So how do you explain everything that happened on the wealth inequality front from the 1970s up to the financial crisis of 2009?
I don't agree with everything in the original article either, but many of the points it made are correct.
In one word: computers. In tsunami after tsunami from 1975 to the present, computers have revolutionized everything we do. I remember one tsunami in 1975, when slide rules in September were $125 and by December they were $5 and in January they disappeared. The calculator had arrived. In 1980 at Boeing you could hear the roar of the tsunami coming in the form of CAD. Then spreadsheets, word processing, on and on.
It's no coincidence that the biggest companies in the world are all American, and all computer companies.
The big increase in wealth was created by the computer companies, and accrued to the people working in them and those smart enough to have invested in them.
BTW, according to Google: "The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid roughly $616 billion, or 38.5 percent of all income taxes, while the bottom 90 percent paid about $479 billion, or 29.9 percent of all income taxes."
Correction: Wealthy enough to be able to invest in them.
$1,000 invested in AMZN is now worth over $1M. or $10 in Bitcoin would have done the trick.
The survey also found 75 percent of people responded they were living comfortably or "doing ok".
"144 ICOs Launched During 2017 Failed Last Year" https://news.bitcoin.com/144-icos-2017-failed/
Do I really need to illustrate how dumb it is, the idea that the stock market and cryptocurrency are the cure to poverty?
Besides, you can just invest in the S&P500 via SPY.
If you know the future. Tells us a few stocks where investing $1000 today would give you a million in 2 decades.
https://www.calculator.net/investment-calculator.html
For $5,000 per year, you'll have $1,073,000 after 40 years.
7% is the average stock market return, adjusted for inflation.
If you invest $0.00, you'll have $0.00 after 40 years.
Robinhood enables buying fractional shares.
On the TV news a couple weeks ago was a 6 year old kid whose mom gave him $60 worth of Gamestock stock. He cashed it in for $3,000.
Besides, the article wasn't about some people. It was about the majority of people.
I'm not arguing that access in itself is bad. I'm arguing that new money speculating in the equities market often doesn't go well.
> new money speculating in the equities market often doesn't go well.
It goes better than lottery tickets, which target the poor and the mathematically challenged. Stocks at least have an upward bias, while lottery tickets have a strong downward bias.
BTW, wealthy people lose money in the stock market, too. Stocks do not come with guarantees for anybody.
What's that as a percentage of their annual increase in wealth? By my calculation, with a wealth increase of "$2.5 trillion a year" (from the article), that income tax amount works out as a flat 25% rate.
Are you able to articulate why you believe "because Fed policy" doesn't apply as a valid argument for 1970 through 2009?
Of course there's never a single thing that explains a complex issue, but the root of the current Fed's monetary policy goes back to Greenspan, so the poster's argument could easily be extended to that iteration of the Fed.
Also, the 1980s is when (modern) wealth inequality really started to take off. And it's much worse today.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-and...
https://www.ted.com/talks/maneesh_sethi_money_the_greatest_s...
Which led to the removal of the gold standard by those who knew the outcome would proceed as it has.
If Reagan didn't shift the tax burden the very wealthy would not have been able to recover their massive losses as rapidly.