What about rent seeking from property owners and wage suppression by employers isn't capitalism?

I don't know about that. I was a resident of Cali from 1979 to 1997. California was always in some kind of flux, but it was always in a generally well received direction.

Around 1995 something changed for the worse. It started to feel like the CA govt. was at odds with it's own people. I stuck it out for another year or two, but then I just had to leave. It didn't feel... as wholesome as it used to feel.

Emotional feelings guide the conservative. I shouldn't expect anything greater from your kind.

Income DISPARITY is the result of un-tethering the US dollar from gold. 1971. Gold window. Nixon. Plebs paid in non-appreciable assets. They fall a smidgeon behind every year. It compounds over time. That was government.

Employers page the wages necessary for people to agree to work for them.

Really? Untethering the dollar from gold to stop other nations from siphoning our entire gold supply out of the country caused wealth disparity? Explain the mechanism. Explain how France emptying out the US of its entire supply of gold would have been better. Explain why you are suddenly a fan of Charles de Gaulle and against a quite economically brilliant sitting American president?

Employers get a ROI above inflation through clever investment of wage theft (OT violations, min wage violations, off-the-clock violations, etc) and ensure raises never beat it. Capitalism is again the root cause, not the end of Bretton Woods.

This post was edited by inkanddagger on Jul 20 2018 04:28pm

Well, that's the short version. One thing that pissed me off was they passed a law that each and every town, city, borough, w/e could charge w/e it wanted for traffic tickets.
Stupid things like the laws about tying an animal in the back of a truck, got draconian. Thje mayor or council or w/e of SF had just passed a law or prop., that forced any and all homeless folk to leave the city. They gave a free one way bus ticket out of town. Little businesses, many that I frequented, were dying by the bucket load.
It's been a while so I've forgotten a lot of the actual things that made me leave.

All I remember now ofc, is how I felt at the time.

If you're paid a wage anchored to a certain standard of living, then that wage will always be anchored to that standard of living excepting productivity gains, which should raise wages. Because we import far more than we export.

Ah, the Pete Wilson era.

Are you trying to say the gold standard creates a system where inflation is impossible?