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Merged Economics, politics and the election

Well - totally coincidentally I am sure - wealth inequality was at its lowest in the US between the 1950s-1980s.
 
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Darat said:
Well totally coincidentally I am sure wealth inequality was at its lowest in the US between the 1950s-1980s.
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Hmmmm ..... Wasn't that when income taxes were high and unions were strong ?

Then again it was also following a global conflict when everyone had to work together so perhaps there was a residual sense of community. :confused:
 
The Don said:
Hmmmm ..... Wasn't that when income taxes were high and unions were strong ?

Then again it was also following a global conflict when everyone had to work together so perhaps there was a residual sense of community. :confused:
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And in 1950 at least, the rest of the industrial world's economies had more or less been destroyed by war. Then the economy tanked in the 70s, in part due to Nixon's wage and price controls. So, not very normal times for most of that period.
 
I think what has happened is that for many years most people were seeing and feeling an improvement in their quality of life, their living standards. The problem is that whilst the lower income folk were seeing a couple of percentage points improvement the wealthier were seeing double that. That means the gap has increased and now to extract more wealth to the wealthiest the less wealthy are seeing their standard of living dropping. There is no way to stop this given the current political landscape and pseudo-capitalist economy we have.
 
ahhell said:
And in 1950 at least, the rest of the industrial world's economies had more or less been destroyed by war. Then the economy tanked in the 70s, in part due to Nixon's wage and price controls. So, not very normal times for most of that period.
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Also the Cold War was on, and computers had been invented but weren't ubiquitous, and there wasn't an internet...there are too many variables in play to figure out a simple cause. Maybe that period was unusual, and the normal state of economies throughout history is massive wealth disparity, and we just think it's unusual because we were born in the bubble of atypicality. Damn, that's depressing.
 
ahhell said:
And in 1950 at least, the rest of the industrial world's economies had more or less been destroyed by war. Then the economy tanked in the 70s, in part due to Nixon's wage and price controls. So, not very normal times for most of that period.
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It wasn't the 90 day freeze on wages and prices that likely caused the Nixon shock. It was the actions regarding currency.
 
Darat said:
Well - totally coincidentally I am sure - wealth inequality was at its lowest in the US between the 1950s-1980s.
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Google says....

For tax years 1944 through 1951, the highest marginal tax rate for individuals was 91%, increasing to 92% for 1952 and 1953, and reverting to 91% 1954 through 1963. For the 1964 tax year, the top marginal tax rate for individuals was lowered to 77%, and then to 70% for tax years 1965 through 1981.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Also the Cold War was on, and computers had been invented but weren't ubiquitous, and there wasn't an internet...there are too many variables in play to figure out a simple cause. Maybe that period was unusual, and the normal state of economies throughout history is massive wealth disparity, and we just think it's unusual because we were born in the bubble of atypicality. Damn, that's depressing.
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For most of the history of civilisation, say the last 6000 years, the default has been to have lots and lots of very poor people and very few, very rich people.

The fact that the only time in history this has not been the case is when the rich were taxed at, frankly, punitive rates may be a coincidence, but I think we should run the experiment again as I suspect this is causal.

Of course, as described above, there are confounding factors.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Maybe that period was unusual, and the normal state of economies throughout history is massive wealth disparity, and we just think it's unusual because we were born in the bubble of atypicality. Damn, that's depressing.
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*chuckles liturgically*
 
3point14 said:
For most of the history of civilisation, say the last 6000 years, the default has been to have lots and lots of very poor people and very few, very rich people.

The fact that the only time in history this has not been the case is when the rich were taxed at, frankly, punitive rates may be a coincidence, but I think we should run the experiment again as I suspect this is causal.

Of course, as described above, there are confounding factors.
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Utterly false.

The normal thing was to have very regular Debt Amnesties, at the least every time when a new Ruler was crowned, but sometimes as often as every 7 years.
And, of course, the Rich would provide lavish feasts for the poor, and have at least half their wealth destroyed for burial purposes.

Wealth has never increased as much or as fast as in the last few decades - it's a complete outlier.
 
Why are we paying 48 000 for a new car? What kind of car? A single person buying a car to get to work should be able to get onevfor 30 000.
 
ahhell said:
I am reminded that the only reason I post in politics is because there is an audience.
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Oh, you're so smart and obviulsy better than us.

I did not actually claim the left has been more hostile the right, I just claim they have been.
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...What...?

I get it,
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I doubt it

if you are for progress, anyone that disagrees with you must be for regress, if you are anti-fascist, anyone that disagrees with you must be a fascist. Makes sense.
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Yup, I was right.
 
The problem with cars being expensive is that the Right hates poor people and the Left hates that cars exist.
 
They disagree on the specifics of the tariffs they want? They disagree on the exact nature of taxes they want to reduce? Harris may or may not support some sort of price controls, I suspect trump is ok with that depending on the prices in question though.
 
Trump doesn't have macroeconomic policies.

What I see is personal transactional policies.
 
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