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U.S. workers took home their smallest share of capital since at least 1947

https://fortune.com/article/why-did-us-workers-just-take-home-smallest-share-of-capital-since-1947-lowest-ever-recorded/
125•qlte•50m ago

Comments

edoceo•31m ago
A disaster. Economy is a flow of capital, it cycles up. USA needs the general public to have money for necessities as well as a little more for saving and then extras.

Top earnings come from the support of 1000s of participants with lesser earnings. This is an unhealthy economic trend. It's more than a stagnation risk.

Issues like these are created in a short term but take comparatively longer to correct.

sixdimensional•24m ago
Lower wages, job losses or eliminations, structural unemployment and forced entrepreneurship were all concepts that emerged during the Great Depression [1].

The world is a very different place than it was in the early 20th century, but at the same time, "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it".

I say this not to be a "doomer". I say this because those forces I mentioned above were very real and we have to keep our eyes wide open.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression

ProllyInfamous•17m ago
>A disaster.

Pay peanuts, expect a circus.

At this point, we'll either have universal UBI -=or=- ongoing war.

Unfortunately, the latter is more profitable, so... the future is by design, probably.

kevin_thibedeau•8m ago
UBI will cause instant inflation and everyone will be in the same place they started from.
motbus3•8m ago
You will own nothing and you better like it
0c3ca83•30m ago
Sounds like the policies that were put in place are doing what they were designed to do, and directing money to where they were intended to.

The work on technology to take the place of policy is proceeding, thought slower than the leadership would prefer.

lotsofpulp•27m ago
Regardless of policy, wouldn't automation inherently lead to agglomeration of capital?
greycol•22m ago
You can implement policies that tax more than just income. So no not regardless of policy but yes where policies don't exist to reshape a system where capital (i.e. investment in automated production) inherently takes more of the wealth than labour it will inherently lead to an agglomeration of capital.
qlte•8m ago
But instead, ever since the brief federal surplus at the end of the 90s, we've done multiple multi-trillion dollar tax cuts for the highest earners. Bush tax cuts + 2x Trump tax cuts (most recently in the BBB). In each case after fudging the projections beforehand to claim it will reduce the deficit somehow, then the deficit grows by a massive amount.

We've been reshaping the system to redistribute trillions to capital owners via government IOUs that will eventually come due. Inevitably, this will be "solved" by cutting benefits to workers while insisting no other solution could possibly exist.

Like, you know, undoing these relatively recent handouts to the ultra rich and restructuring policy to the benefit of workers.

RitchieRicher•26m ago
as someone said, if your workers are overweight, you are doing Capitalism wrong
Dig1t•20m ago
We do still have a real obesity problem in the USA and it affects the poorest in the country quite badly.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3198075/

In fact according to government data:

>U.S. counties with poverty rates exceeding 35% have age-adjusted obesity rates substantially higher than wealthy counties.

Being fat is actually a disease of the poor.

kingkawn•24m ago
It’s ok, soon the greedy will take home their smallest share of heads
_heimdall•23m ago
This shouldn't be a surprise. The US came out of WWII with similarly high debt to GDP. They only corrected that through financial repression, and that's likely to be their only chance of lowering that debt ratio today.

If we don't spend the next few decades skating by while the currency is debased under our noses, I assume its because there's a much more severe and tragic response.

fasterik•20m ago
That, and there is a looming Social Security crisis due in 2032. Fiscal responsibility hasn't been either party's (or voters') priority for the past two decades, and it's probably going to take another disaster to put it back on the table.
cool_dude85•10m ago
What does debt to gdp have to do with the labor share of income?
motbus3•6m ago
Don't quote me on that, but people are saying that despite American companies are getting more money, people are getting even less. Or that's my understanding. Happy to be corrected though
Tryk•9m ago
In a completely unrelated note, corporate profits are at a historical high. Up 22.8% from the same period last year.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/222127/quarterly-corpora...

skew-aberration•20m ago
Capital != money. Confirmed that author does not have finance, economics or business background.
robotburrito•15m ago
Surely there is a ycombinator startup around the corner that will fix this problem.
jackmott42•8m ago
Sadly the people behind ycombinator think helping this administration crush woke youth, and spying on us with flock cameras, is more important that preventing fascism or corporotocracy.
olelele•5m ago
Marxism-as-a-service?
toddmorey•14m ago
So here's what I don't get: The United States is the world's largest consumer market. From what I can find, personal consumption expenditures (PCE) account for about two-thirds to 70% of total US economic output. We live and die on consumer spending and confidence.

So next we automate the bejeebus out of this economy with AI robots and Elon believes it grows 3x in under five years. Splendid. But if a consumer-driven economy has no payrolls, it eventually has no buyers. It just seems to me that ultimately, billionaires and investors cannot decouple themselves from the masses... but maybe it's a game of get mine before the system collapses?

RitchieRicher•11m ago
as Elon says, soon money will be worthless. what will matter is how much compute and how many robots you have

so yeah, billionaires without compute or robots will join the permanent underclass

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U.S. workers took home their smallest share of capital since at least 1947

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