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It’s not just stocks that have benefited the super rich: housing has too. While a generation ago, the middle class held more than 44% of real estate assets in the country, it is now down to 38%. The pandemic generated a boom in housing values that has benefited most those who owned real estate in the first place. It also led to soaring rents this year, which hurt those who can’t afford a house. The self-feeding loop was yet another source of wealth transfer for the wealthier.
So the next time someone abuses the popular phrase “they hate us for our [fill in the blank]”, perhaps it’s time to counter that “they” may not “hate” us at all, but rather are making fun of what has quietly and slowly but surely become the world’s biggest banana republic?
And it has not Russia, nor China, nor any other foreign enemy to blame except one: the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States.
What does this say about our future?
7 replies on “The US Is Officially A Banana Republic: The Top 1% Now Own More Wealth Than The Entire Middle Class”
I thought a banana republic was a country with no rule of law.
Exactly! The entire lawless mob of fruits and nuts dictate reality for the rest of the population.
More specifically, a country with no rule of law, that masquerades as having one.
Such as a two-tier legal system; One set of laws for the People, another set of laws for the Deep state.
And, we, the sheeple; We’re to blame because the buck stops here if we’re to call America a self-governing nation.
Income inequality itself isn’t an issue. It soesn’t matter how rich the wealthiest are as long as the rest of the nation has opportunity to prosper. Last year’s government engineered wealth redistribution from small business to the largest corporations is the real problem here.
Agree 100%+
I don’t care about “wealth inequality”. I’m never going to own several yachts and private jets. All I care about is are the rest of us prosperous TOO.
I’ve lived and worked in other countries around the world. There’s some gawd-awful things going on out there. I’ve seen the sort of grinding poverty that exists in the real world and even our lower income class people live better lives than that. Hell, our homeless people live better lives than some of the truly poor and they mostly do that by their own choices.
The difference between the top and the bottom is not as important as is that the bottom be a higher mark too. People in this nation don’t seem to really understand and appreciate what we have here.
Also part of the reason that no one is talking about regarding “income inequality” is that new wealth is BEING CREATED and those at the top are responsible for a lot of that wealth creation. They may not be the actual creators but without them that wealth would not be created either. More power to ’em, I say.
This is not a zero sum game. There is more wealth in the world today than there was 100 years ago by an order of magnitude. There will be more wealth in the world 100 years from now by an even higher magnitude. If we don’t screw up and give in to the pitfalls of socialism, communism, elitism and all the other ‘isms’ that want power above all else.
Because “income inequality” is a political and social landmine. Where would most of us rather live? In a rich country where the poor have flat screen TVs and drive late model cars but the rich are rich beyond imagining, with huge income inequality? Or a poor country where the poor have bellies distended from famine, rickets and scurvy from malnutrition, bot flies erupting from their skin and the richest live like our lower middle class does.
In the former case, all do well, some do better than others even if the income gap between bottom and top is huge. In the latter case even though the income gap is much smaller logarithmically the poor live in misery and the rich live in what our poor would still consider luxury.
It’s all a matter of perspective and not coveting what is not yours and what you have not earned, while at the same time requiring that you get the opportunity to live a good life if you’re willing to commit to that.
“Income inequality” is just another form of grievance baiting. Provided the society is otherwise free.
As Bill demonstrated so well in his video titled “Eat the Rich”, even if we took ALL the wealth away from the wealthy it wouldn’t run the country for a year. It would however put a screeching halt to the creation of more wealth.
I don’t care even a little bit about how wealthy someone else might be. I care about me and my family and we’ve got it pretty damn good compared to some places I’ve been. Like so many things, a lack of gratitude is the first step down the road to destruction.
Let’s not kill and eat the goose that lays the golden eggs. That would be a short feast followed by a long, long famine.