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Rising Prices Widen Gap Between Rich and Poor »

Posted by: jovial 2 years, 1 month ago

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Central banks flooded the world with cheap money for years, helping the rich get richer. Now inflation is on the horizon, threatening to make the poor even poorer.

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jovial

Grew up In Brooklyn. Joined the Navy in 1976 stayed in 10 years. Aircraft Electronics tech. Worked for Major Govt. contractor then settled in California ...

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Comments: 38

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jovial
Nov. 1, 2007, 10:38 a.m.
Are we on a downward spiral towards inflation? This author seems to think so. Prices of everything is going up. From Gasoline to lumber to wheat. As the world is being flooded by dollars the prices have to go up. Bernanke and Greenspan have kept interests rates low. This has allowed Businesses to become more profitable, but what will happen to the poor and middle class?
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engineer
Nov. 1, 2007, 11:56 a.m.
It's very scary --except for the greedy wealthy who couldn't care less!!
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jovial
Nov. 1, 2007, 12:13 p.m.
We might hear from saintettiene on this story, telling all the poor and middle class how dumb they are for not being rich.
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not2needy
Nov. 1, 2007, 1:14 p.m.
Widening the gap between the haves and have nots was the Bush Plan in 2000!
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Spadecaller
Nov. 1, 2007, 1:45 p.m.
Shopping at the supermarket is like it used to be in the Soviet Uninion. If it's there, its not that fresh, and costs a small fortune. Who has ever heard of paying over $2.00 a pound for tomatos, over a dollar an apple, and over $3.00 for a small bag of spinach laced with ecoli? Great!
Bush is quite pleased with the economy, though. When was the last time he went into a supermarket? Remember his father; he was so impressed with the scanning devices. Maybe George should make the undocumented workers wear bar codes on there way across the borders.
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willottica
Nov. 1, 2007, 3:57 p.m.
In Calgary (Canada), the average price of homes has gone up 200% in the last 5 years, the average salary: 20%. Awesome if you already owned your home -- but anyone who didn't is up spit creek. I'll be renting for a long time.
Part of the 'inflation' in the States right now is actually the devaluation of your currency, so don't feel like prices are that out of control. Actually, since many of those countries have their dollars tied to USD, almost all of it might be American inflation/devaluation...
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NelsonR
Nov. 1, 2007, 5:49 p.m.
Yes the past was mighty good to make your assets look good on paper but now you and your grandchildren will pay the cost. If you shop at Walmart take a magnifier to see where the items were produced, you will be amazed. Every dog treat I looked at were from China and we all know how their made and with what. Once told my wife, don't be concerned about the food we consume, its produced locally, I was wrong. One good note thought our upper class went to great lengths to obtain a larger bottom line while putting another American either out of work or with lesser benefits. Our government and upper crust in action.
How in the heck does England put up with the class distinction in their society, its archaic and antiquated but if you need to worship another for being in a higher class distinction, go for it.
The Queen and her entourage do use commodes, I think???
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Amazing1
Nov. 1, 2007, 7:14 p.m.
It is sad, really sad.
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amIdreaming
Nov. 1, 2007, 10:35 p.m.
What's also sad is that the republicans could not have done all this without your average garden variety knucklehead buying into their hate and fear mongering and electing him twice. Sadly, they put their own head in the noose. Know what's even more sad? they'll blame "Hillary", "Clinton 1", "the Democrats" and everyone but themselves on their way down the toilet.
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ETproductions
Nov. 2, 2007, 12:50 a.m.
Back on our way to the wealthiest 1% owning over 50% of everything in America -- just where a long string of Republican rule got us in 1929 before the great depression.
In the last 35 years of mostly Republican rule, the wealthiest 1% have doubled their accumulated holdings. By 2004 they were back up to owning 42% of everything here, but that's still nowhere near enough.
That 1% have a perfectly good reason to vote Republican. All the spin mastering and truthiness of the New Republican party that Reagan brought in was aimed at hoodwinking another 50% of the electorate to vote against their own best interests.
Of course, things got considerably easier by 2000. With major corporations building the electronic voting machines, a much smaller percentage of the vote would still do the trick.
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DarkWizard
Nov. 2, 2007, 1:21 a.m.
Good post Jovial.
Good comments.
IMHO, we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg as all markets have become intertwined within the global community and economic imbalances can't be as easily offset by investing in foreign markets. Yes, there are still ways around economic spikes, but the majority of people are not educated (formally or otherwise) in finance or economics and will fall victim to the mishandling of investments, interest rates, and government funding/bail outs.
Of course, big corporations and the wealthy won't feel much as they have built tax shelters and diversified their investments to offset economic imbalances. Nothing new there.
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0gramstransfat
Nov. 2, 2007, 8:11 a.m.
This goes beyond Bush. This is what happens when the economy, the accumulation of wealth and financial gain is the driving force of our endeavors. Oh yes, one more thing to ****** us middle class people off, for the rich, about 20% (actually, it was 17% in the news story I saw.) of their yearly earnings go to pay their taxes. For the middle class, it is over 30%.
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getreal1
Nov. 2, 2007, 10:55 a.m.
Bush said as so much in his speech yesterday at heritage that there is nothing any one on earth can do to stop him
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willottica
Nov. 2, 2007, 12:13 p.m.
Tim Horton's around here is $15/hour the last I checked... many restaurant drive-thrus have closed because of lack of staff, the Interfaith Thrift Stores in town went out of business because they couldn't keep/pay employees. And yes, a few years ago, you could easily rent a 2-bedroom for 650-750, now the average is up to around 1500 for the same apartment.
Edmonton's wasn't seeing quite as bad as Calgary, but maybe they've caught up now.
It's a "boom" for the province, leaving thousands homeless and businesses in dire straights because there aren't enough people for the jobs, because the jobs don't pay near enough to afford rent/housing for a family.