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David Stockman Delivers Epic Send-Off To Steve Bannon But Warns ‘It’s Way Too Late’
By David Stockman as originally published on Contra Corner and reprinted here with permission
Good riddance to Steve Bannon. The last thing America needed was a conservative/populist/statist alternative to the Welfare State/Warfare State/Bailout State status quo. Yet what Bannonism boiled down to was essentially acquiescence to the latter---even as it drove politicization deeper into the sphere of culture, communications and commerce.
Stated differently, the heavy hand of the Imperial City in
It sounds like an interesting site, but clicking “subscribe” redirects me to a page by agora financial that asks me to give them a call. They say it’s urgent (and no, I didn’t call).
What am I missing here?
.. Issues such a globalization, free trade, unionization, minimum wage laws, single parents, problems with our education system and infrastructure can increase the income and wealth inequality. However, these are extremely minor when compared to the shift of the tax burden from the rich to the middle class. It is the compounding year after year of the effect of the shift away from taxes on capital income such as profits, dividends, capital gains and inheritances over time as the rich get proverbially richer which is the prime generator of inequality…
The primary change that has fundamentally changed the economy can be best described by Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway who said, “Through the tax code, there has been class warfare waged, and my class has won,” to Business Wire CEO Cathy Baron Tamraz at a luncheon in honor of the company’s 50th anniversary. “It’s been a rout.”..
For at least 50 years, non-wealth and nontax factors had very little impact on pretax inequality. All of the factors that previously had some effect on pretax inequality, now merely take income from one group and may transfer it to others but do not impact pretax inequality. Increasing or decreasing the power of labor unions may have impacted pretax inequality in the past. However, the relative power or lack of power today of unions may determine whether higher paid unionized employees gain or lose relative to lower paid non-union workers and consumers, but that does not significantly impact inequality between the top 1% and the other 99%. Increasing the minimum wage would in many cases be just transfer money from those who eat at McDonald’s to those who work at McDonald’s and similar establishments.
Technological progress, globalization and free trade on balance makes almost all people better off. There will be some losers at times. However, any harm from technological progress, globalization and free trade is a likely to impact the owners of firms as much as employees of those firms. Thus, there is no impact on inequality. At one time lack of access to education may have significantly contributed pretax inequality. That is not the case today. The unpleasant truth is that today’s white non-college educated working class person is not your grandfather’s white non-college educated working class person…”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4125903