Comments by "coolmodelguy" (@coolmodelguy6304) on "Senator Bernie Sanders" channel.

@alohatigers1199 - Bernie (bless his heart), like the rest of us, is thinking too small. You have a grasp on a tendril of the truth with your "idea of growth" and "Greed" comment, but that can be likened to the shade of a single palm tree in the desert. "Profits and revenues had to increase every quarter year", is the literal truth, yet it is also misleading. If you can stand way back and see the biggest possible picture, what comes into focus is an economic scam, a long con game played on the American people and the world, set up by wealthy people who really think they have a god given right to rule. Here is the shortest, simplest form of the truth. We were set up. Shortly after World War Two, with so much of the world economy in ruin, two seeds were planted and were expected to grow (metaphorically). One seed was the U.S. economy, the other seed was "financial assets" or "investments" as it is known today. Public records from the Federal Reserve start in 1947 and run about one business quarter behind the present day (4th quarter numbers for 2022 have yet to be posted). In 1947 financial assets started out 2.88 times the size of the 1947 economy and have averaged a half percent greater annual growth rate than the economy for the past 70 plus years. Skip to the present day. Financial assets are now five times the size of the economy. The 2021 rate of return on financial assets was over $13 trillion (more than 2/3rds of our entire economic output). These so-called "investments" could not have grown to that level based on economic performance, that is simply not possible. You are correct, profits and revenues had to increase every quarter year to keep stock prices growing. This goes beyond simply raising prices on consumers (inflation), it also involves distortion of law (politics) and tapping directly into government treasuries (tax cuts and corporate borrowing from the future through Federal Reserve lending). This theft of wealth is a long con game, normalized by Congress through the creation of "retirement plans", which involved regular American citizens in the scam as accomplices. I could go on, but I think the picture is pretty clear when you look at the charts for GDP and "Financial Asset" growth. Our system of "investment" is a con game, we all feel it in our bones and the end results are all around us. Homelessness, crime and political instability, all caused by allowing the wealthy to rig the system. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDPC1) | FRED | St. Louis Fed https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1 Total Financial Assets, Level (TFAABSHNO) | FRED | St. Louis Fed https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TFAABSHNO
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Bernie, I love that you stick up for Americans and you give real information instead of lies. However, you need to punch harder . . . . like this: The wages of Americans have been stagnant for four decades, while the basic costs to live have tripled or more. Where is that money going? We have no real economy, but instead an extraction economy whose wealth is dependent on draining you of everything you have. Roughly around 1982, wealth generated by rents, dividends and interest payments have surpassed not only all wages paid in the USA combined, but also the combined profits by all companies and corporations world wide. This is extraction economics, it is unsustainable and has to end . . . today.
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@AdamWeatherall - Maybe 600k before cashing in their stock options and after they have used all company profits to pump up their company stocks.
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@AdamWeatherall - The math in your reply post does not make sense. Remove the S&P500 companies from your 7000 publicly traded companies (corporations) and you get 6500 x $12m = $78 billion. That is less than 1/20 of GDP. Yet in 2021, financial assets (of which corporate stock is the largest part of) gained over $13 trillion in value. Net revenues of only $12 million for 6500 unique corporations which are publicly traded does not generate that kind of growth. Try again.
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