Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

Wealth inequality is high. High enough you can feel it like a vibe in the air. The richest people in the world are telling everyone to get onboard with technology that is determined to make a lot of those same people's jobs redundant. All with an explicit goal of increasing the price of stock most of those people do not own.

IMO there's two economies, maybe divided by those who participate in the stock market and those who don't. We, Americans, have largely given up trying to improve the lives of people not in the first group. Economies are living, breathing entities and we're just grinding poorer people for fuel so richer people can have another house, another boat, another company. A lot of regular joes are really stressed out about paying rent. The loss in faith is warranted.

Income taxes are higher than capital gains taxes.

This isn't based on economic theory or anything, it's just a political choice we have made as a country. We've chosen to reward those who move money around and trade capital more than we reward those who labor. And this at a time when, supposedly, the country is trying to increase its ability to build things.

I thought this specific fact worth mentioning.

If we want to build things we need capital investment and a reward for risking capital.