Why is everything so fucked up?

                      The answer to all your questions is: Money.

According to teevee host and former sportswriter Tony Kornheiser, television producer and network big shot Don Ohlmeyer once told him, "The answer to all your questions is: Money."

When we try and figure out how we got into this mess, I'm sure many of us can point to our own favorite incident, policy, condition, cause, or villain, as the reason things are so fucked up. When it comes up among friends, individual lists grow and merge into a gigantic trail of crimes and outrages and, of course, they and we are all correct. I don't even have to open my mouth anymore. When it's my turn everyone just shouts "Reagan!" before I can open my mouth. 

Turns out I may have a case, of sorts. 

A working paper from RAND released in February examines income inequality among U.S. workers. It builds upon an earlier study, and RAND describes it this way: "This short analysis extends the results from a prior study about the gap between what the majority of workers earned from 1975 to 2018 and what they would have earned with more evenly distributed income growth (Price and Edwards, 2020)." It's a short, clear, easy read and I encourage you to take a look at it here, but the money shot is as follows (emphasis mine):

These values are intended to provide an indication of the scale of rising inequality and its durability over the last nearly five decades. Looking at the net effects of these trends, if we had the income distribution from 1975, the majority of workers (the bottom 90 percent by income) would have made an additional $3.9 trillion dollars in 2023. Cumulatively, the gap between what workers from 1975 to 2023 earned and what they would have earned with the counterfactual income distribution amounts to $79 trillion (in 2023 dollars). Compared to the $47 trillion from the 2020 study, the additional $32 trillion dollars comes from extending the time-period by five years, inflating from 2018 to 2023, and additional growth in inequality.

Seventy-nine trillion dollars is a lot of money. A lot of child care and college educations and homes that could have been passed down to help create generational wealth. Instead, "the bottom 90 percent" did not fully participate in the growth of the American economy they helped produce. You know who did? You know who reaped their own benefits and a giant share of everybody else's? Sure you do. 

And not for nothing, there's this from the RAND paper:

For three decades following the Second World War, incomes for workers across the income distribution grew at the same pace as the broader economy. This changed in the late 1970s, when earnings growth began disproportionately flowing to those with the highest incomes leading to four decades of rising inequality.

The late 1970's. Arthur Laffer. Jack Kemp. William Roth. Voodoo supply-side trickle down "economics." And do you know who endorsed this nonsense, who ran on it and was elected in 1980? Sure you do. 

That is a huge part of how we went from thirteen U.S. billionaires in 1980 to over 900 today (+ around 7000 percent). Since geographical distinctions are not what they used to be, it's also instructive to note that Forbes reports its own count as rising from 140 billionaires worldwide in 1987 to 3,028 today. Up 2162% give or take. It's been a good run if you're a billionaire and/or heir to one. For the rest of us, not so great. 

And that is a big reason why everything is so fucked up.

Thanks for reading. Speak to you soon.