As America's middle class collapses, no one is buying stuff anymore

[Nonentity]

@Kimmo

Anyone promoting trickle-down is a fuckwit or an arsehole.

[milliefink]

@Medievalist

If you want to fight for social justice, you have to start by fighting for economic and environmental justice. You can’t build a chimney from the top.

[gregmcph]

Or has bladder problems.

[milliefink]

@some_guy

I vividly recall hearing Sean Hannity on his radio show back around 2004 explaining to one of his listeners that tax cuts for the rich were better for the economy because they would use that extra wealth to buy another home or yacht or car, which would in turn pay the wages of home-builders and auto-plant workers, etc.

Amazing how many people lap up that swill, against their own interests! The wealthy are ALREADY hoarding and not spending the extra they’re getting.

I say we get together and find those economy-murdering wealth hoarders.

[anon26940528]

@ravuya

Don’t worry! Starbucks has decided that it needs to form a charity dedicated to small businesses.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Fuck small businesses. Maybe not all of them, but in my town the majority pay and treat their workers like crap. I genuinely don’t see why people think mom and pop stores are an improvement on Wal-Mart. There’s an inefficiency in having multiple small businesses that means that they employ more people in the aggregate, but they often suck when it comes to compliance in labor law. So explain to me again why I should be so enamored of small business?

[anon75430791]

Actually, I can come up with a way to build a chimney from the top.

But it requires a lot of scaffolding.

/me ducks

[anon26940528]

@Kimmo

I take it every American in this thread is a registered Democrat intent on voting for Sanders in the primaries.

Sanders will save capitalism from itself. I haven’t yet decided if I want that.

[anon75430791]

Small businesses are the carrot on the stick that the right wing uses to push policy.

They sell it to the relatively poor with the “This could be you!” rhetoric. Yeah, maybe. But probably not.

And interestingly, big businesses can derive much greater value from these “little guy” policies.

Don’t get me wrong, starting your own business is a huge part of the American experience. Originally.

We have way, way more regulations now, which makes it a lot harder. And for good reasons, too. If so many generations of business owners weren’t opportunistic assholes, it would be a lot easier to start a business from scratch here.

Them’s the breaks.

[milliefink]

Saw this somewhere or other:

Imagine if the population of Earth were only 100 people and one guy tried to hoard 99% of the money. Wouldn’t the other 99 people simply off that guy and take their money back?

[anon75430791]

Except they don’t have 99% of the money.

Via Wikipedia:

In 2007 the richest 1% of the American population owned 34.6% of the country’s total wealth

I have little doubt there would be civil war long before we approached the scenario in the quote.

[milliefink]

Oh is THAT all?

[manybellsdown]

Seattle is pretty awesome, though. And there’s certainly not a shortage of tech. Although I hear that apparently it really sucks for dating if you’re a single heterosexual male; the preponderance of men in software jobs seems to skew the ratios of men to women in some areas.

[robulus]

The quote doesn’t limit it’s scope to the USA, and when you look at wealth distribution globally its even more stark:

• Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of
  the population.

• The wealth of the one percent richest people in the world amounts to
  $110 trillion. That’s 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of
  the world’s population.

• The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the
  richest 85 people in the world. Seven out of ten people live in
  countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30
  years.

• The richest one percent increased their share of income in 24 out of
  26 countries for which we have data between 1980 and 2012.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2014/01/23/the-85-richest-people-in-the-world-have-as-much-wealth-as-the-3-5-billion-poorest/

[Mister44]

How did he get that money? If it wasn’t through fraud or theft, how exactly can you justify “off[ing] that guy and take their money back?”.

While I am not against increased corporate tax or even taxing the wealthy, but this and the guillotine suggestion is a bit extreme to say the least.

There will never be total equality. Even in a totally “fair” world there will always people who succeed or fail because of ability, talent, effort, or even just dumb luck.

[anon75430791]

@robulus, @milliefink

It’s not my purpose to play apologist to the wealthy.

I am just trying to keep people shooting their mouths off on internet forums statistically honest.

By all means use numbers, just use accurate numbers.

[anon75430791]

To your point, success breeds more success. My right wing friends have chided me about the idea that being born to rich parents means that you have a head start for earning a huge salary some day, but it is scientifically documented.

That is why every country in the world has always had a logarithmic distribution of wealth.

That isn’t to say that we can’t engineer a better system that takes care of everyone.

Just that ambition and self interest are a part of the human DNA, as is taking care of your tribe. Good luck taking the big financial winners from society and getting them to pass on their wealth to the poor instead of their offspring.

No, I don’t think cultural change is possible, so engineering a better system is probably the way to go. But how do you remove self interest, and retain technological progress? I don’t have the answer, but we know more or less how that played out in Soviet Russia.

[milliefink]

@Mister44

While I am not against increased corporate tax or even taxing the wealthy, but this and the guillotine suggestion is a bit extreme to say the least.

There will never be total equality. Even in a totally “fair” world there will always people who succeed or fail because of ability, talent, effort, or even just dumb luck.

So says the ever-ready defender of the status quo.

It’s all just a fantasy, not an actual call to action, which I thought was obvious. As if things have gotten that bad yet. But then, how much longer will it be, the way they’re going? How much more of the pie do the wealth hoarders want? When will we ever get a TV show about THAT hoarding sickness?

As you surely know, more and more people, in the U.S. and elsewhere, are suffering, and even dying, because the wealth hoarders never, ever get enough. Wealth gaps are worse than they’ve been in what, a century? I’m not on board with your preference of emphasizing instead the dumbass cliches that some people will always be able to get ahead, there will never be TOTAL equality, etc. Seriously, wtf?

[popobawa4u]

Imagine if there were 100 people, and they spent their lives collecting magical Roc feathers which were the source of their psychic powers. But then, one day, one sneaky jerk gets the jump on them and hoards all of the magic Roc feathers.

What would the 99 other people need to do to be able to get their powers back?

[robulus]

@anon75430791

But how do you remove self interest, and retain technological progress? I don’t have the answer, but we know more or less how that played out in Soviet Russia.

So the choice is between an insane Corporatocracy or Soviet Communism?

Lets try a little nuance shall we? How about regulating financial markets so they aren’t intrinsically antagonistic to good social outcomes, and restoring Reagan era tax levels to fund public programs?

At a certain point this becomes a fine balancing act, but the US is so far off the scales right now that there are a bunch of straight forward reforms that could be made with very little fear of crippling industry and innovation.

[popobawa4u]

@anon75430791

That isn’t to say that we can’t engineer a better system that takes care of everyone.

Why make one system for everyone? If other people don’t know my goals, how would they know what I need?

@anon75430791

Just that ambition and self interest are a part of the human DNA, as is taking care of your tribe. Good luck taking the big financial winners from society and getting them to pass on their wealth to the poor instead of their offspring.

Wealth all depends upon what you value. Not all people value the same things.

@anon75430791

No, I don’t think cultural change is possible, so engineering a better system is probably the way to go.

I think that these are the same thing. If you are participating in culture, you are engineering it. Human institutions are technologies.

@anon75430791

But how do you remove self interest, and retain technological progress?

Progress is a philosophy, and again, not everybody believes in it. Even “self” is a sketchy concept. As a colony organism, how can you be sure where your self stops and another begins? If another person has 99.9999% the same DNA as you do, aren’t they, for most practical purposes, you? Are you really the same person you were ten years ago, or do your memories simply tell you that you are?