A Staggering $50 Trillion
March 13, 2021 10:34 AM Subscribe
Since both parties play the press-nudging game, I'd like to think this is an initial salvo for Warren's wealth tax, especially seeing how it's coming out in Time Magazine like this. The end result may be unlikely to match the plan she has now, but staking out the territory is imporant for anchoring the terms of the debate.
posted by rhizome at 11:04 AM on March 13, 2021 [24 favorites]
posted by rhizome at 11:04 AM on March 13, 2021 [24 favorites]
That's a lotta avocado toast.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:11 AM on March 13, 2021 [24 favorites]
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:11 AM on March 13, 2021 [24 favorites]
I am glad we have all been realizing & saying out loud for some time now our lives were supposed to be better than this & now there's proof. It's like you go the dr like hey I feel like shit & then the bloodwork & imaging comes back like ah, yes, you feel like shit. It's the necessary first step towards fixing it.
posted by bleep at 11:52 AM on March 13, 2021 [21 favorites]
posted by bleep at 11:52 AM on March 13, 2021 [21 favorites]
Two FRED graphs:
a) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=BWnf
Blue is after-tax corporate profits (2020 dollars)
Red is total wages (2020 dollars)
Dotted green is wage-earner share of the pie (right axis)
This shows that capital getting ~10% of the pie was peak good times for workers, and that capital quickly doubled its share during the Bush years.
b) Per-worker share of the wages under 90% of (wages + after-tax profits)
Shows that if workers were getting 90% of the pie now we'd all on average have an extra $500/mo to spend.
(this charting is just a baseline on the timing; the actual reality is much, much uglier)
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 1:35 PM on March 13, 2021 [12 favorites]
a) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=BWnf
Blue is after-tax corporate profits (2020 dollars)
Red is total wages (2020 dollars)
Dotted green is wage-earner share of the pie (right axis)
This shows that capital getting ~10% of the pie was peak good times for workers, and that capital quickly doubled its share during the Bush years.
b) Per-worker share of the wages under 90% of (wages + after-tax profits)
Shows that if workers were getting 90% of the pie now we'd all on average have an extra $500/mo to spend.
(this charting is just a baseline on the timing; the actual reality is much, much uglier)
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 1:35 PM on March 13, 2021 [12 favorites]
The focus on COVID reminds me of when I was in a class on British history, and at the height of the British empire the health outcomes between the middle and upper classes, and the factory workers were so stark that the middle and upper classes were, on average, 5 inches taller. (The “Eloi” and the “Morlocks” in H.G. Wells.) This only really became an issue during WWI and WWII, when the working classes were too physically unfit to fight in the war. So the ownership class, the leadership class, at that point finally paid attention, because it finally affected their interests.
Maybe there’s something similar happening now (at least twelve years too late) in the USA...
posted by subdee at 1:55 PM on March 13, 2021 [13 favorites]
Maybe there’s something similar happening now (at least twelve years too late) in the USA...
posted by subdee at 1:55 PM on March 13, 2021 [13 favorites]
This article about the COVID relief bill also imagines that the winds might be shifting:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/03/what-is-in-covid-relief-bill-stimulus-checks-biden-progressives.html
For most of the past four decades, American policy-makers have set the opposite priority. When consumer demand is high and labor markets are tight, it is difficult for employers to replace their existing workers with unemployed ones. For this reason, in a “full employment” economy, workers can generally extract higher wages from their bosses through the implicit or explicit threat of quitting. And when workers win wage increases, employers sometimes respond by raising prices. Following the “stagflation” crisis of the late 1970s, America’s fiscal and monetary authorities decided that preempting price hikes was so much more important than promoting full employment that they had a duty to keep millions of Americans involuntarily unemployed at all times, lest labor secure too much leverage over capital.
The article argues that the relief bill indicates a willingness to work in the opposite direction, towards “increasing labor’s leverage over capital,” but that it doesn’t go far enough, since a lot of the welfare provisions are temporary and expire at the end of the year.
This TIME magazine article is excellent BTW, not just that it explains the upward redistribution of wealth clearly but also that it points out that "globalization" and "women and minorities entering the workforce" are not the real reason for the upward distribution, but just distractions or scapegoats.
posted by subdee at 2:02 PM on March 13, 2021 [15 favorites]
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/03/what-is-in-covid-relief-bill-stimulus-checks-biden-progressives.html
For most of the past four decades, American policy-makers have set the opposite priority. When consumer demand is high and labor markets are tight, it is difficult for employers to replace their existing workers with unemployed ones. For this reason, in a “full employment” economy, workers can generally extract higher wages from their bosses through the implicit or explicit threat of quitting. And when workers win wage increases, employers sometimes respond by raising prices. Following the “stagflation” crisis of the late 1970s, America’s fiscal and monetary authorities decided that preempting price hikes was so much more important than promoting full employment that they had a duty to keep millions of Americans involuntarily unemployed at all times, lest labor secure too much leverage over capital.
The article argues that the relief bill indicates a willingness to work in the opposite direction, towards “increasing labor’s leverage over capital,” but that it doesn’t go far enough, since a lot of the welfare provisions are temporary and expire at the end of the year.
This TIME magazine article is excellent BTW, not just that it explains the upward redistribution of wealth clearly but also that it points out that "globalization" and "women and minorities entering the workforce" are not the real reason for the upward distribution, but just distractions or scapegoats.
posted by subdee at 2:02 PM on March 13, 2021 [15 favorites]
Keep in mind that Time is staid, middle-of-the-road, not remotely progressive. pretty amazing that they published this; good on them.
posted by theora55 at 3:42 PM on March 13, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by theora55 at 3:42 PM on March 13, 2021 [8 favorites]
This is amazing. It would be nice to make an income calculator, where someone could plug in their current income and find out how much they would be making had income inequality stayed constant.
posted by chaz at 4:14 PM on March 13, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by chaz at 4:14 PM on March 13, 2021 [6 favorites]
[snorts coffee out nose]
The study was done by the RAND Corporation?!?
The guard at the castle wall sees the mob of pitchforks and torches, checks his empty wallet, decides to pick a different side
posted by armoir from antproof case at 4:22 PM on March 13, 2021 [21 favorites]
The study was done by the RAND Corporation?!?
The guard at the castle wall sees the mob of pitchforks and torches, checks his empty wallet, decides to pick a different side
posted by armoir from antproof case at 4:22 PM on March 13, 2021 [21 favorites]
It is a surprisingly direct article for Time, but it looks like it was published six months ago, so I guess it didn’t kick off a revolution.
posted by snofoam at 5:15 PM on March 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by snofoam at 5:15 PM on March 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
The study was done by the RAND Corporation?!?
The guard at the castle wall sees the mob of pitchforks and torches, checks his empty wallet, decides to pick a different side
???
Have you ever heard of the RAND Corporation?
posted by 2N2222 at 7:04 PM on March 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
The guard at the castle wall sees the mob of pitchforks and torches, checks his empty wallet, decides to pick a different side
???
Have you ever heard of the RAND Corporation?
posted by 2N2222 at 7:04 PM on March 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
Have you ever heard of the RAND Corporation?
Yes. Many times over many years at many levels of influence. Which is exactly what motivated the comment.
Do they do good work? Yes.
Do they do some less good work? Yes.
Are some of their clients not exactly working in the best interests of the non-wealth-having parts of the populace? Hell yes.
Would they be better off — let alone exist — if the wealth had been better allocated starting several decades ago? Hell no.
Glad to see they are willing to turn a page, but fuck if that ain’t a little funny.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 9:20 PM on March 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
Yes. Many times over many years at many levels of influence. Which is exactly what motivated the comment.
Do they do good work? Yes.
Do they do some less good work? Yes.
Are some of their clients not exactly working in the best interests of the non-wealth-having parts of the populace? Hell yes.
Would they be better off — let alone exist — if the wealth had been better allocated starting several decades ago? Hell no.
Glad to see they are willing to turn a page, but fuck if that ain’t a little funny.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 9:20 PM on March 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
Fun fact: google search now autocompletes “50 tril” to “50 trillion divided by 300 million”. Guess I’m not the only one too lazy to count zeros in a calculator app
posted by ook at 6:56 AM on March 14, 2021 [10 favorites]
posted by ook at 6:56 AM on March 14, 2021 [10 favorites]
Reminds me of a quote I read in an article about Texas Organizing Project.
"The side effect of the massive transfer of wealth upwards," the interviewee said, "is that we're all poor down here."
posted by atchafalaya at 6:20 PM on March 14, 2021 [3 favorites]
"The side effect of the massive transfer of wealth upwards," the interviewee said, "is that we're all poor down here."
posted by atchafalaya at 6:20 PM on March 14, 2021 [3 favorites]
In 1989 I was working at a grocery store as a "courtesy clerk" (i.e. a sacker) and during breaks I got to know one of the college students who worked behind the main desk (we called it the "cage") and was blown away to learn she was making nearly $9 an hour (all the money in the world to me at that time.) This was when the tuition at the university was $700 a semester and rent for a mostly-habitable apartment was around $150 a month (if you had a roommate.) She quite literally was paying her way through school with that job.
Fast forward to 2021. I learned recently that the same job she had in 1989 pays around $12 an hour today. Meanwhile tuition at the university is $5500 a semester, the costs of books are beyond exorbitant and rent is around $600 (if you have a roommate). There is simply no way a person in the same situation today could pay their way through school as my co-worker was doing in 1989.
For me that says everything you really need to know about our society today and the way wealth has been redistributed upwards at the expense of the working/middle classes.
posted by drstrangelove at 5:11 AM on March 15, 2021 [12 favorites]
Fast forward to 2021. I learned recently that the same job she had in 1989 pays around $12 an hour today. Meanwhile tuition at the university is $5500 a semester, the costs of books are beyond exorbitant and rent is around $600 (if you have a roommate). There is simply no way a person in the same situation today could pay their way through school as my co-worker was doing in 1989.
For me that says everything you really need to know about our society today and the way wealth has been redistributed upwards at the expense of the working/middle classes.
posted by drstrangelove at 5:11 AM on March 15, 2021 [12 favorites]
As I keep telling my chronically-Republican-voting friend when he gets antsy about talk of "wealth redistribution," the correct term is "recovery of stolen property."
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:41 AM on March 15, 2021 [15 favorites]
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:41 AM on March 15, 2021 [15 favorites]
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