The Autism Spiral? (obligatory loluk thread)

[elmicker]

So, across four years they increased the total debt less than one half of what a single year of recession did, and it's not "small"? We had a sovereign debt crisis even though our debt was low and you think that'd be different if the government had borrowed all of 2%GDP total less than they actually did?

[El Capitano]

Actually, I think that if they hadn't run such a deficit, they'd have a debt to GDP ratio of around 25% and would peak their deficit at 8%, which is far smaller than 11%/year at 35%.

[Maximillian]

On a side note our Reserve Bank is tightening the rules again on bank lending. Primarily they are stopping the unsolicited offering of credit cards or increases in credit limits, and are tightening the requirements for banks to check that they are not lending to people who cannot service the loan.

This is on top of all the existing regulations that meant that no Australian Bank needed bailing out during the GFC.

[Rudolf Miller]

On a side note our Reserve Bank is tightening the rules again on bank lending. Primarily they are stopping the unsolicited offering of credit cards or increases in credit limits, and are tightening the requirements for banks to check that they are not lending to people who cannot service the loan.

This is on top of all the existing regulations that meant that no Australian Bank needed bailing out during the GFC.

I like it. I also like this article.

http://robertreich.org/post/24974761785

  Spoiler:

Why The Economy Can’t Get Out of First Gear
TUESDAY, JUNE 12, 2012
Rarely in history has the cause of a major economic problem been so clear yet have so few been willing to see it.

The major reason this recovery has been so anemic is not Europe’s debt crisis. It’s not Japan’s tsumami. It’s not Wall Street’s continuing excesses. It’s not, as right-wing economists tell us, because taxes are too high on corporations and the rich, and safety nets are too generous to the needy. It’s not even, as some liberals contend, because the Obama administration hasn’t spent enough on a temporary Keynesian stimulus.

The answer is in front of our faces. It’s because American consumers, whose spending is 70 percent of economic activity, don’t have the dough to buy enough to boost the economy – and they can no longer borrow like they could before the crash of 2008.

If you have any doubt, just take a look at the Survey of Consumer Finances, released Monday by the Federal Reserve. Median family income was $49,600 in 2007. By 2010 it was $45,800 – a drop of 7.7%.

All of the gains from economic growth have been going to the richest 1 percent – who, because they’re so rich, spend no more than half what they take in.

Can I say this any more simply? The earnings of the great American middle class fueled the great American expansion for three decades after World War II. Their relative lack of earnings in more recent years set us up for the great American bust.

Starting around 1980, globalization and automation began exerting downward pressure on median wages. Employers began busting unions in order to make more profits. And increasingly deregulated financial markets began taking over the real economy.

The result was slower wage growth for most households. Women surged into paid work in order to prop up family incomes – which helped for a time. But the median wage kept flattening, and then, after 2001, began to decline.

Households tried to keep up by going deeply into debt, using the rising values of their homes as collateral. This also helped – for a time. But then the housing bubble popped.

The Fed’s latest report shows how loud that pop was. Between 2007 and 2010 (the latest data available) American families’ median net worth fell almost 40 percent – down to levels last seen in 1992. The typical family’s wealth is their home, not their stock portfolio – and housing values have dropped by a third since 2006.

Families have also become less confident about how much income they can expect in the future. In 2010, over 35% of American families said they did not “have a good idea of what their income would be for the next year.” That’s up from 31.4% in 2007.

But because their incomes and their net worth have both dropped, families are saving less. The proportion of families that said they had saved in the preceding year fell from 56.4% in 2007 to 52% in 2010, the lowest level since the Fed began collecting that information in 1992.

Bottom line: The American economy is still struggling because the vast American middle class can’t spend more to get it out of first gear.

What to do? There’s no simple answer in the short term except to hope we stay in first gear and don’t slide backwards.

Over the longer term the answer is to make sure the middle class gets far more of the gains from economic growth.

How? We might learn something from history. During the 1920s, income concentrated at the top. By 1928, the top 1 percent was raking in an astounding 23.94 percent of the total (close to the 23.5 percent the top 1 percent got in 2007) according to analyses of tax records by my colleague Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty. At that point the bubble popped and we fell into the Great Depression.

But then came the Wagner Act, requiring employers to bargain in good faith with organized labor. Social Security and unemployment insurance. The Works Projects Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps. A national minimum wage. And to contain Wall Street: The Securities Act and Glass-Steagall Act.

In 1941 America went to war – a vast mobilization that employed every able-bodied adult American, and put money in their pockets. And after the war, the GI Bill, sending millions of returning veterans to college. A vast expansion of public higher education. And huge infrastructure investments, such as the National Defense Highway Act. Taxes on the rich remained at least 70 percent until 1981.

The result: By 1957, the top 1 percent of Americans raked in only 10.1 percent of total income. Most of the rest went to a growing middle class – whose members fueled the greatest economic boom in the history of the world.

Get it? We won’t get out of first gear until the middle class regains the bargaining power it had in the first three decades after World War II to claim a much larger share of the gains from productivity growth.

[theBlind]

On a side note our Reserve Bank is tightening the rules again on bank lending. Primarily they are stopping the unsolicited offering of credit cards or increases in credit limits, and are tightening the requirements for banks to check that they are not lending to people who cannot service the loan.

This is on top of all the existing regulations that meant that no Australian Bank needed bailing out during the GFC.

I like it. I also like this article.

http://robertreich.org/post/24974761785

  Spoiler:

Why The Economy Can’t Get Out of First Gear
TUESDAY, JUNE 12, 2012
Rarely in history has the cause of a major economic problem been so clear yet have so few been willing to see it.

The major reason this recovery has been so anemic is not Europe’s debt crisis. It’s not Japan’s tsumami. It’s not Wall Street’s continuing excesses. It’s not, as right-wing economists tell us, because taxes are too high on corporations and the rich, and safety nets are too generous to the needy. It’s not even, as some liberals contend, because the Obama administration hasn’t spent enough on a temporary Keynesian stimulus.

The answer is in front of our faces. It’s because American consumers, whose spending is 70 percent of economic activity, don’t have the dough to buy enough to boost the economy – and they can no longer borrow like they could before the crash of 2008.

If you have any doubt, just take a look at the Survey of Consumer Finances, released Monday by the Federal Reserve. Median family income was $49,600 in 2007. By 2010 it was $45,800 – a drop of 7.7%.

All of the gains from economic growth have been going to the richest 1 percent – who, because they’re so rich, spend no more than half what they take in.

Can I say this any more simply? The earnings of the great American middle class fueled the great American expansion for three decades after World War II. Their relative lack of earnings in more recent years set us up for the great American bust.

Starting around 1980, globalization and automation began exerting downward pressure on median wages. Employers began busting unions in order to make more profits. And increasingly deregulated financial markets began taking over the real economy.

The result was slower wage growth for most households. Women surged into paid work in order to prop up family incomes – which helped for a time. But the median wage kept flattening, and then, after 2001, began to decline.

Households tried to keep up by going deeply into debt, using the rising values of their homes as collateral. This also helped – for a time. But then the housing bubble popped.

The Fed’s latest report shows how loud that pop was. Between 2007 and 2010 (the latest data available) American families’ median net worth fell almost 40 percent – down to levels last seen in 1992. The typical family’s wealth is their home, not their stock portfolio – and housing values have dropped by a third since 2006.

Families have also become less confident about how much income they can expect in the future. In 2010, over 35% of American families said they did not “have a good idea of what their income would be for the next year.” That’s up from 31.4% in 2007.

But because their incomes and their net worth have both dropped, families are saving less. The proportion of families that said they had saved in the preceding year fell from 56.4% in 2007 to 52% in 2010, the lowest level since the Fed began collecting that information in 1992.

Bottom line: The American economy is still struggling because the vast American middle class can’t spend more to get it out of first gear.

What to do? There’s no simple answer in the short term except to hope we stay in first gear and don’t slide backwards.

Over the longer term the answer is to make sure the middle class gets far more of the gains from economic growth.

How? We might learn something from history. During the 1920s, income concentrated at the top. By 1928, the top 1 percent was raking in an astounding 23.94 percent of the total (close to the 23.5 percent the top 1 percent got in 2007) according to analyses of tax records by my colleague Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty. At that point the bubble popped and we fell into the Great Depression.

But then came the Wagner Act, requiring employers to bargain in good faith with organized labor. Social Security and unemployment insurance. The Works Projects Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps. A national minimum wage. And to contain Wall Street: The Securities Act and Glass-Steagall Act.

In 1941 America went to war – a vast mobilization that employed every able-bodied adult American, and put money in their pockets. And after the war, the GI Bill, sending millions of returning veterans to college. A vast expansion of public higher education. And huge infrastructure investments, such as the National Defense Highway Act. Taxes on the rich remained at least 70 percent until 1981.

The result: By 1957, the top 1 percent of Americans raked in only 10.1 percent of total income. Most of the rest went to a growing middle class – whose members fueled the greatest economic boom in the history of the world.

Get it? We won’t get out of first gear until the middle class regains the bargaining power it had in the first three decades after World War II to claim a much larger share of the gains from productivity growth.

Wow, 1000 people with the same total money as 1 person in total spend more of that money than the 1 person. :shocker:

Who'd have thought? Oh, wait, yeah. Those without an agenda to get the rich richer.

Sorry for sarcasm, I'm just frustrated that I (among others ofc.) have to work for life to unfuck this obvious crap instead of retiring at 40 like I wanted to.

[Smuggo]

On a side note our Reserve Bank is tightening the rules again on bank lending. Primarily they are stopping the unsolicited offering of credit cards or increases in credit limits, and are tightening the requirements for banks to check that they are not lending to people who cannot service the loan.

This is on top of all the existing regulations that meant that no Australian Bank needed bailing out during the GFC.

I like it. I also like this article.

http://robertreich.org/post/24974761785

  Spoiler:

Why The Economy Can’t Get Out of First Gear
TUESDAY, JUNE 12, 2012
Rarely in history has the cause of a major economic problem been so clear yet have so few been willing to see it.

The major reason this recovery has been so anemic is not Europe’s debt crisis. It’s not Japan’s tsumami. It’s not Wall Street’s continuing excesses. It’s not, as right-wing economists tell us, because taxes are too high on corporations and the rich, and safety nets are too generous to the needy. It’s not even, as some liberals contend, because the Obama administration hasn’t spent enough on a temporary Keynesian stimulus.

The answer is in front of our faces. It’s because American consumers, whose spending is 70 percent of economic activity, don’t have the dough to buy enough to boost the economy – and they can no longer borrow like they could before the crash of 2008.

If you have any doubt, just take a look at the Survey of Consumer Finances, released Monday by the Federal Reserve. Median family income was $49,600 in 2007. By 2010 it was $45,800 – a drop of 7.7%.

All of the gains from economic growth have been going to the richest 1 percent – who, because they’re so rich, spend no more than half what they take in.

Can I say this any more simply? The earnings of the great American middle class fueled the great American expansion for three decades after World War II. Their relative lack of earnings in more recent years set us up for the great American bust.

Starting around 1980, globalization and automation began exerting downward pressure on median wages. Employers began busting unions in order to make more profits. And increasingly deregulated financial markets began taking over the real economy.

The result was slower wage growth for most households. Women surged into paid work in order to prop up family incomes – which helped for a time. But the median wage kept flattening, and then, after 2001, began to decline.

Households tried to keep up by going deeply into debt, using the rising values of their homes as collateral. This also helped – for a time. But then the housing bubble popped.

The Fed’s latest report shows how loud that pop was. Between 2007 and 2010 (the latest data available) American families’ median net worth fell almost 40 percent – down to levels last seen in 1992. The typical family’s wealth is their home, not their stock portfolio – and housing values have dropped by a third since 2006.

Families have also become less confident about how much income they can expect in the future. In 2010, over 35% of American families said they did not “have a good idea of what their income would be for the next year.” That’s up from 31.4% in 2007.

But because their incomes and their net worth have both dropped, families are saving less. The proportion of families that said they had saved in the preceding year fell from 56.4% in 2007 to 52% in 2010, the lowest level since the Fed began collecting that information in 1992.

Bottom line: The American economy is still struggling because the vast American middle class can’t spend more to get it out of first gear.

What to do? There’s no simple answer in the short term except to hope we stay in first gear and don’t slide backwards.

Over the longer term the answer is to make sure the middle class gets far more of the gains from economic growth.

How? We might learn something from history. During the 1920s, income concentrated at the top. By 1928, the top 1 percent was raking in an astounding 23.94 percent of the total (close to the 23.5 percent the top 1 percent got in 2007) according to analyses of tax records by my colleague Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty. At that point the bubble popped and we fell into the Great Depression.

But then came the Wagner Act, requiring employers to bargain in good faith with organized labor. Social Security and unemployment insurance. The Works Projects Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps. A national minimum wage. And to contain Wall Street: The Securities Act and Glass-Steagall Act.

In 1941 America went to war – a vast mobilization that employed every able-bodied adult American, and put money in their pockets. And after the war, the GI Bill, sending millions of returning veterans to college. A vast expansion of public higher education. And huge infrastructure investments, such as the National Defense Highway Act. Taxes on the rich remained at least 70 percent until 1981.

The result: By 1957, the top 1 percent of Americans raked in only 10.1 percent of total income. Most of the rest went to a growing middle class – whose members fueled the greatest economic boom in the history of the world.

Get it? We won’t get out of first gear until the middle class regains the bargaining power it had in the first three decades after World War II to claim a much larger share of the gains from productivity growth.

Wow, 1000 people with the same total money as 1 person in total spend more of that money than the 1 person. :shocker:

Who'd have thought? Oh, wait, yeah. Those without an agenda to get the rich richer.

Sorry for sarcasm, I'm just frustrated that I (among others ofc.) have to work for life to unfuck this obvious crap instead of retiring at 40 like I wanted to.

People trying to retire early is a big part of the problem

Of course, the baby boomers are desperately trying to ensure they can still retire early while the younger generations clear up the mess they made. Except, we've got another big problem there because the baby boomers also happen to be sitting on all of our wealth so I'm not sure how they expect younger generations to pay for.

People should have been retiring at 70 ten years ago. My generation will probably be working into our 80s but... given the rate of improved medical technology, this will be very possible for my generation.

[Liare]

On a side note our Reserve Bank is tightening the rules again on bank lending. Primarily they are stopping the unsolicited offering of credit cards or increases in credit limits, and are tightening the requirements for banks to check that they are not lending to people who cannot service the loan.

This is on top of all the existing regulations that meant that no Australian Bank needed bailing out during the GFC.

I like it. I also like this article.

http://robertreich.org/post/24974761785

  Spoiler:

Why The Economy Can’t Get Out of First Gear
TUESDAY, JUNE 12, 2012
Rarely in history has the cause of a major economic problem been so clear yet have so few been willing to see it.

The major reason this recovery has been so anemic is not Europe’s debt crisis. It’s not Japan’s tsumami. It’s not Wall Street’s continuing excesses. It’s not, as right-wing economists tell us, because taxes are too high on corporations and the rich, and safety nets are too generous to the needy. It’s not even, as some liberals contend, because the Obama administration hasn’t spent enough on a temporary Keynesian stimulus.

The answer is in front of our faces. It’s because American consumers, whose spending is 70 percent of economic activity, don’t have the dough to buy enough to boost the economy – and they can no longer borrow like they could before the crash of 2008.

If you have any doubt, just take a look at the Survey of Consumer Finances, released Monday by the Federal Reserve. Median family income was $49,600 in 2007. By 2010 it was $45,800 – a drop of 7.7%.

All of the gains from economic growth have been going to the richest 1 percent – who, because they’re so rich, spend no more than half what they take in.

Can I say this any more simply? The earnings of the great American middle class fueled the great American expansion for three decades after World War II. Their relative lack of earnings in more recent years set us up for the great American bust.

Starting around 1980, globalization and automation began exerting downward pressure on median wages. Employers began busting unions in order to make more profits. And increasingly deregulated financial markets began taking over the real economy.

The result was slower wage growth for most households. Women surged into paid work in order to prop up family incomes – which helped for a time. But the median wage kept flattening, and then, after 2001, began to decline.

Households tried to keep up by going deeply into debt, using the rising values of their homes as collateral. This also helped – for a time. But then the housing bubble popped.

The Fed’s latest report shows how loud that pop was. Between 2007 and 2010 (the latest data available) American families’ median net worth fell almost 40 percent – down to levels last seen in 1992. The typical family’s wealth is their home, not their stock portfolio – and housing values have dropped by a third since 2006.

Families have also become less confident about how much income they can expect in the future. In 2010, over 35% of American families said they did not “have a good idea of what their income would be for the next year.” That’s up from 31.4% in 2007.

But because their incomes and their net worth have both dropped, families are saving less. The proportion of families that said they had saved in the preceding year fell from 56.4% in 2007 to 52% in 2010, the lowest level since the Fed began collecting that information in 1992.

Bottom line: The American economy is still struggling because the vast American middle class can’t spend more to get it out of first gear.

What to do? There’s no simple answer in the short term except to hope we stay in first gear and don’t slide backwards.

Over the longer term the answer is to make sure the middle class gets far more of the gains from economic growth.

How? We might learn something from history. During the 1920s, income concentrated at the top. By 1928, the top 1 percent was raking in an astounding 23.94 percent of the total (close to the 23.5 percent the top 1 percent got in 2007) according to analyses of tax records by my colleague Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty. At that point the bubble popped and we fell into the Great Depression.

But then came the Wagner Act, requiring employers to bargain in good faith with organized labor. Social Security and unemployment insurance. The Works Projects Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps. A national minimum wage. And to contain Wall Street: The Securities Act and Glass-Steagall Act.

In 1941 America went to war – a vast mobilization that employed every able-bodied adult American, and put money in their pockets. And after the war, the GI Bill, sending millions of returning veterans to college. A vast expansion of public higher education. And huge infrastructure investments, such as the National Defense Highway Act. Taxes on the rich remained at least 70 percent until 1981.

The result: By 1957, the top 1 percent of Americans raked in only 10.1 percent of total income. Most of the rest went to a growing middle class – whose members fueled the greatest economic boom in the history of the world.

Get it? We won’t get out of first gear until the middle class regains the bargaining power it had in the first three decades after World War II to claim a much larger share of the gains from productivity growth.

Wow, 1000 people with the same total money as 1 person in total spend more of that money than the 1 person. :shocker:

Who'd have thought? Oh, wait, yeah. Those without an agenda to get the rich richer.

Sorry for sarcasm, I'm just frustrated that I (among others ofc.) have to work for life to unfuck this obvious crap instead of retiring at 40 like I wanted to.

People trying to retire early is a big part of the problem

Of course, the baby boomers are desperately trying to ensure they can still retire early while the younger generations clear up the mess they made. Except, we've got another big problem there because the baby boomers also happen to be sitting on all of our wealth so I'm not sure how they expect younger generations to pay for.

People should have been retiring at 70 ten years ago. My generation will probably be working into our 80s but... given the rate of improved medical technology, this will be very possible for my generation.

1. by borrowing money until you're chaining 20% creditcards to put food on the table, like the more stupid members of society opted for.
2. you expect to retire ? how naive of you tbh, i expect the retirement age to have hit 90 by the time i hit 70 (our current projected retirement age) but being a overweight bloke that like beer and with a office job, i don't expect to hit 80 anyway and the only reason i pay into a pension scheme is because at the end of the day, the rates there are much higher than what bank could offer on a long term savings account.

and that's after calculating the massive tax hit that accompanies pulling money out of a pension scheme, the rates are just that fucking terrible. :/

in my debt is just a symptom of a set of much deeper issues with the way modern society is structured and how we perceive ourselves, it is my vain hope that once the collapse comes (in whatever shape it may take, but it IS coming) we will be forced to take a step back and look closer at how we got to where we are and why, hardship has always been the driving factor in humanity history and i sorely hope this time around will be no different.

and probably string a select few members of the "elite" up in the process, but that's just a added benefit as far as i am concerned.

[punkboy101]

I'm not sure most of us under the age of 40 will manage to retire, the age keeps going up, and it's not like a government pension is easy to live on at the moment let alone once they start the inevitable cut-backs. The only ones who will retire are those that get generous pensions from the company they work for (and plenty of people have lost those/had them cut back significantly), or save enough every month. This removed the posibility of retirement for a large portion of the middle class and nearly the whole if not all working class.

One of the real problems I have with the bailout's is that the banks have behaved extremely irresponsibly by giving out credit cards/loans/mortgages like candy to almost anyone. If someone ask's me for money, it's my responsibility to ensure that they can afford to pay it back, and if they don't it's on me for making the wrong decision, not them for asking. I didn't agree with the initial bail-outs but understood some of the necessity . However the fact that we are still bailing out banks FOUR years after the initial crash with no end in sight is criminal. If the banks haven't figured out how to avoid bad investments by now then they deserve to fail, fuck them. We cannot continue to reward bad behavior by bailing them out. No problem with banks taking risk's, but don't expect us to bail your sorry asses out when it all goes wrong.

I know that allowing the banks to fail will be painful for everyone but it needs to happen. Governments need to go back to providing core/essential services only, people need to stop spending money they don't have to buy shit they don't need and learn to live within their means, those at the top need to start spreading the wealth around more so everyone get's a fair share of the pie. Until this stuff starts happening and we all accept that the next 10 years will suck but ultimately we will all be better off we are going to be stuck in this downward trend to nowhere.

Fuck this system, we're getting screwed with cut-backs, rising unemployment, interest rates of bugger all on savings and rising cost's of essentials like food, water and energy while the guys who facilitated this monumental fuck up are rolling in dosh still.

[Pattern]

How's Iceland doing btw?

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

[Lallante]

On a side note our Reserve Bank is tightening the rules again on bank lending. Primarily they are stopping the unsolicited offering of credit cards or increases in credit limits, and are tightening the requirements for banks to check that they are not lending to people who cannot service the loan.

This is on top of all the existing regulations that meant that no Australian Bank needed bailing out during the GFC.

I like it. I also like this article.

http://robertreich.org/post/24974761785

  Spoiler:

Why The Economy Can’t Get Out of First Gear
TUESDAY, JUNE 12, 2012
Rarely in history has the cause of a major economic problem been so clear yet have so few been willing to see it.

The major reason this recovery has been so anemic is not Europe’s debt crisis. It’s not Japan’s tsumami. It’s not Wall Street’s continuing excesses. It’s not, as right-wing economists tell us, because taxes are too high on corporations and the rich, and safety nets are too generous to the needy. It’s not even, as some liberals contend, because the Obama administration hasn’t spent enough on a temporary Keynesian stimulus.

The answer is in front of our faces. It’s because American consumers, whose spending is 70 percent of economic activity, don’t have the dough to buy enough to boost the economy – and they can no longer borrow like they could before the crash of 2008.

If you have any doubt, just take a look at the Survey of Consumer Finances, released Monday by the Federal Reserve. Median family income was $49,600 in 2007. By 2010 it was $45,800 – a drop of 7.7%.

All of the gains from economic growth have been going to the richest 1 percent – who, because they’re so rich, spend no more than half what they take in.

Can I say this any more simply? The earnings of the great American middle class fueled the great American expansion for three decades after World War II. Their relative lack of earnings in more recent years set us up for the great American bust.

Starting around 1980, globalization and automation began exerting downward pressure on median wages. Employers began busting unions in order to make more profits. And increasingly deregulated financial markets began taking over the real economy.

The result was slower wage growth for most households. Women surged into paid work in order to prop up family incomes – which helped for a time. But the median wage kept flattening, and then, after 2001, began to decline.

Households tried to keep up by going deeply into debt, using the rising values of their homes as collateral. This also helped – for a time. But then the housing bubble popped.

The Fed’s latest report shows how loud that pop was. Between 2007 and 2010 (the latest data available) American families’ median net worth fell almost 40 percent – down to levels last seen in 1992. The typical family’s wealth is their home, not their stock portfolio – and housing values have dropped by a third since 2006.

Families have also become less confident about how much income they can expect in the future. In 2010, over 35% of American families said they did not “have a good idea of what their income would be for the next year.” That’s up from 31.4% in 2007.

But because their incomes and their net worth have both dropped, families are saving less. The proportion of families that said they had saved in the preceding year fell from 56.4% in 2007 to 52% in 2010, the lowest level since the Fed began collecting that information in 1992.

Bottom line: The American economy is still struggling because the vast American middle class can’t spend more to get it out of first gear.

What to do? There’s no simple answer in the short term except to hope we stay in first gear and don’t slide backwards.

Over the longer term the answer is to make sure the middle class gets far more of the gains from economic growth.

How? We might learn something from history. During the 1920s, income concentrated at the top. By 1928, the top 1 percent was raking in an astounding 23.94 percent of the total (close to the 23.5 percent the top 1 percent got in 2007) according to analyses of tax records by my colleague Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty. At that point the bubble popped and we fell into the Great Depression.

But then came the Wagner Act, requiring employers to bargain in good faith with organized labor. Social Security and unemployment insurance. The Works Projects Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps. A national minimum wage. And to contain Wall Street: The Securities Act and Glass-Steagall Act.

In 1941 America went to war – a vast mobilization that employed every able-bodied adult American, and put money in their pockets. And after the war, the GI Bill, sending millions of returning veterans to college. A vast expansion of public higher education. And huge infrastructure investments, such as the National Defense Highway Act. Taxes on the rich remained at least 70 percent until 1981.

The result: By 1957, the top 1 percent of Americans raked in only 10.1 percent of total income. Most of the rest went to a growing middle class – whose members fueled the greatest economic boom in the history of the world.

Get it? We won’t get out of first gear until the middle class regains the bargaining power it had in the first three decades after World War II to claim a much larger share of the gains from productivity growth.

Wow, 1000 people with the same total money as 1 person in total spend more of that money than the 1 person. :shocker:

Who'd have thought? Oh, wait, yeah. Those without an agenda to get the rich richer.

Sorry for sarcasm, I'm just frustrated that I (among others ofc.) have to work for life to unfuck this obvious crap instead of retiring at 40 like I wanted to.

People trying to retire early is a big part of the problem

Of course, the baby boomers are desperately trying to ensure they can still retire early while the younger generations clear up the mess they made. Except, we've got another big problem there because the baby boomers also happen to be sitting on all of our wealth so I'm not sure how they expect younger generations to pay for.

People should have been retiring at 70 ten years ago. My generation will probably be working into our 80s but... given the rate of improved medical technology, this will be very possible for my generation.

1. by borrowing money until you're chaining 20% creditcards to put food on the table, like the more stupid members of society opted for.
2. you expect to retire ? how naive of you tbh, i expect the retirement age to have hit 90 by the time i hit 70 (our current projected retirement age) but being a overweight bloke that like beer and with a office job, i don't expect to hit 80 anyway and the only reason i pay into a pension scheme is because at the end of the day, the rates there are much higher than what bank could offer on a long term savings account.

and that's after calculating the massive tax hit that accompanies pulling money out of a pension scheme, the rates are just that fucking terrible. :/

in my debt is just a symptom of a set of much deeper issues with the way modern society is structured and how we perceive ourselves, it is my vain hope that once the collapse comes (in whatever shape it may take, but it IS coming) we will be forced to take a step back and look closer at how we got to where we are and why, hardship has always been the driving factor in humanity history and i sorely hope this time around will be no different.

and probably string a select few members of the "elite" up in the process, but that's just a added benefit as far as i am concerned.

Are you for or against austerity?

[Pattern]

I hear the jobs market for the over 60's is booming?

[Liare]

Lallante : neither, because at the end of the day it clearly makes no difference does it ? the difference between a "spending government" and a "austere government" is pretty much down to how quickly the debt is racked up, in either case it remains on the wrong side of sustainable in the long term.
Pattern : i heard our "dear beloved" "employment minister" rant about there being plenty of jobs out in europe for our unemployed to apply to, but Denmark is the country within the union with one of the lowest overall unemployment rates at the moment

of course, this is also the minister who presides over a legislation numbering no less than 22.408 closely written A4 pages... in 2010, it's closer to 30.000 now, all directly related to the various areas of unemployment. (at this rate is going to end up at 1 page per unemployed person around 2020)

[El Capitano]

How's Iceland doing btw?

Unemployment's low and GDP is on the up, but wages are down 50%.

[Zeekar]

How's Iceland doing btw?

Unemployment's low and GDP is on the up, but wages are down 50%.

wage / living cost went to shit as well or did the living cost drop?

[El Capitano]

wage / living cost went to shit as well or did the living cost drop?

Electricity is dirt cheap in Iceland, but most other things apart from fish are imported, so cost of living is quite high due to the now worthless currency.

[Tiny]

How's Iceland doing btw?

Unemployment's low and GDP is on the up, but wages are down 50%.

wage / living cost went to shit as well or did the living cost drop?

Cost of living whet up for a little while, then drops. Simailar to other counties that tell the banks to fuck off.

All the media outlets say disater will fall on thoses that fail to pay their bonds, reality begs to differ.

(alot depends on how you define cost of living, iphones are expensive, food, housing and heating, not so much)

[Aurora148]

How's Iceland doing btw?

Unemployment's low and GDP is on the up, but wages are down 50%.

wage / living cost went to shit as well or did the living cost drop?

Cost of living whet up for a little while, then drops. Simailar to other counties that tell the banks to fuck off.

All the media outlets say disater will fall on thoses that fail to pay their bonds, reality begs to differ.

(alot depends on how you define cost of living, iphones are expensive, food, housing and heating, not so much)

Iceland has a small homogeneous amenable population, an independent currency, cheap energy and strong exports. They are one of only a small band of western countries who could possibly default without everything going to shit.

[elmicker]

"Small" is an understatement. Iceland has the population of Newcastle and the land area of scotland and wales put together.

[Tiny]

How's Iceland doing btw?

Unemployment's low and GDP is on the up, but wages are down 50%.

wage / living cost went to shit as well or did the living cost drop?

Cost of living whet up for a little while, then drops. Simailar to other counties that tell the banks to fuck off.

All the media outlets say disater will fall on thoses that fail to pay their bonds, reality begs to differ.

(alot depends on how you define cost of living, iphones are expensive, food, housing and heating, not so much)

Iceland has a small homogeneous amenable population, an independent currency, cheap energy and strong exports. They are one of only a small band of western countries who could possibly default without everything going to shit.

Argentina?

Can you give an explample of a default that hasn't been good for the people of the deaulting nation?

[Aurora148]

How's Iceland doing btw?

Unemployment's low and GDP is on the up, but wages are down 50%.

wage / living cost went to shit as well or did the living cost drop?

Cost of living whet up for a little while, then drops. Simailar to other counties that tell the banks to fuck off.

All the media outlets say disater will fall on thoses that fail to pay their bonds, reality begs to differ.

(alot depends on how you define cost of living, iphones are expensive, food, housing and heating, not so much)

Iceland has a small homogeneous amenable population, an independent currency, cheap energy and strong exports. They are one of only a small band of western countries who could possibly default without everything going to shit.

Argentina?

Was doing ok while credit was sloshing around pre-2007, but now the argie government is hiding inflation rates of around ~25% and seizing foreign held assets in the name of "the people" which is causing foreign investors to run for the hills. Argentinians are stockpiling US Dollars again which gives Argentina the accolade of holding the most physical US dollars outside of the US.

Their current course is not sustainable.