Wealth Inequality in America

this video tells what the average american thinks of the wealth distribution, vs reality (vs ideal): ▶ this video it's very enlightening.

> The real meaningful wealth gap in our society is between the HN poster income bracket and the poor, not the one between HN poster income bracket and the billionaires. This is billionaire propaganda[1] to get the middle class to fight thier class war - it is a class war against the poor and middle class . The tax rate of the ultra-rich are at an all time low 1. ▶ this video shows the gap between people (like you) think the wealth distribution is vs the reality. It was made 10 years ago and has gotten further skewed since then. Start from to 2:40 if you're in a hurry.

Yep. Nearly everyone but equity owners is either hurting or not going anywhere while delivering more for the same or less. Graph after graph Robert Reich has put out there shows the dismalness of the situation. Another infographic video about the distribution of wealth in reality vs. perceived reality vs. desired: ▶ this video Somehow there is also a systematic economic double-standard that works for some but not others: "free markets" of dog-eat-dog inputs (i.e., suppliers), but less free markets on outputs (i.e., monopolies, mega corporations, patents, proprietary-ness, closed-source). Unregulated greed fixes all problems by the "invisible hand", right?

Outrage is clickbait gold. So, that is production in for-profit blogging or pseudo-journalism, and also in the business of social media. That said, Bill Gates is both a public figure and a billionaire, so is fair-game for a lot of criticism. He does set a good example, in general, with immense contributions to global public health and policy. Also, there's no U-haul's behind Hearses, so I would buy 50 Singer Porsches and a 747-400ER and crash them into each other with a trebuchet. If someone has more money than they could ever spend, invest or give-away in a scalable manner, then why the hell not buy an aircraft-carrier or a hydrogen yacht? Furthermore, balance sheet inequality is beyond severe in many countries yet there are people in various economic strata who seem to blissfully revel in denying the real pain of others; "Upton Sinclair effect" (paraphrasing: It's difficult to get someone to accept facts when they benefit from pretending they doesn't exist.). For more details and because it's not worth getting into politics online, I suggest Robert Reich's channel [0] and his brilliant documentary Inequality for All [1] and the Infographics video on the disconnect between perceived distribution, desired distribution and actual distribution [2]. 0: link 1: link 2: ▶ this video

Yeap. And for average people, that leaves a hollowed-out middle-class and not-yet-automated/underpaid tasks like caregiving, teaching, nursing, police, retail sales, retail foodservice, Amazon warehouse stocking, TaskRabbit and Uber driving. People are rightly freaking-out because their existences are threatened while simultaneously others are discussing who's going to be the first trillionaire (much more of the wealth created is only going to the very rich). It seems rational to argue that incel and domestic terrorists, rising homelessness and opioid epidemics are indirectly influenced by the socioeconomic fall-out of rust-belt decay. Infographic video of how bad it really is: ▶ this video

> I think sometimes a picture really does say 1,000 words. This short info-graphic video makes is pretty clear how dramatically top heavy wealth distribution in the U.S. is: ▶ this video It also does a nice job of comparing the "ideal", to the "perception" to the actual.

For what it's worth, I agree, I think capitalism + some rule tweaks is fine. The culprit is really the beauty of capitalism: accelerating returns on investment. If you get to the head of the race you tend to start to accrue more and more wealth. The problem is that it's sucking the pond dry as there is a relatively stable money supply and much of it is circulating in the stratosphere (often as corporate stock buybacks). Hence the need for rule tweaks to enhance recirculation. This is a cool video I saw a while back that shows the current issue: ▶ this video I also agree that movement between countries is a modern problem that probably invalidates the old solution (unless multiple countries coordinate - unlikely). So, we have a problem that wealth will continue to concentrate absent controls on the distribution. The US has a lot of political problems right now, and the major commonality is that people at the bottom get the shaft every time. I think it's too much to try to solve every problem facing civilization in one conversation though, so I'll stick to distributions. ;) For what it's worth, believe me, I'm not a hippie. I want to start a company and get rich one day like all of you. I just think it's important to pay attention to the steady state of the system we are participating in.

+100 for corporations -1 for consumers According to the book "Diet for a Small Planet" the beef industry gets $50 billion a year of free water from the federal government. Doesn't sound like fair market capitalism to me. It does sound like our elected officials can be easily bribed. The super rich have won. Hopefully not too far of topic, but a friend just sent me this video link about income inequality - an eye opener! ▶ this video

It's not a slight drift, it's a massive change since the 1950's. Looking at averages is completely irrelevant when talking about inequality. Here's a video from 12 years ago: Wealth Inequality in America ▶ this video

They should keep patting themselves on the back for crumbs of improvement. And yet America is one of most unequal societies, far exceeding the inequality of the Gilded Age. Infographics: Wealth Inequality in America (2012) ▶ this video (2023) 10 year update to Inequality for All (2013) - Robert Reich link

> These programs are about control, and wealth redistribution lets stop pretending otherwise Shrug , if it's all BS but it does something to the mind-bogglingly skewed wealth distribution[1] we can still chalk it up as a win. [1] ▶ this video

> This is billionaire propaganda[1] to get the middle class to fight thier class war In my opinion, anything that tries to simplify the interests of billions of actors is a form of populist propaganda. It allows bad actors to prove that they're on the "people's side" just because they virtue signal against the "evil side" in order to advance their own interests: for example, crypto-scammers complaining about banks or Hitler complaining about rich Jewish bankers. > The tax rate of the ultra-rich are at an all time low Right. The problem is that the taxing the ultra-rich is difficult to do because they have the resources to avoid these taxes, and they don't actually raise that much money. So what happens is that the left always ends up raising taxes on the professional class like California. I personally wouldn't have an issue with this, if were better spent, like in the Nordic countries, but they clearly aren't in the US. > ▶ this video This video just shows that most Americans are bad at math. Even if literally everyone made the exact same amount of income, the wealth distribution would look closest to the last one because older people would have more time to accumulate more wealth.