These policies exacerbate inequality. In fact, I think economic inequality wouldn't be an big issue without this crap.
https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-hi...
> Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a somewhat higher inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just temporarily, but on a sustained basis.
Furthermore, correlation is not causation, but if you look at graphs of when economic productivity diverges from worker compensation (https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/) the systemic divergence occurs suspiciously close to 1972, which is right after Nixon Shock, when the dollar ceased to be tethered to a neutral third party (flawed though it may be) and began to solely be in hands of policy interests. Yes, the EPI draws the line at 1979, but really? Do we not have eyes?
Fortunately it's boring and complicated which is a built in guarantee that a large percentage of people will never care about it.
Turns out when you create methods to transfer wealth within a society, whoever has the most power in that society usually uses it to capture wealth. We already have a type of de facto socialism, it's just controlled by the ultra wealthy for their own benefit.
I happen to be in the Hayekian camp that says this isn't really a just a failure to correctly implement socialism, this is an actual property of all socialism. Obviously you could argue that, but this seems to historically generally be true.
I believe that even if a well intentioned Bernie type came in and created a wealth transfer system, over time that system would be captured by the powerful and still end up transferring wealth back to them. You can be guaranteed that at a minimum there will be an attempt to do this.
Ironically, a switch to a more truly capitalistic situation where businesses had to make money in the marketplace instead of rent seeking for conducive fed policy would probably be less friendly to large business interests on average.
You focus so much attention on the Fed you lose sight of the fact that rent seeking would shift from the Fed to the Customer.
The problem is fundamentally tied to conservative investment behavior. Given a rational choice, most people lend money to the people most likely to pay it back which are the same entrenched players the lenders are already dealing with.
Throw in the wage growth stagnation incentivized in order to put on the appearance of bigger growth numbers, and you develop a clot in the flow of money to the labor class, therefore decreased mobility from the labor to capital side of things.
Throw in hyperoptimization facilitated value deserts around rapidly consolidating industries, and you have a perfect positive feedback loop to enable wealth extraction from the middle class, while the capital wielders are scratching their heads wondering where all the new blood is.
Crushed with debt, bled dry by the XaaS revolution, exorbitant uncontrolled healthcare costs, and in a distorted market in which the name of the game is to try to keep people buying for the love of God.
Agriculture is already starting to suffer from over consolidation of the dairy industry since Walmart's vertical integration combined with USDA policies favoring the hyperoptimized industrial farmer over everyone else.
Something has to give. Will be interesting toseewho throws up their hands first; Bankers, Business, the Fed, or Labor.
"...recipients of new money enjoy higher standards of living at the expense of later recipients..."[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cantillon#Monetary_the...
+50 internet points for you!
Stocks go up and down. When the whole reason that stocks go up is because a arbitrary number inside the fed and treasury databases went up, I'd argue that move up probably won't last forever. If you time the market then maybe you could profit off of this. Timing the market is hard, even when you can see the bigger picture.
But no, the .01% are the PE people who are using this imaginary money to transfer possession of real assets to themselves with 0 interest loans which will be subsidized as "too big to fail" in the event the whole scheme doesn't work out and the executives who are buying their own stock with the money to trigger their own 7 and 8 figure incentive packages before the scheme collapses then further triggering their golden parachutes.
You aren't the smart money here (neither am I).
If your equities are going up 10% a year but you only have $20k in the market, but make $100k in salary, and your salary growth is falling behind the cost of living, you're not doing well, particularly compared to the person with $100M in the market and not going to work for a living.