After adjusting for inflation, wages are higher than at any point in U.S. history, and after adjusting for age and sex, the percentage of the population that is employed is around its peak in U.S. history.

  • capital_sniff@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 hours ago

    I guess that is one way to present a nice picture for the people at the top. Here’s the way I see it. This neo-liberal experiment has been a massive disaster. We’ve allowed the elites to dismantle so much of our social safety net, and all for what… cheap smart phones with facebook? The very same phones that help power the culture war. A war so devastating it has captured and rotted the brains of large segments of our population.

    Meanwhile, we the general citizens have been getting fleeced in one of the greatest transfers of wealth from the public to the private. And what are these elites doing with all their new wealth? Buying up every available asset that can produce a dollar and writing the rules to benefit those with excessive wealth.

    I’ll leave with an example from the housing market, because it has been so popular lately and because it is a perfect example of this wealth transfer. This is broad and general. People and institutions over extended themselves and got drunk on paper asset inflation during the housing bubble. The gov’t bailed out the big institutions and stuck the common people with the bill. This resulted in tighter lending for the regular home buyer and cheap available funds for institutions such as hedge funds. So tons of available housing stock sitting on bank’s balance sheets were easy pickings for funds.