Soggy in NOLA
Diamond Member
- Jul 31, 2009
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More and more in the US capitalism guarantees the single most important factor in deciding the trajectory of your life is picking the right parents.Where is Democracy to be found in a world where the three richest individuals have assets that exceed the combined GDP of 47 countries?
A world where the richest 2% of global citizens "own" more than 51% of global assets?
Ready for the best part?
Capitalism ensures an already bad problem will only get worse.
"The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) states that income inequality 'first started to rise in the late 70s and early 80s in America and Britain (and also in Israel)'.
"The ratio between the average incomes of the top 5 per cent to the bottom 5 per cent in the world increased from 78:1 in 1988, to 114:1 in 1993..."
"Stiglitz relays that from 1988 to 2008 people in the worlds top 1 per cent saw their incomes increase by 60 per cent, while those in the bottom 5 per cent had no change in their income.
"In America, home to the 2008 recession, from 2009 to 2012, incomes of the top 1 per cent in America, many of which no doubt had a greedy hand in the causes of the meltdown, increased more than 31 per cent, while the incomes of the 99 per cent grew 0.4 per cent less than half a percentage point."
Spotlight on Worldwide Inequality
There are alternatives that don't require infinite "growth."
Capitalism guarantees equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. The quality of your outcome is totally dependent on you.
Don't believe it?
Ask Rick:
"But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe.
"The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage.
"Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a Republican candidate for president, warned this fall that movement 'up into the middle income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in America.'"
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html?hp&_r=0
This won't get better under capitalism.
It is a vicious, venal economic system that has outlived whatever usefulness it once had.
Do you lie awake at night dreaming this stupid shit up? I mean really?