The argument works with any service business that is shared by high income and low income earners: restaurants, transportation, clothing, housing, groceries, etc.
So is the orthodox economist solution: government, the biggest employer and biggest debtor in the whole economy (by far) starts printing money to pay its employees more, thereby using inflation to redivide the debt to the government, and then to its employees which then conveniently also forces every employer to increase pay.
Which means the productive economy gets a greater share of the wealth, by taking it from the rent-seeking part, whatever that may be.
Of course, billionnaires hate this, since their wealth is pretty much some percentage of that debt.
But pensions go down as well, because that's how the system was redesigned by large banks after the last time governments really did this. This was done so it would be as unpopular as possible. Of course, the whole "so what do we do instead" was left unanswered ...
And instead banks decided to lend the government money (QE, covid, ...) which is why governments are now in trouble. In the US, despite what you may have heard, just lending more to the government is quite possible in the US (because the government would still get substantial income for a substantial amount of time by lending more). However for a number of EU countries (reporting focuses on France but if you allow me to be 5% inaccurate let's just summarize that all EU countries except Germany cannot lend more as it would "snowball" in 2029 or 2030, which is within the next government mandate for those countries)
The argument works with any service business that is shared by high income and low income earners: restaurants, transportation, clothing, housing, groceries, etc.
So is the orthodox economist solution: government, the biggest employer and biggest debtor in the whole economy (by far) starts printing money to pay its employees more, thereby using inflation to redivide the debt to the government, and then to its employees which then conveniently also forces every employer to increase pay.
Which means the productive economy gets a greater share of the wealth, by taking it from the rent-seeking part, whatever that may be.
Of course, billionnaires hate this, since their wealth is pretty much some percentage of that debt.
But pensions go down as well, because that's how the system was redesigned by large banks after the last time governments really did this. This was done so it would be as unpopular as possible. Of course, the whole "so what do we do instead" was left unanswered ...
And instead banks decided to lend the government money (QE, covid, ...) which is why governments are now in trouble. In the US, despite what you may have heard, just lending more to the government is quite possible in the US (because the government would still get substantial income for a substantial amount of time by lending more). However for a number of EU countries (reporting focuses on France but if you allow me to be 5% inaccurate let's just summarize that all EU countries except Germany cannot lend more as it would "snowball" in 2029 or 2030, which is within the next government mandate for those countries)