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by gipp 2590 days ago
And what causes them? There is no such thing, really, as a "root" cause, just causes we can effectively intervene on.
2 comments

If you have a limited amount of money coming in and you allocate it in highly unequal ways (via a race to the bottom (in terms of expenses), can you be surprised when there are so many people who are suffering from not having an increased standard of living? You cannot disassociate the choices made in compensation of corporations to the standard of living of people in general. Amazon is putting small businesses out of operation because they can do it cheaper at a mass scale. Those families who are put out? They're toast. What did you expect? And Jeff Bezos is the one who reaps all the reward of all the lost wages of small mom and pop shops.
Capitalism.
This is not an insightful answer.
Capitalism has certain systemic features, one of them is concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a small few. Look at how wealth is concentrated in the U.S., especially over the last 40 years. Unions have eroded, markets have been deregulated, our social safety net has been dismantled, etc. and as a result, the power of capitalists has expanded. Capitalism is by its nature struggle between workers and capital. Capital is winning.
I am quite surprised by the amount of anti-capitalist propaganda on HN.