Originally Posted by
Mick
At some point (it's already started in some states), there will be less and less money available for social supports as fewer and fewer taxpayers are supporting more and more recipients (at both ends of the wealth spectrum - politics are irrelevant). Benefits and price support programs will be cut. The winners will be those with the cash and means for self-reliance. Look around - welfare benefit cuts get the most press but think of all the old companies that are gone, states/cities bankrupt (and in the process), high-wage blue-collar jobs that are gone. The divide between have and have-nots keeps getting wider.
My opinion - It's only just begun.
It has been going on for a long time. Even without automation and cheap overseas outsourcing you have the fact that corporations have been swallowing competitors up for decades leaving mega corps with fewer employees and those corps don't pay taxes anymore (it used to be most taxes paid were corporate now its from workers). Competition wasn't only good for tech progress, but you employed all those extra machinists, sales people, engineers, office workers, etc.
Most wealth today is just a tax on the middle class who keep shoveling parts of their weekly paychecks to 401K/IRA that end up buying rich people more mansions. If that flow of money stops for a second then congress bails out the banks with your money anyway and just send you the long term bill. The stock market used to be where rich people invested money into mature companies for an annual dividend check (stock was priced by how much that dividend was annually), now its where mega banks rip off their customers selling worthless paper back and forth between "investers" while they take their cut every transaction and manipulate the price. It used to be if you owned 50.1% of the companies shares you called the shots, but these days those are common shares and even if you own most of them you control nothing (maybe a seat on the board), preferred shares came into being so owners could sell shares of stock but still run the company any way they wanted. Business schools teach MBAs how to fudge the numbers to make a company big enough for an IPO (cashout 1), then take out massive debt on that company (cashout 2), and finally raid the pension funds (cashout 3)before it implodes after they can't borrow against it anymore (just like the mob).
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