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Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.

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  • shared the link on Facebook.
  • Thought about clicking the link; but too many other chores on my list.
    It is asking too much for a snippet overview of a link??? A gracious and polite consideration, IMHO; by a poster.
  • Low-interest policies helped stabilize the economy, but they also set off a multitrillion-dollar run-up in markets, which overwhelmingly benefited the richest 10 percent of Americans.
    How is that for a snippet ?
    Derf
  • On the bright side.... maybe they won't moan and groan too much when their taxes go up a bunch.
  • royal4 said:

    On the bright side.... maybe they won't moan and groan too much when their taxes go up a bunch.

    Part of being rich is acting indignant when your taxes are increased, however small the %. And then having access to the political offices (and lobbyists) that can block such measures.

    It will never be an even playing field.

  • Then there are some like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett who give away their wealth to the society.
  • edited May 2021
    catch22 said:

    Thought about clicking the link; but too many other chores on my list.
    It is asking too much for a snippet overview of a link??? A gracious and polite consideration, IMHO; by a poster.

    @Catch22 - Here’s a succinct snippet if you’re too busy to read the article:

    “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”

    Regards
  • So just asking...who are "the rich"?

    Can I surmise from the commentary that it is anyone who does not vote for Democrats and has one more dollar than you?

    Just asking for a friend.

    I would also surmise that many who are against these taxes don't like the wasteful spending of gov't.

    Best Regards,

    Baseball Fan
  • edited May 2021
    @Baseball_Fan,

    I take your question as directed at the broader audience here. Personally, I don’t have anything very incisive to say or add. FWIW - Here’s the portion of the linked article I was succinctly referencing for @Catch22 who’s apparently too busy to read it in its entirety:

    ‘Inequality is a cumulative process,’ said Karen Petrou, author of “Engine of Inequality: The Fed and the Future of Wealth in America” and managing partner of the Washington-based consulting firm Federal Financial Analytics. ‘The richer you are, the richer you get, and the poorer you are, the poorer you get, unless something puts that engine in reverse,’she said. ‘That engine is driven not by fate or by untouchable phenomena such as demographics but most importantly by policy decisions.’

    Being in somewhat of a soporific disposition (perhaps not unlike Catch) I’m reminded of other popular expressions about wealth and money and their impact on human kind.

    - “The rich are different from you and me.”

    - “It takes money to make money.”

    - “If you would know the value of money, try to borrow some.”

    - “Money can’t buy happiness.”

    - “He that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing.”

    - “He that is of opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.”

    - “You can’t take it with you.”
  • edited May 2021
    Well I don't think that it's too much to ask of posters to provide a few snippets of the article or discussion topic when posting. It's just a common courtesy and a long time request from the moderator from way back in the FundAlarm days. It also aids readers who might want to or have a lot of other things going on in their lives to decide to come back later if they so choose.

    @baseball fan - I believe you know darn well who the rich are and there are plenty of articles circling the web if you care to do the research. Lets face it, taxes were higher on them before today and they seemed to have managed quite well (i.e. got richer). Besides who knows anyone, especially the rich, who actually pays the going tax rate for their income levels? Even Mr. Buffett pays less than his secretary after all is figured out.
  • edited May 2021
    "Economies of scale." It works for countries, for corporations and for wealthy individuals. Given current circumstances, those not already wealthy in the USA don't have the same opportunities we oldsters once had. It just doesn't hold true anymore that "if you work hard and save your money, you can get ahead." We are in a slow, maybe inevitable decline. Breton Woods died quite a while ago. That old stability after The War with the Marshall Plan was a sort of Pax Americana. That's gone, too. The rest of the world has risen from the ashes. Yes, it's still a mess in parts of Africa and Asia. For some time, we've been struggling to keep up appearances, but our society is being hollowed out by the uber-wealthy so that they can get to be uber-wealthier. The Warren Buffet and his secretary example above is illuminating. And charity is a fine thing, but it's no solution for real issues. POLICIES at a national and international level which actually benefit most people, rather than the uber-wealthy, is certainly one of the foundation stones of real progress.
  • lede

    Ever since the covid-19 pandemic struck, the Federal Reserve has gotten plenty of kudos for moves that have helped stabilize the economy, kept house prices from tanking and supported the stock market. But those successes have obscured another effect: the inadvertent impact the Fed’s ultralow interest rates and bond-buying sprees are having on economic inequality.
    Longstanding inequality in the United States has been exacerbated by the Fed’s role in touching off a multitrillion-dollar boom in stock markets — and stock ownership is heavily skewed toward the wealthiest Americans.


    ending

    Jason Furman, a former chair of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers and currently an economics professor at Harvard, summed up the inequality trade-off this way in an interview: “I don’t want to have a lower stock market and higher unemployment.”
    In other words, increasing wealth for the wealthy is an inevitable side effect of keeping interest rates low to support the economy and create jobs.
    The latest round of stimulus checks will help close that gap a little by putting money in the pockets of low-income earners like Tan. But near-zero interest rates will make it harder for them to save the money for the future, as Tan hopes to do. She would like to set aside $1,000 to $2,000 in savings accounts for her 16-year-old son and 3-year-old grandson in addition to saving for her retirement and a rainy-day fund.
    And as the Fed pumps more money into the financial system by buying Treasury securities and indirectly supporting federal stimulus programs, the run-up in stock markets is likely to continue — and leave people like Tan even further behind than they already were.
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