Couple Of Articles On Wealth And Its Distribution In The Us

[rockhopper]

apologies if these have been posted before :

guardian article "After the crash: the pauperisation of middle-class America"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/may/27/economics-useconomy

and the vanity fair article "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%" by stiglitz

http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105

from somewhere I had previously found a quote that came from this one

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.

cheers,

rockhopper

[sesim]

Good articles.. thanks for posting.

One thing that is missing from both articles (yet again) is the expansion of the money supply.

When I grew up, my mum - a regular nurse was able to support herself, dad and two kids. Now two salaries struggle to do that.

As the money supply expands, each pound buys less, so things are less affordable - for the none-rich, they take debt on to make up the difference.

The rich benefit from the expanding money supply, since they own the companies that employ the people and make the profits in an expanding economy, own the politicians, or as now, they are the banksters who get free bailouts in return for threatening to close the cash machines when their investments go bad.

So the rich escape debt and invest their profits in real assets (that are reasonably inflation-proof), and the poor don't only have nothing - they have less than nothing - debt.

If the money suppy wasn't expanded by the central banks in the first place - at the same rate, there would be less of a boom, less currency debauchment, less debt, less fake growth and less of those profits being generated for the rich to slurp up in the first place.

It all comes down to the money supply. The rich just take advantage of the expansion (and contraction) , on the way up, and on the way down. They know how to play the game. Everyone else don't see the game, don't know the rules, so are gradually impoverished by it.

It's obviously too late now to stop the money supply growing.. the rich have the assets, and everyone else has the debt. Damage done.

It amazes me that the money supply is such a subtle thing, it's effects so invisible - even to Stiglitz et al.

[Executive Sadman]

Stop feeling so hard done by. In intergenerational terms, we in the west, even the 'poor' will probably be the most comfortable in standard of living terms that has ever existed or will ever exist, thanks to the oil age.

We're all guilty.