How is your assessment opposite from OPs? Just like the OP argued, if the entirety of US goes down under, you still have option of moving most of your earnings to your safe North European homeland. Perfect example of income being "decoupled" from the government.

This is why the actual billionaires - including and particularly the ones who setup ycombinator - such as sama and Peter Theil have bunkers outside the US that they plan to flee to (and in some cases did at the start of COVID) to avoid the mess that they've created in the US.

The people cosplaying here by repeating the values that Peter et al want them to quake will be the ones left behind.

Inequality doesn’t really matter as much as people think.

What inequality does is ensure that there will always be two markets of consumers: one that needs goods at low prices and one that can afford higher prices for luxury goods.

As long as the lower price market exists, hoarding sufficient wealth guarantees you’ll be able to at least afford the minimum standard of living, allowing you to safely retire. If everyone was wealthy everything would be expensive and then no one would feel wealthy enough to retire.

...what about the people who can't "hoard sufficient wealth" because it's all been sucked from the market?

...what if "health care" is viewed as a luxury good as it is in the statse?

lol. It doesn't matter much if you're not the one in the lower bracket.

Yes, thank you for telling us that capitalism needs poverty to exist.

Most of Western/Westernized world is going to shit. Western Europe and Japan in particular have terrible demographics, which means that, unless some miracle happens (like a massive influx of immigrants who integrate well and become productive members of society), that less and less working people will have to maintain more and more non-working population. Obviously, it will lead to radical decrease of standard of living and gutting of the welfare programs across the board. Just watch it happen across the next 30-40 years.

There was even a leaked secret recording of heads of banks, where they basically agree that the party is coming to an end for Western Europe (due to demographics) and admire Merkel and Holland for hinting that to the population, as opposed to ignoring the problem altogether.

Do you have link to that recording?

It's in Polish - they were heads of Polish banks and financial institutions. The one who said that was Morawiecki, a CEO of BZ WBK (which is a subsidiary Santander) at the time , who has since then became Prime Minister of Poland... There was a period in Polish politics around 5 years ago were important people were being secretly recorded by waiters in expensive restaurants, that's how this conversation got recorded and leaked.