Not in generations.
Ever. It's the highest it's been, ever.
We've surpassed the first gilded age.
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Not in generations.
Ever. It's the highest it's been, ever.
We've surpassed the first gilded age.
And thanks to social media, media conglomeration and partisan politics they can live in totally separate realities from each other. I'm sure that's not causing any problems.
i meet people with similar education, job, politics, etc.
and they are living in a totally different reality from me. and they are straight up hostile to my reality because it isn't a mirror reflection of their own.
A shared reality is like the bare minimum for a good basis for healthy humanity.
yeah and people are mentalyl unhealthy because they are living in their little rabbit holes of siloed information.
the amount of willful, deliberate, 'i'm sticking my head in the sand and you can't stop me from doing it' crap I see IRL and here on fediverse blows my mind. It wasn't like this a decade ago. a decade ago people would be curious about your differences and at least ask you questions, now everyone is apparently some expert genius with psychic powers who knows 'everything they need to know' about you based on what shirt you wore today.
Blame Reagan.
Back in the Cronkite Era the Fairness Doctrine insured that anytime a station put on an editorial it had to provide equal time to the opposing point of view.
Reagan deregulated the FCC and made it easier for big companies to own and operate radio and TV stations. And he made sure that the emerging cable companies could put on anything and call it 'news.'
"Blame Reagan"
That's all you had to say. Any argument that starts with "Blame Reagan" objectively needs no further explanation.
It's amazing how people are still angry with Ronnie just because he destroyed the middle class and imported tons of cocaine.
Only two ways this ends.
Permanent subjugation or rebellion.
Rebellion can take multiple forms. Personally, I like the form where we elect people like Mamdani that tax these fucking leeches and strengthen the middle/lower classes.
Personally, I'd prefer the other options where billionaires' heads become targets.
NASDAQ has been doing 20-30% growth every year for over five years. A 20% rate of growth is a 150% ROI over that time. Is anyone else in the country seeing their net worth jump 150% since COVID?
A french economist named Thomas Picketty laid out how this had been going down way back in 2014. He pointed out that as rate of GDP growth was exceeded by ROI of capital, the divide between rich and poor would expand and the functions of the economy would increasingly turn to serving the plutocracy. Picketty was heckled out of the public discourse within a few years and has been functionally blacklisted from global media reporting since. But his truth goes marching on.
I don't own a piece of the wealth pie at all, in fact I'm in pie debt.
Is anyone else in the country seeing their net worth jump 150% since COVID?
In net worth? Sure, -$1000 is technically a 150% jump from -$400.
I thought that name looked familiar. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Not a spirit lifting book.
Setting aside the parts that are six Charles Dickens books in a blender, I thought it was a very sober and rational consideration of historical economic trends. Nice to see someone come in on the left side of the political spectrum and apply a bit of rigorous math to the problem of economic planning. That part felt very hopeful.
The response to the book was incredibly bleak, as it mostly amounted to corporate shills screaming "Fakes News!" and posting Laffer Curves, then flexing under a big libertarian-branded victory banner.
Is anyone else in the country seeing their net worth jump 150% since COVID?
Does a net worth going from $100 to $250 count?
Is anyone else in the country seeing their net worth jump 150% since COVID?
I'm not from the US, but yes. More than that, actually. The COVID dip is what got me started investing in index funds, and I pretty much doubled my wealth in just a few years. Investing in the stock market isn't only for the rich. I'm a plumber - I'm never getting rich by just saving money. Investing is the only realistic way for someone like me to build any kind of significant wealth, and I'm pissed at the school system for not teaching any of this. I lost a whole decade in the markets because of it, which is huge.
Yeah, massive wealth gaps are a real problem and will only get worse, but people can also take 50% of the time they spend complaining about billionaires and put it toward sorting out their own finances instead. It'll actually make a difference. It's not 100% the system's fault.
Investing in the stock market isn’t only for the rich.
You can pocket a portion of your salary and invest it in another company's equity. But you're never going to outpace the bank selling you that stock they got at the IPO rate for the market clearing rate.
I’m a plumber - I’m never getting rich by just saving money.
You can turn $50k into $250k with some savvy investment during a market boom. And $200k is a buncha-lotta money. Then you can keep riding the wave, turning that $250k into $1.25M. And maybe that's going to be enough to retire on.
But you're kidding yourself if you believe you'll ever be CEO-rich by just throwing quarters into a market that's moving multiple trillions a year at a profit. You're even more kidding yourself if you think even millionaire status will protect you from a major medical emergency or a natural disaster or an ugly lawsuit or divorce.
people can also take 50% of the time they spend complaining about billionaires and put it toward sorting out their own finances instead
This was the pitch made by a gaggle of Bitcoin shills five years ago.
It's the pitch being made by a gaggle of goldbugs today.
"Just stop complaining and start investing" was the line pushed by the Reagan Administration way the fuck back in the 1980s. Forty years later, a lot of people who took his advice are still complaining - louder than ever - at those god damn hippie socialist antifa illegal sharia law anchor babies who sold them Enron stock and Lehman stock and Silicon Valley Bank stock.
The 401ks were a failure. At some point, you have to acknowledge that, even if you bet on the right ponies.
Managing to grow those saved earnings into even a million is plenty rich by my standards. The aspiration has never been to become a billionaire or even whatever "CEO rich" means.
Also, managing your finances is much more than just investing. The markets are useless if you've got nothing left over to put in there. Most people needlessly waste huge amounts of money all the time without even knowing it.
Idk seems like you're confusing people being unable to afford groceries with having enough to invest and make meaningful amounts.
If you investing a few grand a year, which is hard to do for a majority of Americans, that isn't going to be that much in even 10 years.
The market also isn't going to just rip forever as it has been and in fact is very much due for course correction. You could be telling people to buy at the very top of the market and then it will all come crashing down.
It's all on paper if you don't take profit and many years were needed for the market to recover from 08.
One Neat Trick
Tax cuts for the rich didn't trickle down?!?! Does Trump know about this?! 😂
Off with their heads

I'll predict the future. It will be bigger next year, and the year after, and the year after.....
I am shocked.
Only a genius or a clairvoyant could possibly have seen this coming.
Dumbshits.
Should be no gap.
It's completely unrealistic to suggest there shouldn't be wealth differences at all.
I agree - there will probably always be differences and that might be even be acceptable. But extreme differences (like we have currently) are just madness. It's stupidly inefficient in terms of allocating limited material resources to where they are needed. And the 'meritocratic' moral argument quickly falls down once wealth and income differences exceed a fairly modest level. If you claimed that a person like Jeff Bezos has the same productive output as 2.5 million nurses or is 2.5 million times more clever or righteous or whatever, even an 8-year-old would think you have a screw loose.
there are very real effects to this to. Like velocity in the money supply. There is always a certain amount of money invested vs spent but an economy can only handle so much of an imbalance. It relies on the velocity to determine the worth of currency and when its to low, like when wealth disparity is high, everything gets out of wack.
Except its not why do you think so?
who needs reality when you have anarchism or marxism to bleat on about and make yourself feel smart and big?
I can't wait for the 99.99% to continue to do absolutely nothing about it.