<story><title>The rich are hoarding economic growth</title><url>https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/8/16112368/piketty-saez-zucman-income-growth-inequality-stagnation-chart</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pg_bot</author><text>Why is there no talk about the dramatic increase in the supply of workers over the last 40 years? Globalization has brought millions out of poverty and those people are now competing with Americans when they wouldn&amp;#x27;t before. It makes sense from an economic standpoint that the price of labor would not rise when the supply is increased and is likely the cause of income inequality in the US.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Camillo</author><text>Wealth concentration was the goal, globalization was the means. The rich saw a great arbitrage opportunity in the fact that the price of labor (and its legal rights) in the developing world was much lower than in the first world.&lt;p&gt;In the late 90s, there was a big political struggle over globalization.
The pro-globalists (the economic establishment and the Clinton administration) argued that it would (A) grow the economy (based on comparative advantage), (B) enrich the developing world, and (C) push them towards liberal democracy, as a consequence of having a richer middle class.
The anti-globalists (mainly left-wing opposition) argued that it would (D) destroy the working class in the first world, (E) shift the balance of power enormously in the favor of corporations, (F) destroy the developing world too.&lt;p&gt;The pro-globalization side won the fight completely: the WTO was established, China was brought into the global trade system, etc.&lt;p&gt;Twenty years on, it is clear that both sides were partially right. The pro-global side was right about A and B, and wrong about C. The anti-global side was right about D and E, and wrong about F.&lt;p&gt;Strangely, the anti-global side disappeared &lt;i&gt;entirely&lt;/i&gt; from the public discussion; in fact, that entire period of history seems to have been memory-holed with incredible rapidity. Even as D (the destruction of the working class in the developed world) was brought into the 2016 presidential campaign as one of the main issues (by Sanders and, surprisingly, by Trump), nobody seemed to recall the anti-globalization protests of the 90s. None of the activists from back then came out of the woodwork to say &amp;quot;we were right!&amp;quot;; no journalists went to look for them.&lt;p&gt;This should give pause to those who put trust in the media, even (especially?) the self-proclaimed progressive ones, like Vox.</text></comment>
<story><title>The rich are hoarding economic growth</title><url>https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/8/16112368/piketty-saez-zucman-income-growth-inequality-stagnation-chart</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pg_bot</author><text>Why is there no talk about the dramatic increase in the supply of workers over the last 40 years? Globalization has brought millions out of poverty and those people are now competing with Americans when they wouldn&amp;#x27;t before. It makes sense from an economic standpoint that the price of labor would not rise when the supply is increased and is likely the cause of income inequality in the US.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zaptheimpaler</author><text>Because the rich are getting richer, and hoarded money is useless to the rest of society. Regardless of why they get richer, the economy exists to serve society. Large amounts of money lying in investments hoping to outpace inflation is not useful to society - there are practical limits on how much money can be invested usefully at all, determined by how many capital intensive tasks businesses take on as a whole.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps in older times when there were railways to build, factories and assembly lines to setup, power grids and communication networks to build, there was more room for investment in the sense of spending money now to gain rewards later.&lt;p&gt;Now that businesses have little trouble raising capital, we may be getting closer to the point where new technology&amp;#x2F;ideas are scarcer than capital. In that climate, money may be more useful to society in the hands of government or regular people than the beneficiaries of investments like entrepreneurs.&lt;p&gt;Concretely, when $1B is better used to build housing or improve healthcare, than invested into 10 &amp;quot;Uber for X&amp;quot; startups, it makes sense to tax more and let the government use the money for just that.</text></comment>