USA - real wages declining

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I wonder where the money went.

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So…the continuation of a 45 year trend?

Steve

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Tax cuts for the wealthy will fix this.

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So we’ve been told again, & again, & again, & again, …

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I have a friend who I think voted for Trump, but we have not discussed it, so I’m not sure. However, he LOVES Elon Musk. My friend is reasonably well off, but not rich. Why does any ordinary person think the richest man in the world is on their side? It’s not impossible, but in this case I think it very unlikely.

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We old phartz have seen plenty of cults, even ones that start out with good intentions, turn toxic.

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Because he isn’t the type to go out and buy gigantic yachts or huge fancy homes and stuff like that. Instead he spends on things like trying to improve solar power, improving battery technology so that clean power becomes more useful, zero emission vehicles, going to Mars, worldwide internet coverage, etc. Stuff like that. Pretty much cool futuristic stuff to generally benefit mankind.

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I guess getting the taxpayer to fund his space yachts Mars is different.

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That’s what happens with a lack of antitrust enforcement and union busting.

intercst

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It’s completely different! A typical yacht is meant only for the owner and their guests to enjoy. It is a very expensive form of entertainment reserved for the ultra-wealthy. A “yacht” to Mars, or wherever, is an experiment, one that may (will!) take decades or centuries, but what it finds and what it does is eventually for the good of all mankind. Not for one single person. It’s more like the polio vaccine from Jonas Salk and not at all like Lipitor from Pfizer.

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We are undergoing an industrial buildout.

Where do you think that money is coming from?

The recapitalization has to come out of the workers. As usual. Nothing new.

In the process the tariffs are genius. Instead of cycling money through the government towards the factory buildout the corporations will rely on US factory production as opposed to their Chinese factories.

As this process gains steam economies of scale will fall into place about two years from now.

In the meantime the management and owner classes in the US do not face tax hikes.

If you tax something you get less of it. If you take taxes off of something you get more of it. You also get inflation. Which capitalizes more factories.

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I think I was suggesting something like that, in another thread. The USian “JCs” have their profits protected either way, by direct government subsidy, or by government imposed tariffs on their competitors. The difference is, in the subsidy model, the cost is opaque to J6P, because the government is borrowing the money, while, in the tariff model, J6P quickly realizes he is paying a lot more for stuff. If the tariffs, as wide and steep as proposed, materialize, the popularity polling the next couple years will be interesting.

Steve

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He wins as the factories get built and put into production. They will buy from each other B2B and compete with each other.

The tariffs only need to be in place for x number of years. Then the international bargain begins to lower them.

SpaceX has advanced the space program enormously … something others don’t seem to be able to manage.

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Tax cuts for the wealthy have long drawn support from conservative lawmakers and economists who argue that such measures will “trickle down” and eventually boost jobs and incomes for everyone else. But a new study from the London School of Economics says 50 years of such tax cuts have only helped one group — the rich.

The new paper, by David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King’s College London, examines 18 developed countries — from Australia to the United States — over a 50-year period from 1965 to 2015. The study compared countries that passed tax cuts in a specific year, such as the U.S. in 1982 when President Ronald Reagan slashed taxes on the wealthy, with those that didn’t, and then examined their economic outcomes.

Per capita gross domestic product and unemployment rates were nearly identical after five years in countries that slashed taxes on the rich and in those that didn’t, the study found.

But the analysis discovered one major change: The incomes of the rich grew much faster in countries where tax rates were lowered. Instead of trickling down to the middle class, tax cuts for the rich may not accomplish much more than help the rich keep more of their riches and exacerbate income inequality, the research indicates.

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Is this news? Is it possible there is someone on this planet that believes ‘trickle down economics’ is actually a thing?

JimA

It is a “thing”–typically a total failure (sound familiar?) proposed by someone who has no clue about real-world economics.

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It is a thing. But long ago the poor realized they would not get rich because of it. It definitely is a thing. There is no surprise with it.

Roughly 75 million American voters apparently believe in trickle down economics, including 60% of the voters without a college degree earning less than $50,000. My wife’s siblings believe in trickle down economics, despite being 75 and 81 years of age, respectively, and living almost entirely on their SS and pensions. Democracy needs an educated populace with core values to survive, and we have neither.

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