> But this can't be a healthy way for a society to operate: to have the rich get richer and transfer their money to the poor so they don't get poorer.
I mean, it's literally the point of a welfare state to do this, because it's a whole lot more unhealthy to just let the poor get poorer or try to fix incomes
Manufacturing jobs shifting overseas has virtually nothing to do with monetary policy and everything to do with the fact that Asia has got much better at manufacturing and has relatively cheap labour. Similar manufacturing shifts happened in other Western nations whose currencies are not reserve currencies
(Sure, in theory the US could have countered trade imbalances by aggressively devaluing their currency to make buying things from overseas expensive, but less drastic approaches to promoting manufacturing exist...)
I mean, it's literally the point of a welfare state to do this, because it's a whole lot more unhealthy to just let the poor get poorer or try to fix incomes
Manufacturing jobs shifting overseas has virtually nothing to do with monetary policy and everything to do with the fact that Asia has got much better at manufacturing and has relatively cheap labour. Similar manufacturing shifts happened in other Western nations whose currencies are not reserve currencies (Sure, in theory the US could have countered trade imbalances by aggressively devaluing their currency to make buying things from overseas expensive, but less drastic approaches to promoting manufacturing exist...)