This is a topic I have spent some considerable time on so I’ll put my conclusions down in order:
Globalization for me is easily number 1, which comes down to simple math. So imagine a company that initially had say 10 million customers then after globalization that now goes to 100 million or more. Profits are significantly increased as a result. Globalization also had the following double effect; companies could then produce things for pennies on the dollar outside the US and the US worker now has to compete salary wise with this significantly lower paid workforce.
Technology; companies can produce things more efficiently while not having to hire as many people, which increases profit.
Social factors such as middle/upper middleclass/upper class women not having as many children, which has had the result of over 40% of children born in the US in poverty. To put it another way income level is inversely proportional to the number of children people have. Birth rate by family income in the U.S. 2017 | Statista
Also women who are successful do not typically date or marry men who are not as successful as them. So generally what happens women marry men who are at or above their income level.
So how exactly is government going to fix these factors? I guess they force big companies to break up? I guess the other thing they could do is implement a $70/hr minimum wage? Should not every American maker as much as their US Representative? Maybe a 90-100% income tax above say $200,000. Thoughts?
Not sure your point as wealth concentration is income inequality. Redistribution of wealth is currently going on and has been for over fifty years. Many will argue all that has done is promote generational poverty.
I think your #1 and #3 have a huge impact. It’s hard to quantify, but I’m not sure #3 doesn’t have a bigger impact than we think. You’re right, women do not downgrade when it comes to a mate. It is extremely rare. Men do, but only on a middle class to upper middle class level. Those with great wealth stick together. Almost exclusively. It is my opinion that there is not a lot of movement between classes. The poor, the middle class, the upper middle class, the rich, and the famous. They all gravitate towards eachother. Tom Brady married a super model. This type of thing is repeated throughout the classes.
Qualification. In my opinion, that’s the biggest OVERALL difference. It takes someone qualified for the job to land the $100K job. (In general.) And the one who is not qualified for a better-paying job is destined to fill the low-rung-compensation jobs.
I keep inserting qualifiers to that statement because there are always exceptions. And I want to head off derailment focus on those exceptions.
A secondary (but still major) factor is ambition. Even if a person has the graduate degree in electrical engineering, he’s not likely to hold the high-paying engineering job if he doesn’t want to do the work required to execute that job. (Ambition also holds for the acquisition of qualification for the high-salary qualifications. The guy who doesn’t want to do the study and work necessary to get that masters in engineering is likely not going to succeed in getting the degree. (Probably not even the undergrad degree.) )
I think the largest barrier to the middle class and a better life is the inability to afford college, and even beyond that, getting a good start in HS. In this world you need advanced training to make it, and that could simply be trade schools or apprenticeships.
We need to invest in people, throughout their lives, so that they can support themselves and put back into the system instead of just taking out. Education and training is the best path to that.
I think all public housing should be adjacent to college campuses and trade schools, for instance. If you need help to survive, let’s not think short term.
I think that we need to intensify education and training in prisons for the same reason, when they get out, what are they going to do and what options will they have?
Our current education system serves as a de facto caste system, designed to keep people in their socioeconomic levels. There is less social mobility here than in India, which has a caste system thousands of years old still in place.
Anecdotally people from poor circumstances thrive and become wealthy and successful, and there are people born of means who fail. But the plural of anecdote is not data. And just because you paid for your education doesn’t make it unfair if someone doesn’t have to do it now, be glad for them and be proud you were able to get it done when things were more difficult.
Buy I-Phones, eat at Chipolte, buy X-Boxes, play video games, buy Teslas, etc., etc., etc. Government makes the laws in which theses businesses thrive and we make them rich by buying their products.
Haven’t we been trying that for decades with rent, food stamps, earned income credit, child tax credit, and a host of other programs? If that hasn’t worked, how will giving more money help?
That’s not true at all. There are many avenues to the middle class out side of college and even trade schools. Regarding college there are many types of financial aid, scholarships, grants, etc., for students of low income families. It’s not all that hard for someone to make it to the middle class. In making this thread one of the things I learned is that 70% of the poor in this country are women and children, which correlates to this fact:
The US has the largest percentage of children born to single parents. In other words an excellent way to stay poor is to have a child when you are single and poor. Why do so many immigrants of ALL races come to America and succeed? The choices one makes in life and how hard you work go a long way.
Clearly there’s nothing government can do about who people date and marry, nonetheless the social phenomenon of rich marrying rich (or not at all) has indeed contributed to wealth concentration.
How do you come to that conclusion? A person from a school in an inner city who puts in the work, gets good grades, does well on the SAT, etc., can have the same opportunities as the same kid in a middleclass town. Our education system absolutely has many problems - it’s antiquated, cookie cutter, takes too long, costs too much - but by no means is it keeping people down.
