Financial leadership and investors have long known this, and actively plan for it[1]:
> Citigroup analysts have also used the word plutonomy to describe economies "where economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few."
Here's a link to the plutonomy paper from Citigroup[2].
Wrong. Just totally false. The USGOV exists to persist if you want to be cynical. Persisting in that context means avoiding social unrest that prevents electoral defeat and subsequent legislations that eliminates good paying bureaucratic jobs, and that reduces government spending (thereby reducing income of businesses that rely on USGOV spending).
In sum, the USGOV is not shy about cutting the nuts off the "capital owning class" and its doing that right now with higher interest rates, higher taxes, more regulation & declining asset prices.
When did Federal income tax go up? REALLY rich people don't have income - they have capital gains - that's not going up at all.
Asset prices are down 15% from being up 50% - they're still up higher than average from the beginning of Covid.
I imagine they will still go lower - but my crystal ball rarely works.
Either way, the wealthy are doing just fine.
The American government exists as a tool to protect the capital owning class and the capital they own. Foreign policy is never about "spreading democracy". It's about extending US interests.
We have a system that demands exxponential growth for the capital owning class. The workers that make that system possible do not get to share in the proceeds of their labour because that comes at the cost of the growth the system demands, which is why for 40 years we had basically no real increase in wages despite massive increases in productivitiy.
For anyone confused about what the Fed can do here is to raise interest rates to increase unemployment to destroy the negotiating power of working people.
Your existence has a budget shortfall built into it. Housing is expensive by design. Crippling student debt is by design. Medical debt is by design. This budget shortfall keeps you working and compliant.
The only counter to this is labor organization.
This system is unsustainable. Just like an algal bloom eventually starves itself and dies out, squeezing out every limited dollar you can from people ultimately robs them of the purchasing power to become a customer.