{"id":7394,"date":"2011-09-04T14:22:46","date_gmt":"2011-09-04T19:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=7394"},"modified":"2011-09-04T14:22:46","modified_gmt":"2011-09-04T19:22:46","slug":"why-inequality-is-the-real-cause-of-our-ongoing-terrible-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2011\/09\/04\/why-inequality-is-the-real-cause-of-our-ongoing-terrible-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Inequality Is the Real Cause of Our Ongoing Terrible Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Robert Reich has posted <a title=\"Robert Reich's Blog Post\" href=\"http:\/\/robertreich.org\/post\/9789891366\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Why Inequality Is the Real Cause of Our Ongoing Terrible Economy<\/strong><\/a> on his blog.\u00a0 He starts the post with these paragraphs.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>THE 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases, according to the latest research from Moody\u2019s Analytics. That should come as no surprise. Our society has become more and more unequal.<\/p>\n<p>When so much income goes to the top, the middle class doesn\u2019t have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going without sinking ever more deeply into debt \u2014 which, as we\u2019ve seen, ends badly. An economy so dependent on the spending of a few is also prone to great booms and busts. The rich splurge and speculate when their savings are doing well. But when the values of their assets tumble, they pull back. That can lead to wild gyrations. Sound familiar?<\/p>\n<p>The economy won\u2019t really bounce back until America\u2019s surge toward inequality is reversed.\u00a0 &#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>These are ideas from his book <a title=\"Previous post about Reich's book\" href=\"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2011\/06\/24\/aftershock-the-next-economy-and-americas-future\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>\u201cAftershock: The Next Economy and America\u2019s Future\u201d<\/strong><\/a> For copyright reasons, I was unable to quote from his book in my previous blog post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Robert Reich has posted Why Inequality Is the Real Cause of Our Ongoing Terrible Economy on his blog.\u00a0 He starts the post with these paragraphs. THE 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases, according to the latest research from Moody\u2019s Analytics. That should come as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7394","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7395,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7394\/revisions\/7395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}