Another good article by Michael Pascoe going where the rest of our slumbering journalists won't.
the “danger” is the pent-up frustration of 130 million Americans who can’t access $400 in an emergency but who are watching rich Americans get fabulously richer, thanks to central bank policies of ultra-cheap money boosting asset prices.
If you have money, you can borrow more money for extremely little to buy real estate and stocks that are being pushed up in price by cheap money, making them even more unaffordable for those without money.
No, it’s not good policy but it’s also in place in Australiawith the same outcome of increasing wealth inequality.
As the government starts to tighten fiscal policy next year,the Reserve Bank’s cheap money for asset price inflationwill remain as the main stimulus prescription.
Without progressive tax and wealth redistribution policies, without evidence that positive reform is possible, when the dominant policy direction has been by the powerful for the powerful, the grievances of the disempowered can only mount. Pressure cookers have limits.
The US Republican Party has persistently skewed towards the lower-tax, smaller-government mantra of the “neoliberal” Right in recent decades. In turn, that has been slavishly mimicked by the usual local suspects, wealth’s politicians, mouth pieces and media.
It’s hard to comprehend what Australian politicians could find so attractive about an increasingly divided, very rich country that can’t even achieve good universal health care and a modicum of gun control.
We are well behind the US example, but dedicated folk are working on it.
Flattening our progressive income tax scales, demonising social security – nowhere better illustrated than by the consequences-free Robodebt scandal – and constantly pushing for cheaper, “more flexible” labour are symptomatic.
In the short term, it can make the rich richer – but history says it doesn’t end well.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/finance-news/markets-and-shares/2020/11/25/wall-street-civic-unrest-pascoe/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Morning%20News%20-%2020201125
