Three dynamics that define any human civilization are the distribution of resources, capital, and agency. Resources are straightforward — food, energy, shelter, etc. Capital is financial (money), tangible (tools, ownership of land, etc.) and intangible (social / human capital). Capital productively invested produces income. Agency is control of one's life, having a say in community / public decisions, and having some control and power over one's circumstances. When these three are distributed asymmetrically -- where the majority of the resources, capital, and power are distributed to an elite -- society and the economy are imbalanced and prone to stagnation and eventual discord.
Statistics are unequivocal: income-wealth inequality in the U.S. continues reaching new heights. This is reflected in asymmetric access to healthcare and other resources, asymmetric ownership of income-producing capital, and limited agency. The bottom 90% of the U.S. economy has been decapitalized: debt has been substituted for capital. Capital only flows into the increasingly centralized top tier which owns and profits from the rising tide of debt that's been keeping the bottom 90% afloat for the past 20 years. Globalization and financialization have richly rewarded the top 5% and especially the top 0.1%. Everyone else has been been reduced to a powerless peasantry of debt-serfs.
America has no plan to reverse this destructive tide of neo-feudal pillage. Our leadership's "plan" is benign neglect: send a monthly stimulus of bread and circuses (the technocrat term is Universal Basic Income or UBI) to all the disempowered, decapitalized households so they can stay out of trouble and not hinder the New Nobility's pillaging of America and the planet.
As for agency: Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University are authors of the study "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens." Professor Gilens gave this brief summary of their conclusions:
"Ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States. And economic elites and interest groups, especially those representing business, have a substantial degree of influence. Government policy-making over the last few decades reflects the preferences of those groups — of economic elites and of organized interests." (Foreign Affairs, Jan. 2021, Monopoly Versus Democracy)
That is as definitive as soaring income-wealth inequality. Both are inherently destabilizing.
Meanwhile, central bankers, monopolists and the politicos whose campaigns are funded by monopolists are all frantically trying to convince us their policies will heal the metastasizing tumor consuming America. Borrowing a quarter of the nation's entire economic output every year to prop up an ineffective, corrupt status quo is merely kicking the can down the road while not addressing the root problems in our country.
If America cannot bear to discuss these realities (and structural solutions) openly, the social, economic, and political orders will unravel in a non-linear Cultural Revolution with a highly uncertain outcome.
-- Charles Hugh Smith (The Daily Reckoning) March 27, 2021
