The Ice Age Economy

Water is the currency of life.  10,000 years ago, during the last ice age, much of the Northern Hemisphere was blanketed under huge sheets of ice that locked up much of the freshwater on the planet.  On much of the earth life barely existed.

This strikes me as an apt model for the current US economy.  Money is the currency of productivity, and much of the money in the United States is locked up in the control of wealthy people who have no real needs.  So they pay ever increasing amounts trading existing assets back and forth. This gives the illusion of productivity as the "value" of the assets they trade keep rising, but it actually produces no new usable value.  The standard of living of a larger and larger percentage of the population sinks as it gets harder and harder to afford the homes, or the education or the other tools they need to build wealth.

A tax policy that rewards people for trading in existing assets, or allows people to sit on accumulated wealth, or devalues education in favor of accumulated wealth, is inviting an economic ice age.