The money printing during COVID screwed everything up. Most of the capital was directly given to banks and businesses, fraudulently in many cases and unnecessarily in most, and everything pooled up into real estate and stocks so anyone who had already owned a large proportion of those became absurdly wealthy in the span of a couple years and everyone else effectively lost 20-30% of their income through inflation. The majority of all money was printed during COVID, no one voted for this to happen, no one bothered to even communicate how it was decided how much money would be printed and who would get it, and no retrospective has ever been done. It’s never been more clear that a small group of the wealthiest investors in the US run the show and the majority of people are wage slaves who had the ladder kicked out above them. Now we’re seeing an administration and elite class that is openly ransacking the country for whatever profits it can extract from a dying empire. I have no idea how this ever gets fixed.

▲

Terr_ 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The capital was either directly given to businesses, fraudulently and unnecessarily in many cases

Especially concerning when a bunch of politicians were in on it, ensuring that the money went out willy-nilly and that $700+ billion in "loans" were turned into a straight up gift from the taxpayers.

https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/cre...

https://fortune.com/2020/07/08/ppp-loan-recipients-members-o...

▲

gruez 8 hours ago | parent [-]

>ensuring that the money went out willy-nilly and that $700+ billion in "loans" were turned into a straight up gift from the taxpayers.

Wasn't that widely understood during the pandemic? All the coverage I've seen mentioned that the loans for forgivable if certain criteria were met, and nobody was like "yeah it's fine because it's a loan!".

▲

cyberax 8 hours ago | parent [-]

The problem is that these loans went to _businesses_, not workers. There was an orgy of corruption, with newly formed LLCs claiming to have dozens of workers.

And then these loans were just forgiven. And since they went to businesses, Republicans are completely silent about that.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_Protection_Program

▲

laughing_man 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The loans went to businesses as a bribe to keep on employees they didn't need until the pandemic was over. If you just gave out money to unemployed people it's almost impossible to stop when the emergency is over.

▲

cute_boi 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't know why they keep voting republicans, they haven't done anything to benefit Americans.

	▲	gruez 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		But the bill in question passed the house 419 - 6 and the senate 96 - 0?

▲

Mountain_Skies 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Your partisan obsessed brain is why the political class gets away with this.

▲

cyberax 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Sorry, but "both sides" went out of the window in 2024.

There are _some_ decent Democrats in the Congress. There are also plenty of bad ones. There are NO decent Republicans in the Congress. And yes, reality appears to be partisan.

To the topic in question, PPP was not really a big deal. The real culprit is this: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CP - the corporate profits literally DOUBLED since 2020 because of earlier Trump's tax cuts.

	▲	gruez 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>To the topic in question, PPP was not really a big deal. The real culprit is this: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CP - the corporate profits literally DOUBLED since 2020 because of earlier Trump's tax cuts. Not really. If you add data series for pre-tax profits and index both series to 2020, you see the two lines are basically on top of each other. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1X0JM

▲

12hasgt 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You get the money back the same way Roosevelt did, 94% tax rate on the rich.

▲

laughing_man 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Nobody paid those high tax rates. Everybody was writing off cars, home offices, hobbies, "business" dinners, and everything else.

The tax simplification that occurred in 1986 struck a bargain: We'll lower your tax rate, but we're not going to allow you to take all those BS deductions anymore. The effective tax rates barely budged.

An effective 94% tax rate is a huge drag on the economy, since it makes risk taking impossible to justify. You'd be stupid to start a business or invest in a startup at that rate. There's no surer way to throw half your work force out of work.

▲

mothballed 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The effective tax rates have went down modestly, but approximately no one was paying anywhere near that. They were playing the same financial engineered fuck fuck games that are played today to get around it. It's the poor and middle class that can't get around those tax rates.

▲

idiotsecant 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wealth reform is needed more than any point in American history

▲

trescenzi 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yea the covid money printing is regularly pointed to as a reason why MMT is clearly bad but that ignores that there’s literally a solution to this problem in MMT. Raise taxes to reclaim the money. It’s a trivial solution which is sadly politically incredibly challenging.

▲

triceratops 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Raise taxes to reclaim the money

Only works if the government doesn't turn around and spend the money. And feeding dollar bills into a furnace just looks bad.

▲

guywithahat 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What a horribly dystopian thing to say

	▲	trescenzi 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Huh what is dystopian about that? I’m just referencing how MMT prescribes to solve for inflation and the reality that it’s hard in a democracy to raise taxes.

▲

gruez 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And yet, the amount of redistribution that's happening has never been higher, far exceeding the era of "94% tax rate on the rich", never mind that nobody actually paid that rate because the tax code was full of exemptions at the time.

https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20260221_IRC...

▲

javascriptfan69 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Those graphs are about income, not wealth.

	▲	gruez 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		So was "the same way Roosevelt did, 94% tax rate on the rich"

▲

lovich 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don’t see how this graph shows that claim. It says it’s graphing the effect of welfare on income ratios between top 10% vs the bottom 50% then just has an arrow pointing down saying “Stronger redistribution”

Where is the connection between the percentage being graphed and whatever their definition of “stronger redistribution” is?

And I just realized the second graph includes capital gains for the fiscal income but not for the after tax income? This just seems blatantly misleading with that detail being hidden in an asterisk.

	▲	7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		[deleted]
	▲	gruez 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>I don’t see how this graph shows that claim. It says it’s graphing the effect of welfare on income ratios between top 10% vs the bottom 50% then just has an arrow pointing down saying “Stronger redistribution” The chart is supposed accompany an article, which explains what the metric is: """A simple measure of progressivity involves comparing the distribution of income both before and after tax. By this measure America redistributes about twice as much today as in the 1960s (see chart 1). Germany and Japan, the next biggest rich economies, also redistribute a lot more than they used to. So do Britain and Canada. Indeed by our estimate, seven in ten countries have more progressive tax-and-benefit systems than in 1990. The ones that have become less progressive tend to be dysfunctional (Belarus, Eritrea, Haiti) or were exceptionally redistributive to begin with (Norway, Sweden).""" >And I just realized the second graph includes capital gains for the fiscal income but not for the after tax income? This just seems blatantly misleading with that detail being hidden in an asterisk. 1. If you read the original paper[1], they seem to be doing it for weird economics reasons: "We then sequentially remove capital gains, which are not in national income" I don't know enough about economics to dispute this, but given that they bothered to adjust for other factors like imputed rent and "corporation retained earnings", I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt unless there's convincing reason otherwise. 2. On page 16 they have an actual breakdown of all the adjustments, which lists the effect of removing capital gains at between 0.7% to 1.4%. In other words, not enough to change the conclusion. [1] https://davidsplinter.com/AutenSplinter-Tax_Data_and_Inequal...

▲

Loughla 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Google Disaster Capitalism.

What we've done to other countries has finally turned inwards. It was just a matter of time.

	▲	lifestyleguru 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Oh the sweet shock therapy. Kids sniffing glue, women emigrating to prostitute, emergency services and doctors killing people for kickbacks, oligarchs, organized crime. Fun times.

▲

stanleykm 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

a big war, probably