A look beyond the Twitter IPO finds rot beneath the gloss of recovery
Source: The Guardian
... All week, the US has been focused on the Twitter IPO as if it were the Marshall Plan of finance, as if this one money-splashing event had long-term implications for capitalist peace. Silicon Valley millionaires gossiped about the company's decadent $30bn valuation and started dreaming of IPOs that would make them rich for working at unprofitable-but-innovative companies too.
Meanwhile, in the real America – the one where you can't call Uber to take you to a launch party – people are dropping out of the workforce, the recovery is weakening and early cuts in food stamps are already slamming the poor.
... The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities this week took a hard look at measures of income inequality. Those statistics have intensified in their warning signals since 1970 and now that the economy is weakened, that inequality is more pronounced than ever. The inequality gap is widening, and that's making it harder to keep the core of the US economy – the middle and working classes – financially stable. That's what we see in the jobs numbers, and what we see in the growing poverty rate.
... So when the jobs numbers come out, and they look positive, they hide a larger truth. There is rot underneath the glossy surface of our improving economy. That rot comes from income inequality, and the fact that poor Americans are starving and ignored while rich Americans are celebrated for their often accidental billions.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/08/twitter-ipo-us-economy-recovery
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