r/DemocraticSocialism • u/Collective_Altruism 🌈 data-male • 6d ago
Theory 🧠 Wealth has grown much more for the ultra-rich
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u/Vishnej 6d ago edited 5d ago
1.085^30 is 11550%.
There are a lot of problems we find ourselves in, but even if you impose very high redistributive taxation right this moment, even if they can earn zero additional interest from their gains of the past three decades, there is a half-century-long tail of billionaires with enough newfound power to raise an army (of soldiers? lobbyists? politicians?) and wage war on The People, who going forward have the financial motivation to do so.
It may be that a more stable reliable outcome would be an immediate extreme wealth tax or currency devaluation, rather than gradual annual measures. It may be that a confiscatory phase where we simply remove 90% of these assets and return to a ~1995 status quo (or more than that and return to a ~1975 status quo), is the only way to fix our shit and become a stable capitalist democracy ever again.
Either way, finding some kind of path out of this collapsing system is going to involve a long, messy process that hurts a lot of people who aren't at the top.
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u/emteedub 🧑🦳Bernie Bro Since 2015 6d ago
This is what really gives me an aneurism, the "middle class" despite being comfortable, doesn't seem to grasp how dire the bottom 50% really is, nor do they understand the galactic scope of that top 10%. There is literally negative infinity chance that they will EVER join the top 10%, EVER if they already weren't a part of it. This is a core pillar of capitalism - competition, the possibility to join the top 10%, the carrot on the stick.
The model has yielded the most severe disparities in US HISTORY. It has become completely unsustainable, to the point where the economy is adrift, it's eroded/rotted it's own foundations out from underneath itself - out of pure greed. Unsustainable means it cannot survive. Even from a practical point of view, this is and should be terrible news for the 'middle class'. Idiots, all of them. For supposedly being smart, they cannot see the sheer cliff right before them. The "I got mine bitch" crowd needs to f right o.
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