Question for Economists: Does America Have a Crisis of Pie?
I am genuinely asking; is there something I’m missing here? Is there any good faith argument to be had for a third (and rising) of the money to sit with 1% of the country?
Robert Reich, Neil Kashkari, Paul Krugman, Warren Buffett, Sheila Behr… That’s every economist I can name off the top of my head; perhaps the Substack algorithm will be kind and put this article in front of one of them so they can answer my damn question:
What am I not understanding here?
We The People of the United States of America make a pie every year - with blood, sweat, tears, time, energy, ideas, and brilliance, we make a big ass wealth pie - and in 2024, that pie was worth $163.8 trillion. That’s the value of our country, our American pie.
As you can see, the wealth isn’t coming back down; over 30 years, the bottom 90% of Americans have quite literally been given a smaller and smaller piece of the pie…. I can see it, I made that graphic myself.
So here are my questions, economists… is there ANY chance the majority of Americans have been underpaid while the ultra-wealthy take more and more and more and more and more?
And does society not collapse at some point, if that trend continues?
I am genuinely asking; is there something I’m missing here? Is there any good faith argument to be had for a third (and rising) of the money to sit with 1% of the country?
One last question (though I admit, this one is less for economists and more for Democrats); how is this not THE ONLY topic of conversation? We have been denied the fruits of our labor, LITERALLY, for long enough.
Official Opinion: This is some bullshit.
Official Question: Is this opinion well-founded?
With the information I currently have, I keep landing on the same conclusion; Wealth levels like Musk’s, Bezos’s, and Zuckerberg's are only possible so long as workers continue to be paid (clearly) far less than we’re worth.
If the value of the product peoples labor produces goes up the value of their labor should go up too. The prices of the products have certainly gone up but people wages haven’t kept pace with prices so we can’t afford what we once could. Stagflation. GDP has gone up. Reagan cut taxes for the rich and there was no longer an incentive to pay people higher wages to keep taxes down. Wage earners have lost ground ever since. Now Trump cuts the riches taxes to 15% and we need the little people to pay even more to keep the country going even with all the cuts in government spending so we get to pay tariffs because we don’t realize those are taxes and the little people are in deep shit and Trump and Elon and Putin and the rest of the rich hide in their bunkers and sail on their yachts and wait for the population to reduce itself. I think that’s about what they have planned.
You're not wrong. This is heinous.