What is Occupy Wallstreet?

[kandrathe]

So are these values corrected for the federal debt? I mean if all countries will have to really balance their checkbooks the wealth of many rich countries will decrease. More than you think. When wealth is distributed more equally in the world cheap labour becomes much less cheap making our consumption patterns much less sustainable (read more expensive).

The numbers I listed are GDP per person, which is a rough measure of the final value of goods and services produced in a year, along with income, and family income. The growing gap is showing that while productivity is growing, the wage earners (& family) share is growing more slowly (at times keeping just ahead of inflation).

Part of the problem is explained by demographics, in that 2010 is 65 years after the baby boom began, and theoretically the first boomers will begin to retire. So, consequently, 2010 was the year that had the maximal number of workers in the economy. Now, as boomers retire, and there are fewer replacements, the value of labor should increase between now and 2030. The downside is that we are broke, just as the costs for caring for the boomers will begin to increase. The current recession has been a set back too, creating about 30 to 40 million job shortfall which we need to "make up".

As for "national net worth"... The US rough GDP per year is $14.5 trillion, and the gross debt is about $15.5 trillion and growing between a half to 1.5 trillion per year. If we could reduce spending or increase taxes enough, we could pay it down substantially in a decade or two. The hidden problem is the $100 trillion we have yet to pay for in unfunded liabilities (due to pensions, and social spending promises). I've proposed before that our government might be trying to inflate our way out of debt, making today's problems shrink away, bringing with it high inflation. We, like many other countries, have leveraged our future, and hopefully the gamble was worth it. I think it is a bit irresponsible to not ensure that the borrowed money is truly invested in things that will have a pay back down the road (e.g. infrastructure that helps the economy).

So, looking again at the previous graph, increasing taxes (or letting GWB & Obama tax cuts expire) would reduce everyone's take home pay, but begin to curb a bit of the deficit. It might also slightly impinge on the economy, because I feel that government spending first had to take the money from an economy discerning person or business.

I'm elated that China's success has lifted 300 million people out of poverty. I'm a little chaffed that they manipulated their currency and destroyed a bunch of the US and Europe's manufacturing capacity. But, as Jester said, wealth is not a zero sum game. They took a shortcut, and burned us a little. Their gain was not at our expense, even though it may seem that way.

Our problem is that the world has changed, and we are still expecting it to be as it was right after WWII. There was no competition to US manufacturing, so we could afford to be extravagant with regulations and the cost of labor. There was no where else the capital could go, and being that they had a monopoly, they could afford to let prices on everything go up. Naturally, now the capitalists have gone to where the labor is cheapest and the regulations are the least restrictive.

When I think about sustainable, I think about two things. The abundance of the resource, and the impact of it's acquisition and use. Some natural resources are limited, so we may not be able to make everything we want, but we are innovative enough to use substitutes. And, like Jester, I'm worried about how a more productive world will affect the environment. There is a direct correlation between a nations wealth, and its consumption of energy. This is what makes me sleepless sometimes.