Stephanie Kelton and Randy Wray’s latest podcast

I highly recommend listening to Stephanie Kelton and Randy Wray’s latest podcast. They lay out in some detail the role of interest bearing government debt in shifting income towards rentiers, either of the small variety but skewed, of course, towards the wealthy.
Especially in liquidity constrained currency, such as under the gold standard, such debt would significantly shift real income towards the wealthy.

http://ec.libsyn.com/p/e/b/4/eb4f1d8beba84dae/Randy_Wray_April_28.mp3?d13a76d516d9dec20c3d276ce028ed5089ab1ce3dae902ea1d01c18f3ed1cf5dce6f&c_id=7122314


Way back in the 80s, when I was a young lad, in my first poli. sci class, we looked at inequality. When societies reach extreme polarization in wealth, they destabilize, and you face turmoil, revolution, and in a worst case scenario they self-destruct. For example, the Senators availed themselves of vomitoriums and gladiatorial combat, the Visigoths gathered on the border plotting sedition. The French Revolution is another example. As is the Arab Spring.

If we reach a point where a preponderance of the vaunted Main St of the US becomes the "formerly middle class", whilst the 1% live in opulence, off their ill-gotten gains, all bets are off.

“A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.” -Wendell Berry