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Going along with everything you've said, the fact that the wealthy now control such a vast share of assets and capital is a super not-good thing in the event of

• LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  > we had to participate in a World War to get out of it I'm not sure that "participation in a World War" was what got us out of it, nor is that an admissible tool to correct a recession. WWII did kick-start a lot of valuable developments, and it allowed the government to write a lot of checks and take out a lot of loans to inject money into industry, I'll grant. But I'm curious what you think would have happened had the Nazis not come to power in Germany, and Japan not taken Manchuria.
  • FussyZeus 9y ago
    It's a booster shot of capital first into industry and agriculture, then into the hands of the wives of soldiers, then into the soldier's themselves when they got back. It's not a great tool at all, I'm not saying it's a good thing, the fact that a war is fantastic for the economy is common knowledge, or at least I thought. It's a shitload of Government spending that's directed from all sides of the political spectrum (mostly) and often isn't questioned at the time, so you get the capital shot without the hangover of the political divide like we have now. Things are objectively easier when your enemy is as well defined and totally evil as the Nazi's.
    • Quenty 9y ago
      That being said, War is really bad for quality of life. Every tank, missile, bullet, could be used to improve a consumer’s life instead. And every life lost, building destroyed, et cet is potential economic assets. Economics that are good on paper isn’t really the end goal.
      • FussyZeus 9y ago
        I don't disagree, but you asked me how the war got us out. That's how it did.
      • chii 9y ago
        > Every tank, missile, bullet, could be used to improve a consumer’s life instead but just because no war happesn doesn't mean that the consumer's life gets improved. THe bullet money would've been spent elsewhere similarly to a war, to benefit the few rich.
    • peoplewindow 9y ago
      the fact that a war is fantastic for the economy is common knowledge, or at least I thought What?! This is absurd! Common sense should tell you that war is terrible for an economy because lots of valuable assets get destroyed repeatedly. What you mean is that war is good for GDP because suddenly every last scrap of spare resource is thrown into industrial production, often funded by running up massive debts. But don't make the mistake of confusing the economy for GDP. From a wealth perspective war is about as useful as paying people to dig holes in the ground and immediately fill them back up again. Yes, it pumps your stats around "production" (of holes), but it doesn't create wealth.
      • seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        Mostly true, except that war does drive scientific and technological advancement, as well as investments in production capacity and resource extraction (basically it is an extreme form of competition that forces you to progress or die).
    • 9y ago
  • alphaalpha101 9y ago
    The recovery from the great depression would have been like the USA's still ongoing recovery from the 2008 recession: slow, very arduous, and likely to take more like 20 years than 8.
  • everyone 9y ago
    World War one and two were some of the only events ever in history the reduce wealth inequality, which otherwise has grown inexorably. I gathered this from reading 'Capital in the 21st century' by Thomas Piketty
    • pnutjam 9y ago
      Don't forget the Black Death.
      • njarboe 9y ago
        And the fall of the Roman empire.
        • mathiasben 9y ago
          And the internal revenue act of 1954.
  • ataturk 9y ago
    It's funny that the people who tout WWII as the US's recovery gloss over the fact that "war socialism" was put into play and that people suffered rationing and a near command economy in the US during the war years. Company profits were limited, etc. I'm not a fan of any of those things, mind you, I just find it fascinating that destruction leads to those kinds of outcomes and not only that, but many people look back fondly on those times of absolute hardship. My parents were kids during WWII and they have mentioned all kinds of stories about collecting newspapers and metal and so on. They all wax nostalgic about a time when 50 million people were killed. Makes no sense. Nothing in the human condition, when dissected, makes any sense though.
• moduspol 9y ago
  I think it's different this time around. Student loan debt and healthcare costs are out of control, but the practical difference in quality of life between the rich and average American is smaller than ever. All the money in the world won't make Facebook better, or get you another season of Breaking Bad, or a better iPhone, or a better video game, or faster speed limits. People aren't going to raise pitchforks because someone has more zeros in their bank account.
  • FussyZeus 9y ago
    It's definitely going to take longer (in fact I think we'd be there already if not for the quality of life) but that only does so much. People now have access to more information than ever and are realizing just how screwed they're getting every single day. I don't think it's unreasonable to say shouldn't we have it better too, not just the wealthy?
    • moduspol 9y ago
      You do have it better, including relative to the wealthy. That was the point of my previous comment. The trend shows no signs of changing, so we can expect that to continue. I think it's worth re-examining if what you're describing is even a problem, and more importantly, if what you would suggest as a fix actually makes anything better other than a sense of "fairness."
  • dhimes 9y ago
    They might if all those things go away for them but not for the other guy.
    • moduspol 9y ago
      They absolutely will, but I don't see signs of that happening.
  • mywittyname 9y ago
    Yeah, entertainment options are great if you're poor. This might keep them somewhat complacent. But how about the quality of housing and transportation? People absolutely will raise pitchforks when they no longer have housing or food. There are many Americans in this situation right now, but they suffer in near-silence. As their numbers swell, we will reach a point where they can no longer be ignored. The food itself is cheap, but obtaining the food isn't. Consider the poor rural people that need to drive 30+ miles to the grocery store.
• ameister14 9y ago
  Income inequality and lack of social mobility don't lead to widespread violent revolution unless you add in famine. Just because you'll never be able to afford floor seats doesn't mean you're going to attack the people that can. If you don't have food for your children, though, and you don't see another way - that's a lot more likely.
  • Gustomaximus 9y ago
    You're missing a few classic violent revolutions in that logic, the NAZI party, Mao (he created a famine and kept power...) Stalin, Pol Pot (also made famine, not created by it). People really get triggered by real or perceived injustice. It seems to be one of those common human instincts. Being downtrodden with lack of opportunity while others are born to the manor can get people going.
    • ameister14 9y ago
      The Nazi party wasn't a violent revolution, and Mao came to power in part through widespread famine and war. Creating famine doesn't always generate a violent and widespread revolution, that wasn't my point. Inequality on its own, without other types of degradation or the growing desperation that famine brings has sparked no such revolutions.
  • kamaal 9y ago
    >>Income inequality and lack of social mobility don't lead to widespread violent revolution unless you add in famine. The term 'Income inequality' in developed economies can almost always be translated to one word: 'Envy'.
• Gustomaximus 9y ago
  > eventually all their money isn't going to keep the pitchforks at bay. I wonder if it will. This is where drone and automation tech can get scary. Particularly combining drones with less than lethal tech could be super dangerous for our society. And I say less than lethal as it is a huge step to straight out attack and main people. But imagine something like the LA riots again. I suspect many people wouldn't be OK if some drones with paintball and tasers were sent to 'calm the fray' and zap a few nasty looters type thing. As long as it was controlling some 'evil few'. Then the evil few starts to expand...much like surveillance today. So if we ever see this style of scenario in our lifetime I feel people should use all political clout to stop it in its tracks. It could take society in a really bad direction and I dont doubt some people will look to take this route.
• crimsonalucard 9y ago
  Rich people aren't pushing for it. There assets appreciate without any effort. This is the tricky part. There is a point where you are so rich that your assets itself just make money for you.
• cubano 9y ago
  By definition the "wealthy" have always controlled the "vast share of assets and capital" in the world. How could it be anything but? The reality is that the "poor" in developed countries live better then 99.9999% of all humans have ever lived on this planet. You disagree? Well consider this then...just very-short-90-years-ago, the 16 year-old son of the most powerful man on Earth died from a blister on his foot he got while playing tennis on the White House lawn. We should all stop looking at the glass being half-empty.
  • vkou 9y ago
    Be careful where you point that analogy. In that case, if we take away 99% of what the wealthy own, they'll still be better off then 99.99999% of all humans that have ever lived on the planet. Sounds like great grounds to grab some torches and pitchforks. They don't even really need all that money.
    • FussyZeus 9y ago
      > They don't even really need all that money. This. It's not even about that they have it better, it's that they have it so ludicrously, needlessly better. They're just running up the score at this point. What was Bezo's last milestone? 90 billion? What the fuck do you even do with 90 billion dollars?
      • ameister14 9y ago
        Why does that matter, on its face?
        • rainbowmverse 9y ago
          You notice how no one complains about Elon Musk pouring his billions into solar, electric cars, and rockets, or about the Gates family trying to solve disease in developing nations? No one really cares if someone has billions of dollars if that money is doing some good. The problem comes when they're just hoarding it while people around them suffer from problems that are solvable with a little investment. That money didn't just appear in their bank account. They made it on top of a society and economy that enabled that wealth. No one is an island, even if they're rich enough to buy one.
• Qwertious 9y ago
  >and we had to participate in a World War to get out of it). I think it wasn't participating in WW2 that got the US out of the depression, so much as everywhere else being completely fucked by war, with the USA being basically the holder of the best production setup at the end of the war, and therefore able to export an absolute fuckton of product to help Europe et al rebuild. I suspect that if USA never joined the war, it would actually be better off today economically, since WW2 would have proceeded regardless.
  • wavefunction 9y ago
    The US never had a choice about joining the war or not. I know that we knew in advance about Pearl Harbor and I know that the US had already decided to join the war which precipitated specific aggression from the Axis powers against the US but there was no choice. Japan or Germany or both would have eventually come into conflict with the US due to any interests of one or more of the parties.
    • solarhoma 9y ago
      I disagree. The US took the political stance as being neutral to appease the citizens, the population was for isolationism, while simultaneously changing imports/exports to drive the Japanese to attack us. The political elite wanted war, we were doing everything against the Japanese to start a war other than declare war. We put in place an oil embargo against the Japanese which forced them to attack, they knew with this embargo we were acting against our neutral stance and therefore wanted to destroy any chance of us joining the war, at least within a reasonable timeframe. Which is why they sunk our fleet at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese underestimated our ability to produce warships as well as the timeline we were able to enter the war.
  • rsync 9y ago
    "I suspect that if USA never joined the war, it would actually be better off today economically, since WW2 would have proceeded regardless." Let me emphatically state that I am very much against waging war. With that out of the way, I must point out that the position the United States carved out for itself at the conclusion of WWII was such that it enjoyed absolutely unprecedented levels of autonomy and control over, basically, the entire world. It's really quite unbelievable how much of the worlds political and economic institutions were aligned directly with the interests of the US. Without question the economic benefits of that alignment are far and away beyond any possible position we could have had after not participating.