Its a matter of extend and pretend. Normal folks don’t expend the effort to look at how over leveraged the entire world economy is. Notice how there are no more debt crisis’s? The Fed stopped recording the official debt. So no more debt crisis’s. Check out shadowstats for real debt, unemployment and employment. The whole banking world is doing extend and pretend. This is why the stock markets are so disconnected from corporate reality. The longer we keep putting off a significant correction the worse a crash will be. All we can do as spectators is prepare.
This is how I see it as well. Sooner or later our debt becomes unsustainable and the shell game can’t go on. I think we are currently spending about 1.30 for every 1.00 worth of tax revenue. Eventually we are going to have to start moving our debt in the other direction…what are we going to do raise taxes 40% or cut spending 40%? Either one is going to have a dramatic impact on the economy, and that is a best case scenario if they actually try to fix the problem before we simply can’t afford to service our debt anymore, which is the more likely scenario.
The rich will continue to get richer and the rich/poor divide will get even bigger. Youngsters today will never be able to afford property and will be work slaves to pay rent which is going to retired boomers.
I’m a bit of a skeptic on a lot of this data they put out. When they throw things out there like the top 1% have more wealth than the bottom 60%…you have to think who are the bottom 60%? A portion of them are just scum bags…druggies, single moms, lazy people, people who love making terrible choices and not learning, etc. There are professional athletes and lottery winners who make millions in a short amount of time who end up with a negative net worth, because no matter how hard you try, you just can’t fix stupid. On the flip side of that you have people with 15 dollar an hour jobs who make good choices, live frugally, and retire millionaires. What are you really comparing when you are looking at the wealth distribution…to me it just seems its nothing but proof the amount of stupid people in society is multiplying.
Also…who are a lot of people with a high net worth? Simple answer…people who lived within their means and saved for retirement. I’m too lazy to look up the statistics, but if I recall correctly its something in the ballpark of 85% of millionaires are self made, and the average age of a millionaire is around 60. Do you think its unreasonable a 60 something year old who spent 40+ years of his life working ends up with a net worth higher than 50 20 year olds who combined have worked less hours than that one 60 something year old?
Plus you also have to look at the concept of how valuable is what you do? I don’t think its unreasonable some doctor who went to school for 10 years and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on education ends up making 300k a year, while someone stocking a shelf at walmart makes 20k. I don’t think its unreasonable someone can grow a business from the ground up and end up worth millions while someone else ends up with very little because they never advanced in life beyond flipping burgers.
It sounds all nice to say things should be more evenly split, but when you start looking at the demographics a bit, and contemplating some numbers, how are you going to accomplish this? Are we going to have a 60k a year minimum wage and a 200k a year maximum wage? Hell even if we did that you’d still end up with people who end up in debt and other who end up multi millionaires. Are we going to start taxing seniors at a higher rate because its not fair they have more wealth after a life time of work? Are we going to have government provided smart phones, cable tv, twice yearly vacations, and new cars every 4 years so people who like spending money on those things don’t have to anymore, and they can save more?
With that being said, the only thing that p~~~es me off in the realm of the whole wealth distribution thing, is how the middle class end up paying 35-40% tax rates while the rich pay 15-20% because the bulk of their income is capital gains, not payroll. I’m not of the mind set we should be soaking the rich for obscene amounts of taxes, but I wouldn’t mind seeing us all paying 20-25%, as well as requirements for government assistance being a bit more strict because I think we have a s~~~ load of people out there just gaming the system because its easier than working.
Anonymous 4 years, 1 month ago.
