Wealth addiction

Oh, sure they are. I never said they're hiding money in a mattress, though. Where did you get that idea?

But, anyway, we see every week how the One-Percenters keep gaming the system. Who's ripping off whom? The markets are rigged, and the cash flows uphill only. Pretty good way to hoard money. Most of it never flows to the middle class.

Also, jumping to your own conclusions is demonstrably dumb, Dickie. Try harder next time.

 

Totally know I'm working their corners. And to be working them with someone who knows a lot more about economics than I do is definitely the enjoyment of this thread for me. Talking to you helps me think through these ideas and tweak the (admittedly very rough) models in my head. (Though I'll admit to not knowing Mises. I know the others.) I look forward to watching those videos when I've got a chance

 

Make sure you do – Hayek has mad flow. If you like what you see, the videos are the brainchildren of these folks: http://econstories.tv/

 

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_great_divergence/features/2010/the_united_states_of_inequality/introducing_the_great_divergence.html

In 1915, a statistician at the University of Wisconsin named Willford I. King published The Wealth and Income of the People of the United States, the most comprehensive study of its kind to date. The United States was displacing Great Britain as the world's wealthiest nation, but detailed information about its economy was not yet readily available; the federal government wouldn't start collecting such data in any systematic way until the 1930s. One of King's purposes was to reassure the public that all Americans were sharing in the country's newfound wealth.

King was somewhat troubled to find that the richest 1 percent possessed about 15 percent of the nation's income. (A more authoritative subsequent calculation puts the figure slightly higher, at about 18 percent.)

This was the era in which the accumulated wealth of America's richest families—the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Carnegies—helped prompt creation of the modern income tax, lest disparities in wealth turn the United States into a European-style aristocracy. The socialist movement was at its historic peak, a wave of anarchist bombings was terrorizing the nation's industrialists, and President Woodrow Wilson's attorney general, Alexander Palmer, would soon stage brutal raids on radicals of every stripe. In American history, there has never been a time when class warfare seemed more imminent.

That was when the richest 1 percent accounted for 18 percent of the nation's income. Today, the richest 1 percent account for 24 percent of the nation's income. What caused this to happen? Over the next two weeks, I'll try to answer that question by looking at all potential explanations—race, gender, the computer revolution, immigration, trade, government policies, the decline of labor, compensation policies on Wall Street and in executive suites, and education. Then I'll explain why people who say we don't need to worry about income inequality (there aren't many of them) are wrong.

 

I remember that series. Doesn't Noah ultimately conclude that the education disparity is the culprit?

 

And what causes that? I agree, though.

Education and/or training in a skill will lift people up.

 

If wealth is an addiction, here's a guy who needs an intervention: Tom Perkins, founder of probably the most successful venture capital firm of all time, writes a letter to WSJ titled "Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?"

http://online.wSportsJournalists.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304549504579316913982034286

The 1 percent used to be the Jews. Now they are the rich, according to him. For instance, people think Danielle Steel is a snob and dare to say that, which is obviously just like imprisonment and extermination when you think about it.