TruthOut writes about data from a Rand study showing massive wealth transfer to the top 1% since 1975:
Sanders: 1 Percent Has Sapped $79T in Wealth
From Bottom 90 Percent Since 1975
In 2023 alone, $3.9 trillion was sapped from the bottom 90 percent— enough to give every worker a $32,000 raiseA new analysis has found that nearly $80 trillion in wealth has been redistributed from the bottom 90 percent of Americans to the richest 1 percent over the past 50 years, as neoliberal policies have come to roost and billionaires are poised to use their vast power to worsen wealth inequality in the coming years.
Five years ago, researchers for RAND found that roughly $47 trillion earned by the working class between 1975 and 2018 was instead given to the richest 1 percent, in 2018 dollars. This calculation was based on calculations of the growth of the bottom 90 percent in the decades after World War II, when income distribution held steady between groups.
In a new analysis published last month by RAND extending the analysis to 2023, RAND found that that figure is now $79 trillion in 2023 dollars, with inflation accounting for roughly $10 trillion of the growth.
And one wonders why so many voters were angry about the cost of everything. This mess is bipartisan. Democratic Party neoliberalism has failed the American people as a whole. The Republicans? They were pro-elites even before the Dems abandoned New Deal principles in the 1980s and 1990s. To a significant extent, the Dems backed away from defending worker's and consumer's rights and regulating capital markets and businesses to tamp down abusive excesses of unregulated capitalism. Instead, that mindset was replaced by a neoliberal or "free market" policy mindset.
Like the article says, neoliberal policy chickens came home to roost. Now they're seriously fouling the chicken coup.
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The Moscow Times, a reliable news source, reports that the Ukraine war has in essence bankrupted Russia, leaving it weak and open to negotiation demands:
Russia's Hidden War Debt Creates a Looming Credit Crisis
Moscow has been quietly pursuing a two-pronged strategy to finance its escalating war costs. In addition to the publicly scrutinized defense budget, it has set up a system of state-directed, off-budget soft loans where the Kremlin badgers banks into making easy credits to defense-sector companies to unofficially fund its war machine.
But with the soaring cost of borrowing that is now becoming a problem that could end in a debilitating crisis, according to a report from the Davis Center at Harvard University.
This lesser-known mechanism, instituted shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, has ballooned, with the volume of loans running into hundreds of billions of dollars. Companies that were forced to take out these loans are starting to squeal from the pain of servicing the rapidly rising interest payments after interest rates climbed into double digits.
After inflation took off, the Russian Central Bank had to reverse loosened monetary policy in the second quarter of 2023. Since then, prime interest rates have climbed to the current all-time high of 21%. That imposes crushing interest payments on Russian capitalists. TMT article also reports that since mid-2022, off-budget financing led to a record $415 billion surge in corporate borrowing. According to one analyst, about $210-250 billion (21-25 trillion rubles) was financed by compulsory loans to defense contractors. Russia's defense spending was somewhat over 10 trillion rubles in 2024. Informal state-directed lending to Russian defense companies is about double all the officially reported military spending.
Given its weak financial situation, djt, NATO and the Ukraine are in a strong negotiating position against Putin. However, since djt is now openly aligned with Putin and corrupt authoritarianism, it is almost certain that djt will refuse to use that leverage to force a reasonable peace deal with Russia. Instead, he will betray the US, and democracy. He will use his power to prop up Putin and corrupt authoritarianism while throwing the Ukraine under the Russian bus.
The anti-democratic moral rot of djt and MAGA elites is beyond outrageous. It is literally evil.
