…them on top and everyone else at the bottom under foot.

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They include some age demographics further down in the article. Older Americans have actually gained the most. They speculate that “Evidence shows that rising Social Security benefits have played a key role in improving the economic status of older adults.” That, plus the push towards more retirement savings, has led to old people actually doing pretty well, economically-speaking.

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Thatavatar.jpeg

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[quote=“Papasan, post:2, topic:70523, full:true”]
I could go all day with graphs and images…
[/quote]

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a link would be nice with the graph, if you could.

While I was trying to find your source, I ran across this post from Pew Research which maybe sort of goes to the point that you’re making(?), which is to say that wealth inequality is way more extreme than income inequality

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FT: America’s Middle-class Meltdown: Core shrinks to half of US homes

edit: nicer link text

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Sorry about that. I don’t have a point, just thought it was another way of representing the data. It came from this morning’s FT, which renke links to below.

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FTFY.

BB posts should be wikis so we can copy edit. Sure it sounds like chaos, but then wikipedia also sounded insane too.

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On the flip side there are more million and billionaires than ever before. So, we got that going for us…sigh

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ALL ACCORDING TO KEIKAKU

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I’d love to find the source data in that one It’s a good viz but I had something else in mind that it’s about time I put together!

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Well, in all fairness

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SO what are we going to do about it?

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  1. Start a corporation that uses ethical hiring to raise the bar to basic civility, logic, and reason. Initially hire enthusiastic, positive, and proactive people who are easily intrinsically motivated. (Just a spinoff of the Valve+Mondragon model)

  2. Let them create campuses with housing and allow any small group (of 42 or more) to set up their entire local government/economy/etc. in exchange for overproduction as teams and squads. (Tie in skunkworks projects, intentional communities, and university models.)

  3. Have them focus on high money opportunities that they’d normally struggle with (finance, exploiting flaws in the private/public partnership, etc.) by making it for the setup of additional campuses for refugees, orphans, etc. (that are similarly well-motivated Kelvin Doe types) (Basic intrinsic motivation, breaking the work/life balance, offer a life designed for our brains)

  4. Use that group to expand further by being more productive and beating corporate America/Earth at their game by being more effective. Gradually take over their supply chain. Franchise out all over the world. Create a co-opernation. with the four-step plan mentioned within.

  5. Nations provide ‘lame’ citizenship and are still there for those who aren’t willing to raise the bar a bit (i.e. not be dicks to other people) and we’re not stuck with them, this group provides something new for the non-asshats, and you depopulate war, poverty, and so on. Also: Citizens United is suddenly awesome.

I actually have a few specific business plans, one was a gift to me that exploits one of those private/public partnership holes to take a few dozen people (healthcare and data people mostly, plus those who want to enable them) to take on about 70 million or so in business at a minimum (3-10 million per State, at least 17 States feeding off of the same prototype design). I can recreate the prototype in a couple of months.

Any better ideas? Nobody’s tried anything like this one. Bonus spoiling to the first batch, I’m good at spoiling people. And worst case scenario it’s just a profitable business.

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I agree with much of what you propose, except that I can’t agree to the terms of incorporation where I am. Doing it without governmental recognition seems to put people off, although I think that can be an advantage.