Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete F.
Jim,
It's not poverty that is the problem, it's the shrinking of opportunity for people.
Its because nearly all the benefits of economic growth have been captured by large corporations and their shareholders.
Controlling the flow of capital so that you can capture incrementally more is how you win and the middle class has no chance in that game.
If you do it long enough you control the banks, the means of production and distribution and the government. Forty years ago when I was in my twenties I could call the loan officer at the local bank and get a loan, today that same bank is part of a large corporation with little involvement in the community. That holds true for almost everything we buy today, from fishing equipment to groceries and clothes.
This happened in the Gilded Age and history is repeating, it does that.
Corporations buy up profitable small businesses, reduce management costs per unit and buy more small businesses.
Then they start on each other.
The number of publicly traded corporations has been reduced greatly in the past twenty years, roughly by half.
Corporations have been gobbling up their competition for the past twenty years. The easiest way to control the market is eliminate your competition and the easiest example is any of the FAANG who buy anyone who could compete.
The vast majority of shares are held by the wealthiest people in the US. After-tax corporate profits have doubled from about 5 percent of GDP in 1970 to about 10 percent, even as wages as a share of GDP have fallen by roughly 8 percent. And the wealthiest 1 percent’s share of pre-tax income has more than doubled, from 9 percent in 1973 to 21 percent today. Taken together, these two trends amount to a shift of more than $2 trillion a year from the middle class to corporations and the super-rich.
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"It's not poverty that is the problem, it's the shrinking of opportunity for people"
Agreed 100%.
"Its because nearly all the benefits of economic growth have been captured by large corporations and their shareholders"
Too much energy is dedicated to enriching large corporations and shareholders. I wouldn't say "nearly all". There are too many people who move up the economic ladder for me to buy that "nearly all" of the benefits go to big business. But I agree that too many politicians prioritize bib business over families, I agree 100%.