In US top 1% now make more than entire middle class.

Provide an economic argument to contradict anything I wrote in the post you quoted.

Well, that went about like I thought it would....

I want to hear more about this sun-snuffing.

Since time began, Man has dreamed of destroying the sun.

If we're destroying the sun, the line forms behind MY pale ginger ass.

If only 1% of the population can engage in the exchange of goods and services, that model is doomed to fail. We aren't there yet, but the gap is increasing at an exponential rate. How long do you suppose before it collapses? If you think "so what, I'll die before then." Then you are a selfish, ignorant, asshole.

I'm not in the one percent and I can engage in exchange. So can pretty much everyone I know.

The gap is not increasing at an exponential rate. The graph shows that gap converging at a low linear rate.

"Any trend projected sufficiently far into the future leads to catastrophe."

Actually, the trend could continue (if it continues) far into the future. The top 1% could have 10 or 100 times the wealth of that middle 60% and the system remain stable, so long as the absolute wealth of that 60% were high enough to constrain their discontent.

And the total wealth is increasing faster than that middle 60%'s share is shrinking. So, they get better off in absolute terms.

I'm not discontented because Jeff Bezos has a dozen mansions. His wealth relative to mine isn't a bother if my absolute level is sufficiently comfortable.

Please let me make my own arguments before you assume them and use that as a basis to be uncivil.

Just keep that ginger ass out of direct sunlight. We don't want to be blinded!

for now.

You're misreading the graph. in 1999, the 99% had X and the 1% had Y. in 2021, the 99% dropped, while the 1% increased. in 2021, the top 1% own as much wealth as the bottom 89%. Soon, very soon, it will encompass the entire 99%

How far into the future do you think you will live? If you're close to my age, you won't live much longer than another 60 years. How is that for "sufficiently far into the future"?

Here we go back to "you're just jealous". That's not an argument. Tell me how the bottom 99% is fairly compensated for their labor based on your ... incredibly naïve thought process.

After 10 years of insults here on WF, you demand I be civil? I treat people as they treat me.

$100 to whoever fucks this cunt up the best.

You're misreading the graph.

It isn't between the top 1% and the other 99%, but between the 1% and the middle 60%. The graph also omits (very strategically, in my opinion), the 19% of people between the 60% and the 1% because that would undermine the conclusion it wants you to draw.

And you don't know the difference between exponential and linear growth.

You miss the point. You're assuming that the trend will continue indefinitely. And if you assume any trend continues indefinitely, disaster ensues.

The system is stable if people won't overturn it. If people are comfortable enough, they are not troubled by others having more.

The market price for labor in a free market is the closest thing to a fair price. It is the price at which buyer and seller agree.

I've offered up reasoned arguments, even if you don't like my reasoning or think it's wrong. You're the one offering up "fool," "asshole," and "fuck you." I don't expect you or the Red Room to be civil, but you certainly can't claim I've said anything like that.

This appears to be your only argument. You use a lot of words to say just one small sentence over and over. It's not about others having more. It's about the disproportionate distribution of assets. This is the difference between equity and equality. No one is asking for equality. They're asking for equity. Nothing you have said so far invalidates that point.

It seems borne out by experience.

The guy who makes minimum wage and the guy who makes $250k a year are both worth about $100 million less than Jeff Bezos. But the latter doesn't spend a lot of time stewing over it.

What's the appropriate number? Don't just say less, give me a number you think is appropriate.

What point? It's an opinion.

If by latter you mean Bezos, you're correct. But, though I don't make $250k a year, I make more than enough to live comfortably. And I DO stew about the folk on minimum wage, because I've seen what that does.

Perhaps you're the sort of cunt who has a decent salary and doesn't look at those "below" him as anything other than lazy and shiftless. I see folk on less than half what I make slaving themselves to the bone for it. They're not lazy, they are undervalued. And they have no option but to beg at our table for scraps. Despite the fact they pull our sled and keep the polar bears away.

Same. I make more than the national average, let along the average for a woman my age with my education. But, that doesn’t mean I’m so engrossed in my own success that I completely disregard the struggles of others. Regardless of Paladin’s success financially, he has failed compassion and empathy. And that’s infinitely worse in my opinion.

Yeah. Instead, the latter spends his time stewing over the possibility of the former getting a couple of pennies' worth of his tax money.

It's only pennies? I thought it was several percent...

Oh, no. All that freedom for nothing.

Given how incensed you are by that several percent going to programs to help people, it's weird you can't understand why so many people would be angry about an increasing percentage of their productivity every year being siphoned off to the richest while their real purchasing power drops.

Some are lazy, some aren't. Some are hard-working, some are making the absolute minimum effort required to not be mistaken for a corpse or a mannequin.

Beware anyone who lumps people into overly-generalized monoliths for the sake of an otherwise-unsupported assertion.

They're providing labor at the agreed price, and they're free to seek a higher price for their greater productivity.

I forgot to add "yet."

Anyway, it's not like there's the 1% and everyone else is a rickety peasant.

Stop it with your obfuscating nuance. You are either the oppressor or the oppressed, and are expected to read accordingly from a prescribed script. Get with the program.

And yet that seems to be the course we're on. Hence the OP.

Now wait, let's not gloss over the revelation that Albert is a soulless ginger abomination.

Were people wrong to complain about living conditions in the USSR?

Under the government of the USSR they had better Tv's and consumer electronics than previous generations, better housing than their grandparents overall, and hunger was less common.

Seems silly there was jealousy for the living standards elsewhere. Why couldn't they just see how things had been improved instead of focusing on how they could be better or more fair?

And then the irony meter turned into red matter, and everyone died.
THE END.

Pink-haired gender studies majors are different, doncha know.

This has been known for years, maybe as far back as the founding of the board.

Really? Maybe my aging brain is losing memory function then . . .