America Is Regressing into a Developing Nation for Most People | Hacker News Reader

America Is Regressing into a Developing Nation for Most People

evonomics.com

3 pointsmonsieurpng5 comments

Although an interesting write-up, I hesitate with anything that dichotomizes complex systems into only 2 options, as there are many spots on the spectrum and continuum of economic means and balance. Although "developing world" is true, and I can see the visual of rich people behind fences and poor people in the streets, there is actually a lot of gradation in our economic system(a) that does not support a "two party approach." I find it very intriguing that most researchers on the American continent split thinks into binary systems, like organizing your wardrobe into left socks and right socks, it really glazes over a lot of fidelity.

maybe or are why seeing "Strange attractors" from Chaos theory?

Whereas I tend to reject analyses (literally meaning splitting) that can't even come up with one meaningful division. The whole point of the article is that while there's still some variety, we're losing a huge part of the economic ecosystem in the middle, that is, that we're dichotimizing; if you have contravening statistics, by all means provide them.

I have no data to contest this article, I agree with the findings just based on my own common sense. There is not enough elaboration on how to fix the situation, though, which is my main interest these days.

>What can we do?

We’ve been digging ourselves into a hole for over forty years, but Temin says that we know how to stop digging. If we spent more on domestic rather than military activities, then the middle class would not vanish as quickly. The effects of technological change and globalization could be altered by political actions. We could restore and expand education, shifting resources from policies like mass incarceration to improving the human and social capital of all Americans. We could upgrade infrastructure, forgive mortgage and educational debt in the low-wage sector, reject the notion that private entities should replace democratic government in directing society, and focus on embracing an integrated American population. We could tax not only the income of the rich, but also their capital.

The cost of not doing these things, Temin warns, is incalculably high, and even the rich will end up paying for it

It's true! Even the wealthy would benefit tremendously from wealth redistribution. It's sad that it's not a more ordinary thought in the US. But, the nation is not becoming a dual economy, it is becoming a singular economy with a growing class of people completely un-involved in the economic happenings of the land. A more inclusionary, participatory system would solve a lot of the issues right off the bat, but to fully embrace capacity-economic-participation our culture needs to grow more kind and inclusive in tandem.

There's no shortage of data about steeply growing inequality, here's just one recent article that caught my attention, by Ray Dalio, no less, saying it's up by six times: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/our-biggest-economic-social-p...

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