Everything I’ve seen from how the media covers it to how our financial institutions are forming ranks to condemn retail investors sickens me. It’s making obvious the informal lines of control the investor class use to maintain their wealth and their anger to have the average person attempting to play their game.
It’s like a giant metaphor for how screwed up our society has become.
I'm pretty lucky, I happened to like computers and got into a field that pays decently well for now. I have no illusions that that I'm not working class though. I watched my parents nearly get crushed in 07/08. I graduated into a economic war zone. Watching the banks get bailed out as I went to parties hosted by kids whose parents were losing the house. Seeing the kids who used to live in the house encourage everyone to punch holes in the drywall because fuck the bank.
I haven't forgotten what Wall Street did to us. The wealth inequality in this country is insane. The elites have been treating the working class like dirt for decades now.
With that context... those CNBC clips made me livid. Fuck the Wall Street propaganda. I'll chip in my little piece if there's a remote chance of taking down one or two of the vultures who are destroying this country with their greed. Much of the finance class that runs this country builds nothing, provides nothing, and tears down communities so they can shake a few coins out of the wreckage.
In talking with my friends who voted for Trump, this is the first time I've been able to feel on the page as them in a long time. There is class rage at play here. People are sick of this system.
We're pretty much there. Just try driving through the Midwest, or West in areas not subsumed by the mega-cities. It's sad.
When it gets to that, it seems to me that there's some serious anger built up.
Do you have a reference for older people having more wealth? There's definitely a smaller number of people holding more wealth, but I haven't read about older people holding more wealth.
Saying that there's wealth deficit for millennials/genx because boomers have accumulated more wealth later in life is a little handy-wavy.
What did the boomer chart look like when they were 20-35? What will the genx chart look like when they're 50-70? And what will the millennial chart look like when they're 30-70?
Edit - 70+ for everyone would be good too.
That's not what the chart I linked is claiming. The Boomer line goes back to when they were 35. Not sure what the data limitations were preventing it from going back further. Meanwhile all age data is shown for Gen X.
I'm not sure what you mean about the future chart? I guess we'll have to wait and see :-)
But anyway, this chart appears to answer the question: "which generation had more relative wealth in its early 30s?"
Leaving out boomer data from ~18-35 makes me a little more suspicious of cherry picking because that data could be similar. It may also show boomers gaining even more wealth, but if it's not available we can't know.
> Increasing wealth inequality for several decades now
TV talking heads bemoan about this, but billionaires still remain the most admired people in this country (Trump, Musk, Gates, etc).
> older generations holding onto more wealth and power in society than ever before - with a large share of their wealth in the stock market
If there was anger at the older generation, we wouldn't have so many sacred cows regarding older people (social security and medicare). Average age of senator and house member has been growing over time. Hell, we just elected a 78 year old as president. How about before the revolution we just start with voting for younger people
> Wall Street is seen as entirely unaccountable due to 2008 bailout
Most people don't remember this. I'm surprised how rarely its actually discussed
> Pandemic this year has basically been a huge wealth transfer from normal people and small businesses towards large conglomerates and the wall street hedge funds who back them
This is mostly true but people don't see it that way. They're too busy yelling at people that refuse to wear masks or people that are forcing others to wear masks.
> Institutional trust is at historic lows, while online spaces become more and more regulated by those same institutions
Again, we elected a 40+ year veteran politician. House and Senate re-election rates are still 85%+ and we're ceding ever more of our authority to the [health] experts.
[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/04/01/yes-c...
Okay, now include Jeff Bezos, George Soros, and the Koch Brothers :)
But in all serious, I'm not talking about anecdotal "admiration" of billionaires. I'm talking about literal wealth gaps[1]. The Bottom 50% of the US held 21% of the wealth in 1970, and the Top 1% held 11% of the wealth. 21% to 11%. By 2014 this had changed to 13% to 20%. Meaning the top 1% doubled its share of the wealth while the bottom 50% lost 38% of its share of the national wealth.
> If there was anger at the older generation, we wouldn't have so many sacred cows regarding older people (social security and medicare). Average age of senator and house member has been growing over time. Hell, we just elected a 78 year old as president. How about before the revolution we just start with voting for younger people
There is massive systemic momentum keeping these programs in place untouched as they are because of gridlock in the national government, I'm not really sure how their existence supports or rejects my point. I agree younger people need to be more active in the voting process and to elect younger people. I'm optimistic about several state-level voting reforms gaining momentum in the coming years to help this.
But at least at the presidential level, our arcane primary/caucus and electoral college systems give a huge advantage to older people living in rural areas. There has been increasing consolidation of young voters in urban areas which are severely under-represented in choosing the president.
And of course campaigns are financed by large wealthy interests that are mostly controlled by older generation who have an incentive to maintain the status quo. As long as we don't have congressional term limits, poor campaign finance regulation, and a massively gridlocked Congress, it's difficult for the state of things to change from what we have, which is domination by those lobbyists and a federal government which doesn't accurately reflect its populace.
> Most people don't remember this. I'm surprised how rarely its actually discussed
What is your definition of Most People? This comes up every time I've ever seen wealth inequality, accountability and government bailouts discussed (A lot in 2020, naturally).
> This is mostly true but people don't see it that way. They're too busy yelling at people that refuse to wear masks or people that are forcing others to wear masks.
It's concretely felt among those who have lost money, jobs and opportunities. Twitter arguments about masks can be present at the same time as the literal felt effect. Anyone who has followed economic news this year has seen the repercussions even if they weren't directly impacted. In my opinion you're underestimating the mood on this, but I'd like to see some data on it.
> Again, we elected a 40+ year veteran politician. House and Senate re-election rates are still 85%+ and we're ceding ever more of our authority to the [health] experts.
I already talked about federal government above^ But I think this has actually been an incredibly interesting year in that divergence from health experts became "mainstream". Tons of people getting Covid news from people on Twitter who called out studies being used by mainstream press and national governments to justify their policy decisions. I can point out a dozen random people on twitter who I trust more than NYT or Dr. Fauci to give me relevant, contextualized analysis of different COVID-19 strategies around the world. And most importantly, there's little social risk to this. I can tell that to people and they don't think I'm a quack. Half of them do are doing the same thing. Additionally, you're seeing protests break out across the world as governments try to lock-down and re-lock-down without legitimately strong evidence to back up their proposals.
[1] Figure 2.4.1a, https://wir2018.wid.world/part-2.html#article-39
* Increasing wealth inequality for several decades now
* older generations holding onto more wealth and power in society than ever before - with a large share of their wealth in the stock market
* Wall Street is seen as entirely unaccountable due to 2008 bailout
* Pandemic this year has basically been a huge wealth transfer from normal people and small businesses towards large conglomerates and the wall street hedge funds who back them
* Institutional trust is at historic lows, while online spaces become more and more regulated by those same institutions
So maybe GME stock is small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, but it seems like all of this has to reach a boiling point eventually. I'm not sure what that will look like, but violence wouldn't be surprising.