Monday, August 31, 2009

Massive inequality

I've said more than once that the housing market is segmented geographically and by price bracket, so discussion of house price movements in aggregate is not very helpful.

The same can be said of the savings rate, and here Andrew Kaplan plays with figures to show that US income is so unequally distributed that the top 1% could theoretically account for all the savings in the US. It is getting dangerous, I feel - I sense (I hear) among many ordinary people an inchoate rage against the financial elite, as well as against the remote political class that services them.

This concentration of wealth and power is exactly what sparked the American revolt of the 1770s. But a colonial secessionary war is quite different from a civil war; making peace after the latter is much harder. "O Freunde, nicht diese Töne."

5 comments:

James Higham said...

This is a good thing, Sackers. I'm sure there was a generalized anger at the "capitalists" at the time of the Great Depression but this time. it's more focussed, the name Rothschild is not mentioned only by firnge dwellers and CBs are seen as targets. That can only be good and it might point to developing political maturity in the electorate.

If so, it must be worrying for them up there.

Sackerson said...

It's the ordinary people who suffer most in a revolution (not least because there's so many more of them), and see what happens afterwards.

Paddington said...

What happens afterwards is that there is a new power elite, who usually are worse than the first lot.

dearieme said...

"This concentration of wealth and power is exactly what sparked the American revolt of the 1770s." Good grief, are you quite well?

Sackerson said...

Fine, ta, DM - but the American Revolution against wicked old George III has failed under a couple more recent Georges.