Wealth inequality is not a problem.
It's a propaganda term, nothing more.
I articulated my argument poorly, because I hammered it out at the end of my workday yesterday.
I agree that much of this social-level conversation is propaganda. In a vacuum under ideal conditions, the rational person will recognize that as a society, we are constantly being marketed to and that our perception of many of our "needs" is no more than induced demand. What we actually need, as individuals, is far far more basic than what we are perceiving. Nobody who is here in this forum should dispute that.
Mine is a much murkier perspective - a philosophical and moral one. My question and my concern is 'should society be comfortable with a system that builds a class of oligarchs, allows "them" (an ambiguous, undefined "them") to influence the lives of every individual in varying degrees, convincing the bottom 70% to keep working harder to attain that next level of social status?'
Call me naive, call me dumb, shortsighted, anti-capitalist, whatever you want to call me. I play the game as much as anyone else, I'm not crucifying myself to make some moral point. i have a house, 2 cars, 3 kids, and plenty of consumer stuff. I work for a company that provides a questionable benefit to society within the terms of this argument I'm framing.
What Bezos, Musk, Gates, Branson, Buffet, Ma, Clooney, Pitt, Lennon, etc. etc. etc. have earned is all rightfully theirs. They are each successful for the things they have done and the risks they've taken. But the rest of us (in Western economies) are born, live, and die under the guise that we have every opportunity to be just like them. The same thing goes for the hundreds of thousands of CEO's and C-suite leaders, that if you just work hard enough you can be just like them.
You and I might not view that with the same saliency, but the majority of the population does. We are all marketed to, and we all succumb to that marketing. Who we are is inexorably tied to the environment we grow up in, and environment we choose to occupy. Unless you cut yourself off from society you can't not be susceptible to marketing.
Everyone has human capital ( themselves ) to start accumulating other types of capital ( like tools, sandwiches and money ).
But at the end of your life, how much farther did you make it? Did you and your family attain a higher social status relative to the rest of the population than where you started? Did you at least die at parity?
When quarterly earnings underperform for a couple cycles, when profits trend down, when COGS rises without any good way to tamp them back down what suffers? Who suffers?
When a restaurant sees falling profits and lower foot traffic, who's the most vulnerable in that organization?
When a bank branch closes, who has the biggest challenge in regaining a place in society?
Most people in these forums should be just fine if we're out a job or if the markets dip or if we have an unexpected health crisis or if our GDP falls. And we snicker and bemoan the rest of society that can't handle an unexpected expense without taking on debt or skipping healthcare or selling their house. How many people do you interact with on a daily basis who are comfortable and content with where they are in life? How many people do you know are working for the thrill of the job? Or are they working because if they don't, their lifestyle falls apart?
Those same 'unmustachians' who buy McMansions and SUV's and $1400 phones are the "consumer class" I was talking about, and I should edit that to say "blind consumer class", because they're playing the game - a game where they believe themselves to be the player not the pawn.
When the company they work for decides to have a round of layoffs, and their position is lost, does that make them (on the whole and not trying to paint a portrait of some idealized individual) better off?
When Bezos or Musk announces that in order to remain profitable or to improve margins or whatever a round of layoffs is necessary, do those people who probably are pouring more than 40 hours a week into those jobs suddenly find themselves happier? More content? Those setbacks have just gotta be little speedbumps. They'll lick their wounds and realize where they went wrong. It just HAD to be that degree, or that certification - next time I'll get em! Or maybe their mistake was getting that job in that part of the organization. Next time they'll be sure to avoid that job!
When Yum! brands sees falling profits due to lower foot traffic because you, me, and they know that the stores they operate are ostensibly making our population live shorter lives, they are probably going to close a few stores. They, and the leadership-level org chart gets to keep their jobs. The store owners/managers are probably offered relocation packages. And he rest of the people who depended on income from those locations? I'm sure it's better for them in the end. I'm sure it makes them more resilient, more agile, more intelligent. They learned from their mistakes, right?
We (again, maybe people who are frugal and who work toward FI are mostly immune, so the collective 'we') are sold the idea that if you work hard and are mindful of what you spend, that you can end up higher on the social ladder than where you started. Or if not you, certainly your kids/grandkids. And in just a few generations your family will be wealthy! And in one year of that time, the wealthiest individuals might earn more taking a dump than you'll earn in a year. And that crap-covered pile of cash can just sit in a pile and earn more.
We listen to our (often wealthier) bosses, to VP's and CFO's, to career politicians and industry moguls talk about all the great things that they're doing for the rest of everyone else. In fact, most people spend their whole lives as line cooks, equipment mechanics, HR specialists, clerks, 1B accountants, contract maintenance listening to the people above them talking as if they are talking to the rest of us, for our benefit. Most of those people doing their absolute best to use the human capital they have to contribute to organizations and to owners and to leaders so that they at the very least can maintain an acceptable standard of living.
And then when the hammer falls, all that human capital is worth something, right? They can just jump back in it at the next opportunity, right? The profit motive, the same directive that cost them their jobs (deserved or undeserved), works in their favor....it's just go to.
Maybe I'll go out tonight and smash some windows in my neighborhood. They can't be that difficult to replace for most folks and it sure would benefit the very narrow segment of our economy that manufactures and installs those windows.
I'm not fighting against those who earned what they have, I'm fighting the idea that we have to keep the profit train moving in perpetuity at the ever increasing expense of those who shovel the coal and fire the tender. One day the profit directive will replace those roles with an automated device, and throw overboard the people who got the whole thing to that point. We'll nickname it 'innovation' and feel some pity for those on the side of the tracks. The last ones to be tossed off will hurt the most - the folks who built the coal-to-tender conveyer themselves. Maybe they'll get an extra few pieces of coal to fire their houses for the week.
Because I want to be clear - at what point do we recognize the title of this thread - "Inequality is killing our economies"? If you have a better background in economics, enlighten me. I'd like to think I know the fundamentals, but we'll be at 10B people in a few decades, and instead of recognizing that each of us gets to have one shot at our ride around the sun we keep telling ourselves that only a few (and we, you and me and the rest of us are the few) get the good fortune to have that be an enjoyable experience. While the messaging to everyone remains "keep feeding us your income, and then your life so that we can maintain an ever-increasing standard of living".
Because I want to be
crystal clear - capitalism is the only thing that got us as a society to where we are now. And we, the haves, seem to want to die on the hill of the belief that we must have more than before instead of having enough.
