the other mike
Diamond Member
According to a recent paper by University of California-Berkeley professor Gabriel Zucman, the top 1% in the country own 40% of the country's wealth. And with income inequality skyrocketing over the past 30 years, even the people that have benefited most from the system are calling out its flaws.
According to Business Insider, JPMorgan Chase CEO and billionaire Jamie Dimon has sounded the alarm on the threat that rising levels of inequality will pose for the country.
And while President Donald Trump rode the support of people struggling to make ends meet to the White House, experts say his policies have only been exacerbated the divide between the haves and the have-nots. Major corporations like Dimon's didn't use the savings they have gotten from the tax bill to pay workers' higher salaries or create new branches. Rather, they used it to buy back stock, boost their share prices, and help the minority of the American population that is invested in the stock market.
Americans are not happy*, and for good reason: They continue to suffer financial stress caused by decades of flat income. And every time they make the slightest peep of complaint about a system rigged against them, the rich and powerful tell them to shut up because it is all their fault.
One percenters instruct them to work harder, pull themselves up by their bootstraps and stop bellyaching. Just get a second college degree, a second skill, a second job. Just send the spouse to work, downsize, take a staycation instead of a real vacation. Or don’t take one at all, just work harder and longer and better.
The barrage of blaming has resulted in workers believing they deserve censure. And that’s a big part of the reason they’re unhappy. If only, they think, they could work harder and longer and better, they would get ahead. They bear the shame. They don’t blame the system: the Supreme Court, the Congress, the president. And yet, it is the system, the American system, that has conspired to crush them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, unemployment is low and the stock market is high. But skyrocketing stocks benefit only the top 10% of wealthy Americans who own 84 percent of stocks. And while more people are employed now than during the Great Recession, the vast majority of Americans haven’t had a real raise since 1979.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-untold-story-of-trumps-booming-economy/
*From the article;
Americans labor 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, 260 more than Brits, and 499 more than the French, according to the International Labor Organization.
And the longer hours aren’t because American workers are laggards on the job. They’re very productive. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates that the average American worker’s productivity has increased 400 percent since 1950.
According to Business Insider, JPMorgan Chase CEO and billionaire Jamie Dimon has sounded the alarm on the threat that rising levels of inequality will pose for the country.
And while President Donald Trump rode the support of people struggling to make ends meet to the White House, experts say his policies have only been exacerbated the divide between the haves and the have-nots. Major corporations like Dimon's didn't use the savings they have gotten from the tax bill to pay workers' higher salaries or create new branches. Rather, they used it to buy back stock, boost their share prices, and help the minority of the American population that is invested in the stock market.
Americans are not happy*, and for good reason: They continue to suffer financial stress caused by decades of flat income. And every time they make the slightest peep of complaint about a system rigged against them, the rich and powerful tell them to shut up because it is all their fault.
One percenters instruct them to work harder, pull themselves up by their bootstraps and stop bellyaching. Just get a second college degree, a second skill, a second job. Just send the spouse to work, downsize, take a staycation instead of a real vacation. Or don’t take one at all, just work harder and longer and better.
The barrage of blaming has resulted in workers believing they deserve censure. And that’s a big part of the reason they’re unhappy. If only, they think, they could work harder and longer and better, they would get ahead. They bear the shame. They don’t blame the system: the Supreme Court, the Congress, the president. And yet, it is the system, the American system, that has conspired to crush them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, unemployment is low and the stock market is high. But skyrocketing stocks benefit only the top 10% of wealthy Americans who own 84 percent of stocks. And while more people are employed now than during the Great Recession, the vast majority of Americans haven’t had a real raise since 1979.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-untold-story-of-trumps-booming-economy/
*From the article;
Americans labor 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, 260 more than Brits, and 499 more than the French, according to the International Labor Organization.
And the longer hours aren’t because American workers are laggards on the job. They’re very productive. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates that the average American worker’s productivity has increased 400 percent since 1950.
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