- Poverty--Sociologist Herbert Gans wrote a piece decades ago about how the poor often pay coming and going. Think about it--society gets 'dirty work' done (low-wage, often menial work, no opportunity for advancement, etc.); Wealthy can find domestic help; there's a market for recycling goods (e.g., clothing, appliances, cars, etc.); there are business niches like payday loan companies and personal injury lawyers, and the social work profession has a niche as a result of poverty and inequality; the poor pay a disproportionate share of income in payroll taxes; Etc. Investors in companies that underpay employees do well, and those companies are essentially subsidized by public welfare assistance that makes up the difference between people's wages and what they need to survive.
- Divorce--Well, for starters, attorneys who do divorce law can fare pretty well in divorce settlements. This doesn't mean they're all predatory, it just means there's business in divorce--someone has to figure out the legal angles, after all. Presumably people involved in divorce benefit, in the sense that they are able to leave dysfunctional marriages.
- The banking crisis--This one's trickier, but obviously those who made bad decisions and risky loans benefited while the value of their stocks increased. To the extent this was built on the 'housing bubble,' the real estate industry did quite well, as did developers and investors in real estate. Now they aren't doing so well, but the bailout to this point seems to be protecting bank shareholders/investors, and banks have been rewarding their upper-level executives with large bonuses (otherwise, how could they keep 'good people???'). The banking industry has been so consolidated that the largest players may emerge from this stronger, the industry less competitive. In the last 30 years or so, the amount of profit in US business that went to the financial services industry increased from about 15% to over 40%, so obviously some people were making huge amounts of money even though their practices have in the aggregate led to a serious economic crisis, possibly a Depression.
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