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Tuesday, November 17, 2015

The Class War Has Already Started

A few commentators see the fault lines and understand the Class War is already rumbling. Correspondent Mark G. submitted these two articles as examples of the widening divides between various classes in the U.S.:
In the first piece, Joel Kotkin describes the political capture of the Status Quo Imperial Democrats by the Left Coast media and tech culture of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, both of which have thrived in our hyper-financialized economy of 95% losers and 5% winners, and the Right Coast financiers, lobbyists, government bureaucrats and Wall Streeters who have benefited so handsomely from the hyper-financialization of the U.S. economy, politics, media and zeitgeist.
This Class War is illustrated by this chart: a tiny financial-political Elite (the top 1/10th of 1%) now own as much wealth as the bottom 90%:


(To read entire content between the chart and what follows here – link to full article below.)

The younger workers are chained to a system that is completely out of whack with the real-world demographics of an enormous generation of retirees who are living decades longer than the population the system was designed to serve, with medical care costs that are the financial equivalent of a runaway train.
As painful as it might be to retiring Boomers, here's the perspective of those facing decades of taxes to pay for programs that can't possibly fund their retirement in the same fashion:
All of these fault lines result from one basic truth: the system is broken and cannot be reformed/fixed. As the pressures of a system that optimizes inequality, monopoly, cronyism, stagnation, low social mobility and systemic instability build, the fissures in our economy and society will widen.
Here's what's obvious, but unacceptable: we need a new system. Not a system modified with tiny tweaks and a feeding trough filled with borrowed money--an entirely new system designed from scratch to be sustainable and with opportunities to build capital for all. This is why I wrote A Radically Beneficial World--to start the discussion of what a new system could accomplish, not just for the top .01% or top 10%, but for all of us.
This entry is drawn from my new book A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology and Creating Jobs for All: The Future Belongs to Work That Is Meaningful. Get a 25% discount on my new book this week only (ends 11/15/15).