The Partisan Divide on Issues

[Eric the Green]

(12-24-2020, 12:43 PM)Snowflake1996 Wrote: One of the hallmarks of any successful Fourth Turning Crisis is the transfer of wealth from the old to the young but more importantly from the rich to the poor. The response and result of the Covid19 pandemic has resulted largely in the opposite: the rich have gotten richer while everyone else suffers. Initially at the start of this turning (2008-2019) we at least had income and wealth inequality indicators start to stagnate relative to the Third Turning which was a good sign. And in the few years before the pandemic we began to see inflation-adjusted incomes for the bottom two quartiles of Americans finally rise. It seems as though we have backtracked to 1980s style economic trends. The stock market and upper income earners are booming while everyone else suffers. 

I’m genuinely worried we’re gonna come out of this looking far more like the Gilded era of the post-Civil War America rather than anything resembling the post-WWII American climate. Sad state of affairs right now.

It's true. That's why we need to dethrone Reaganomics/neoliberalism from power, and the voters did not fully cooperate, re-electing too many Republicans to the senate. If we could ever dethrone Reaganomics, then measures could pass like stimulus and higher taxes on the wealthy, minimum wage rises, better laws for union organizing, restrictions on speculation, health care for all and other Keynesian measures. 

Unless neoliberalism is overthrown, it will indeed create another Gilded Age, and the double rhythm indicates that may be our fate. Neoliberal, trickle-down, self-reliance ideology is too tempting for those who resent giving "free stuff" to the poor and "lazy" and who expect that it will work to give breaks to "job creaters." Classic Xer is the chief example of these folk here.

Eric M