ysabetwordsmith | Money Matters

I first saw this on Doug's computer screen, from the commentary essay "Money Matters." This is the quote that caught my eye:

The truth is that while the proximate cause of America’s economic plunge was Wall Street’s excesses leading up to the crash of 2008, its underlying cause — and the reason the economy continues to be lousy for most Americans — is so much income and wealth have been going to the very top that the vast majority no longer has the purchasing power to lift the economy out of its doldrums.

Well, yes. I have been saying that for quite some time. But the person who said this version has served as the 22nd Secretary of Labor. You might ignore me, but he has all the fancy paper and experience to show for it. Of course the obvious is still the obvious: no matter what you try, 20% of the wealth can't run 80% of the economy. Further thoughtful details appear in "The Republican Shakedown," which explains how Republicans are digging in taxpayer pockets. The problem with a shakedown, though, is that eventually you get down to pocket lint. Working Americans are running out of pennies to fund the government, or anything else for that matter.

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>>Or as I put, if a small number of people are bleeding the economy dry, eventually it's going to die.<<

Precisely. Whenever you take out more from a system than gets put into it, the system eventually collapses. There's no way around that effect. So, in order to have an economy that does not collapse, it must either achieve equilibrium, take out less than is put in, or oscillate slowly around the break-even line. Wild swings are bad.

I believe it should be illegal for corporations to behave like parasites. They should be obliged to behave as commensals at least, and encouraged to behave like symbiotes. Those latter two things are possible, as some businesses do so. I just think we'd have a more functional nation if that were the requirement.

>>Money, unfortunately, is a zero sum game. More for them, means less for everyone else.<<

Too true. There is only so much of it, and the fake money -- which exists only in figments of pixels agreed upon by money-handlers -- is almost all in the hands of the fatcats.

Hmm, you know, there's nearly 20-30 times more 'money' in the economy then actual physical printed cash.. and 80-90% of that virtual money is in the hands of the plutocracy.

Is it bad of me to think that a massive solar/geomagnetic storm wiping out all those digital dollars might not be such a bad deal for most of us...

Edited 2011-02-25 19:22 (UTC)

I suspect that we'd lose more than we gained, alas. Too much infrastructure would be hit by a blast like that ... and the rich people wouldn't be the ones paying for repairs.

Yeah, that would be too shattershot..

Money Matters

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