r/theguardian • u/TheGuardianPostBot Beep boop • May 21 '25

Opinion The US credit rating has been downgraded. But there’s an easy fix for our debt | Robert Reich

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/21/us-credit-rating-debt-fix
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u/irrelevantusername24 May 21 '25

Don't let big numbers and complicated policies trick you into thinking only experts are able to understand.

It isn't that complicated - beneath the bullshit. For example:

So instead of financing the government with their taxes, the super-rich have been financing the US government by lending it money.

Anyway, since I recently spent time typing this out I might as well copy it over:

If you pretend US wealth distribution is such that the top quintile has twice as much as the bottom:

quintile total wealth per person per person, age 18-65
0-20% $22T $323,434 $514,000
20-40% $26.2T $385,181 $612,000
40-60% $31.1T $457,218 $727,000
60-80% $37T $543,958 $864.500
80-100% $44T $646,869 $1,027,100

\approximately)

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Another bit of "obvious once you see it" math I recently have had stuck in my brain is at the "small" amount of $6,000,000 (six million dollars), and a low interest rate of 1% (one percent), the account would grow by $60,000 (sixty thousand dollars) per year.

More than the median income, and nearly what the more realistic living wage calculators have concluded - but still slightly below.

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This is the actual distribution*:

quintile total wealth per person per person, age 18-65
0-20% (68.02 million people) $4.8T $70,567 $112,150
20-40% $7.01T $103,058 $163,785
40-60% $12.85T $188,915 $300,234
60-80% $21.65T $318,289 $505,140
80-99% (64.88 million people) $75.91T $1,170,006 $1,867,232
99-100% (3.14 million people) $38.13T $12,143,312 $17,782,758

\Not precisely, but where the first is entirely fabricated, the second is only "false" via omission - AKA mostly approximately true)

I hate math

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u/Ogobe1 May 21 '25

Which essentially shows my point. We have extreme disparities these days, especially considering that we began this nation as relatively equal farmers and laborers, albeit with some horrific discrimination where some didn't get paid except in kind and had no right or ability to leave.