meanwhile, as everyone focuses on trivia

[callmeslick]

.....and points fingers at one another, this is continuing, apace. As I've noted before,we have, for about 10 years, transferred more wealth in the US via inheritance than we have via wages. Look at the numbers in this article and realize the process has just started. No party comes remotely close to addressing the matter of excessive wealth inequality, or how to run a decent modern society with this wealth transfer going on. None.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personal ... li=BBnbfcL

[woodchip]

Since you are party to this, Your concern comes off a tad empty.

[callmeslick]

Actually, Woody, where I'm at falls in the grey area. Not enough to make the list of 'uber-wealthy' that they set at $80 million, but far more than most, and over half of it via inheritance, and at least another quarter earned from investing earlier inheritance. My concern, which I've pitched to my fellow travellers for a LONG time, is that we're heading to a time where we will be the targets of violent revolts OR our descendants will be living in isolated enclaves of well off people, behind hired security. That isn't my America, and the idea that money equals happiness is what rings hollow to me.

[callmeslick]

so, other than an ad hominem attack, Woody, do you have ANY thoughts on the matter?

[Tunnelcat]

Actually, Woody, where I'm at falls in the grey area. Not enough to make the list of 'uber-wealthy' that they set at $80 million, but far more than most, and over half of it via inheritance, and at least another quarter earned from investing earlier inheritance. My concern, which I've pitched to my fellow travellers for a LONG time, is that we're heading to a time where we will be the targets of violent revolts OR our descendants will be living in isolated enclaves of well off people, behind hired security. That isn't my America, and the idea that money equals happiness is what rings hollow to me.

It's already started. We're already surrounded by desperate homeless people who camp right next to people's backyards in those urban park recreation areas (making those unusable and dangerous to the general public) and then resort to stealing from homeowners near them because it's convenient. It wouldn't take much more suffering for some type of mass revolt to kick in and start chaos. The people who will be most affected by that turmoil will be middle class people living in our large suburban areas, as the link below shows in Portland, OR. The poor are already affected. Portland is not alone in this either. The middle class also doesn't have the luxury or wealth to live behind fortified concrete walls with armed guards or to be able to drive around in armored cars to get anywhere. Welcome to the dog eat dog world of Republican fantasy where the spoiled kids of the über wealthy lock themselves behind walled and armed fortresses in order to protect themselves from the mass poverty and desperation of the rest of the people who don't have good jobs or homes.

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/inde ... hooti.html

[callmeslick]

beyond limiting your words of blame at the GOP(this was a bi-partisan march here), the rest is exactly correct. My only other quibble is the restraint you show in painting the picture, which I'd ascribe to subconsciously not wishing to paint reality fully. There essentially IS no middle class at this point. There are working class families and investment class families. Some fortunate few from working families get enough wage and benefits to forestall the illusion, but if they aren't RAPIDLY socking investment capital aside, they're every bit as screwed insofar as their descendants' trajectory. Others own small businesses which provide some buffer, but most of those won't be greatly sustainable at current income once the divide gets too far along.

[Tunnelcat]

I disagree. I think that there is still a small but dwindling middle class around, but it's rapidly going to require some life support. There are still enough boomers around to make a middle class still viable because they're the ones with most of the old money, but once they're mostly gone in a decade or 2, it's going to be a nasty place to live in this country because all the wealth will be held by a few. And I blame Reagan for starting the march towards all of this and a lot of liberals for becoming too comfortable and cozy with their own status quo.

[callmeslick]

won't split hairs, TC. I view the middle class as beyond the life-support stage because I still see the toxic divisiveness in the general public. Too little too late unless someone proposes and enacts a radical fix(like a return to 1960 tax code adjusted for inflation).

[Tunnelcat]

won't split hairs, TC. I view the middle class as beyond the life-support stage because I still see the toxic divisiveness in the general public. Too little too late unless someone proposes and enacts a radical fix(like a return to 1960 tax code adjusted for inflation).

It may be beyond life support, but it ain't totally dead....yet. But I agree that a return to the 1960's tax code would be the only way to revive it. But fat chance of that happening in today's climate, unless a Great Depression happened again to knock a few of the wealthy out of their golden towers of power.

[callmeslick]

you point out a fallacy that I suppose the bulk of the public never really considers. Depressions, recessions are ALWAYS retrenchment moments, bagging a few nouveaus and rubes, but largely hurting the modest investors and long-term pension holdings. In 2008, virtually everyone I knew had liquidated vast chunks of equities by the 1st quarter, when things went to crap in mid summer. You can literally smell bubbles forming most of the time, and most folks with cash pay folks to manage money and assets and those folks also can smell a rat if they're worth what you pay them. Thus, when the stock market hit a bottom, right around the Obama inaugural, everyone who had bailed in January of 2008 bought up on the cheap. I can distinctly remember buying blocks of Wells Fargo at $7.80, PNC at $11, even tech stuff like Amazon for like $65, or a bit more. Thus, in the great depression, the old families made a killing, same for every recession since, and a MASSIVE amount of money was made from the last 'great' recession. Recoveries from recession almost always happen, and any purchase at the trough is simply bound to make money, and rather quickly. It didn't hurt that Obama was handling matters, as his team worked at preserving liquidity and propping up industry.

[woodchip]

The middle class started disappearing with NAFTA. So allowing companies to go foreign with the idea they would build up the wages in those countries, all the while not seeing it would be at the expense of the middle class here. And everyone pooh poohed Ross Perot.

[callmeslick]

The middle class started disappearing with NAFTA

please flesh that out. What makes you peg it to that, as opposed to the changes in the tax code that started in the mid seventies.

.

So allowing companies to go foreign with the idea they would build up the wages in those countries, all the while not seeing it would be at the expense of the middle class here. And everyone pooh poohed Ross Perot.

would you pass on the global economy? That would have changed nothing except where the wealthy invested their assets.

[callmeslick]

“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater


keep focused on this reality, no matter who wins, you all better get your representatives to deal with this or Vonnegut is merely prescient and not cautionary.