Forum Post: The New Old Reality......or was it The Old New Reality? No.......

……….. it’s the two classes or the three classes, or where’s the middle class. Wasn’t it right here a minute ago? With regard to the question of social classes and those who think that we, the United States, as a society is moving in the direction of having only two classes, I think, maybe, there are presently only two economic classes, the rich and the not rich. The distribution is NOT a bell curve at all. There is a gigantic lump at the top with 95% or so of the wealth stuffed into the top 1-3% (these numbers modulate slightly over time) The other 5% is distributed over the bottom 97% in a wedge shaped distribution. And to make it even worse, there is little to no permeability, little opportunity to move into the rich class. The occasional instance is met with great fanfare, the "singer" the "movie star", pro athlete, business wizard, etc. This has the same effect as the lottery. Few rich play the lottery. And the distribution of wealth holds the world over, consistently, with small variance. ,This is true not only in the developed world, but pretty much through out all humanity. Furthermore, it should be noted that any claim to or hold on any of the bottom 5% of assets/wealth is always tenuous because of credit policies of banks, tax policies of governments and so on. At best, claim to this wealth slips and slides through the hands and pockets of the working population sufficiently enough to maintain productivity at a rate needed to continue to provide profitability and margins for the wealthy 5%. Every asset, be it a hard asset or talent asset, provides profits and/or margins for the wealthy 5% as it circulates through commerce. Housing, cars, work hours, travel, leisure, everything is feeding the wealthy and sustaining the non-wealthy, but only to the extent necessary to provide the profits/margins sought by the wealthy 5%. This is not hyperbole or inflammatory rhetoric.. The numbers may adjust slightly, but the essential structure is true. I have spent more than 30 years in the "Wall Street" environment and much of that time doing analysis. This is just the the way it is. Of course, capitalism does not have to be like this. It is not inherent in the system. It only reaches these dimensions when the system is unrestrained. Virtually all human systems, political, economic, religious,etc. will get out of hand when unrestrained. Capitalism has not had much history, but it has enough to demonstrate that is conforms to the rule. Late in the 1800's and early 1900's the "robber baron" era brought the system into collapse and brought on the Great Depression. The resultant restructuring and re-balancing created a system whereby there was 45 years of middle class development, the greatest development of the middle class in history. The "oil crisis" of 1973 [a manufactured crisis rather than any real hydrocarbon problem] clamped down on the program and beginning with the Reagan era and his launching of the dismantling of the regulatory structure, which was nearly complete by the George W. Bush cadre, we now have the situation whereby the non-rich are simply the providers for the rich, akin to the Morlock structure from H. G. Wells' "The Time Machine". But get this, Reagan and Bush did not do this to us, we did it to ourselves by not living up to our responsibility as the voting public. We didn't vote and when we did vote we were uninformed and/or voted from bias, greed, avarice, ignorance....anyway, you get the point. It is up to us. But simply asking questions will not lead to answers. Indeed, we start with questions, but we must seek answers, create answers, discover answers, until the best solution available is achieved. Sorry, it ain't easy, but it is worth it. I lived a good part of my life during that 45 years and it is good, we get to do stuff like go to the moon, not just see it in the video game or movie theater.