"Class Warfare", By Citigroup

[Mr. Shaman]

I think Michael Moore will be suing you for copyright violation someday, that's Michael Moore's point not yours.

Nahhhhhhhhhhhh.....

We're (all) on the same team....

....the WINNING TEAM!!

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[georgephillip]

"Before Wall Street drove our economy off a cliff, bullish Citigroup strategists dubbed the United States a "plutonomy." They said, "There are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the 'non-rich,' the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie."

Inequality had increased so much since the 1980s, Citi strategists noted in 2005, that the richest 1 percent of households and the bottom 60 percent had "similar slices of the income pie!" Even better, they said, "the top 1 percent of households account for 40 percent of financial net worth, more than the bottom 95 percent of households put together." And the Bush "administration's attempts to change the estate tax code and make permanent dividend tax cuts, plays directly into the hands of the plutonomy."

In "Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer," Citi strategists considered the risk of backlash. "Whilst the rich are getting a greater share of the wealth ... political enfranchisement remains as was - one person, one vote," they said. "At some point it is likely that labor will fight back against the rising profit share of the rich and there will be a political backlash against the rising wealth of the rich." This could be felt, for example, "through higher taxation (on the rich or indirectly though higher corporate taxes/regulation)."

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Better reach-out, 'Baggers!!

The high-rollers might need some (more) moral-support, some time soon.....​

What is the primary goal of Capitalism?

"Creating jobs is not the raison d'être nor the primary goal of a Capitalist economy.


"Creating profits for the purpose of Capital accumulation and expansion is the sine qua non and essential function of Capitalism.

"Often larger profits can be made by increasing the productivity of workers and upping overall output.

"When such efforts are not possible or do not result in an increased rate of profit, some Capitalists---especially those who own and control vital resources---can limit real production, thus creating shortages of that essential product.

"They then raise prices without increasing production and thereby increase the profits of their particular enterprise. (Or, in the case of the US and British oil companies, they can support the creation of a foreign organization like OPEC that will cooperate in restricting output in ways that would be illegal in the US or Great Britain.)

"This hurts the 'bottom-line' or profits of those other industries dependent upon the restricted resource; and, therefore, is not a long-run solution for correcting crises in profitability for the Capitalist system as a whole."

For at least a generation the FIRE sector tax burden has been shifted off Finance, Insurance and Real Estate and onto wages earned by the US middle class. This is the exact opposite of what Classical Economists meant by a free market, i.e., a market free from of rentier/monopoly finance capital control.

With the latest multi-trillion dollar bailout of Wall Street inequality levels in the US are back to Great Depression levels, and the richest 1% show no signs they are through taking even more.