Inequality Then and Now: Now It’s Too Late, by Charles Hugh Smith

Few would begrudge the productive the fruits of their productivity. When wealth stems from government, its central bank, and those with influence in those institutions, people are much less inclined to accept the resultant inequality. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

In refusing to recognize that inequality had the potential to bring down the entire system, our delay has made that reckoning inevitable.

The theme here is problems are not resolved, they’re papered over with profitable faux fixes. In my previous post, I described how the problem of our collective health crisis isn’t being resolved, it’s being milked for profit by faux “solutions” that don’t actually resolve the problem, they keep it on simmer because this is the most profitable arrangement for those providing the illusory “solution.”

I have endeavored to explain why extreme inequality will undo not just democracy, it will undo the entire social order and the economy as well. We currently live in a fantasy world in which finance and market forces operate with impunity, as the focus is on profits and “growth.”

That finance and market forces have profound social consequences is ignored. This reality has been explored since the 1800s, by critics ranging from Emerson to Marx (“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned”) to modern critics such as Christopher Lasch, author of The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (1995) and more recently, by Jeffrey L. Degner in his new book Inflation and the Family: Monetary Policy’s Impact on Household Life, which is described in The Social Costs Of Inflation (Quoth the Raven, via Rich W.)

That inequality of wealth, income and opportunity has reached dangerous extremes in America has been starkly visible since the save-the-fraudsters response to the 2008-09 Financial Fraud Meltdown (a.k.a. the Global Financial Crisis). In the aftermath, a number of incisive essays were published by journals left, right and center on the urgent need to address soaring inequality.

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