Aside from wealth disparity there is opportunity disparity, and the asymmetric flows to capital vs. labor.
What is ignored in today's discourse is WHERE and HOW the top 5% is getting their 33% share of total AGI from. It's not from the mines of Zanzibar, or between themselves, it's from the 95% below them, via economic rents in housing, healthcare, and corporate sector profits.
Each of these are $2T flows from the paycheck economy to the capital class.
To reverse this, instead of a higher minimum wage, we need a lower cost of living! Just raising the minimum wage will result in higher housing rents:
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On Redistribution
Aside from wealth disparity there is opportunity disparity, and the asymmetric flows to capital vs. labor.
What is ignored in today's discourse is WHERE and HOW the top 5% is getting their 33% share of total AGI from. It's not from the mines of Zanzibar, or between themselves, it's from the 95% below them, via economic rents in housing, healthcare, and corporate sector profits.
Each of these are $2T flows from the paycheck economy to the capital class.
To reverse this, instead of a higher minimum wage, we need a lower cost of living! Just raising the minimum wage will result in higher housing rents:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=uZh
red is CPI rent, blue is wage level, 1981 = 100
but nobody gets this.
Opportunity-wise, when looking at what full employment is we need to compare the present to 1999, when ~73% of age 15-64 were working.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=uZj
blue is 'full employment' level reached in 1999, red is manufacturing, construction, information, and retail employment.
This shows that since 1980 the working population has increased 50%, but these sectors as a whole have not increased at all.
This should be the political issue of our day, but is not.
#housing