Yeah, I don't know Tim, My Daughter and I debate this stuff all the time too, and what I think is I'm pretty happy with my lot in life, like 99% of other Americans, I have a roof over my head, food in the fridge,
And I have enough money left over to do stuff and buy the gadgets that make me happy. I don't care that other people are super rich and I'm not. What if we took all their money and divided it up? The price of everything
would skyrocket over night & average guys like you and me really wouldn't be any better off, no?
Now I feel that I'm hijacking the thread, but this will be my last words on this.
I'm thrilled that life has treated you well, but I'd argue with your statistics. I'd also argue that prices of everything wouldn't skyrocket at all if we gradually reversed some of the excesses that have been building since the late 70's.
In fact, the economy would probably smoothly revert back to the kind of stability and opportunity that we saw from the late 50's to the mid-70's. Nobody is looking to "take all of their money and divide it up" You've bought into the propaganda of the 1%ers to make sure we never challenge their control. If you are comfortable with just being satisfied with life and can ignore the fact that 1 out of 4 kids in America suffer from food insecurity much of the time, then that is your right.
Just don't try to pass it off that 99% of us are satisfied with our lot in life. I have it great, I own a successful company, have investments, make a good living and am comfortably upper middle class, but my eyes are wide open to the suffering of many of my fellow citizens. And that's not even speaking too our fellow humans and non-humans around the world who struggle just to survive.
There is nowhere near the level of life satisfaction that you think there is. We have huge economic insecurity in America and most of it can be attributed to the policies that have shifted the tax burden away from corporations and the rich and onto the backs of the working classes. Homelessness, food insecurity, hunger, lack of educational access, lack of healthcare, decent affordable housing, stagnant and falling wages for nearly the entire working classes, shifting tax burdens from the rich to the middle class, government handouts, subsidies and tax shelters for the rich, blah....blah....blah.......Nearly all of it can be placed at the feet of the 1% that has had a stranglehold on our collective wealth for the last 40 years.
Our government is actually providing tax shelters and breaks to companies that move their jobs overseas. There are trillions of dollars per year worth of earnings being housed offshore by U.S. based corporations that set up a dummy office in a tax haven and exploit the loopholes THEY got passed into law.