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Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

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Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#231

Post by rhino369 »

Terr_ wrote: post #153
rhino369 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is IRS accounting and GAAP accounting. You try to reduce profit for the former and maximize for the former. Off shoring subsidiary profit shaving is a fairly common practice for IRS accounting. But all the profit stays on the corporate parents books in one way or another (they own the subsidiary). The point isn't to make the executives rich, but to make the shareholders richer by avoiding taxes. Paying people i…

> The point isn't to make the executives rich, but to make the shareholders richer by avoiding taxes. That's a distinction without a difference, since most of those executives' compensation comes through stocks.

Through tiny portions of the stock. For mature public companies, executives own very little of the company unless they are founders or heirs of founders.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#232

Post by yummyfajitas »

sytelus wrote: post #230
yummyfajitas wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to believe the rich have the ability to somehow buy up all the supply of some good (land, water) and then arbitrarily raise the price. As they buy up premium estates in major cities around the world, supply gets constrained, more people gets priced out of home ownership and must agree to pay ever increasing rents to those investors. You are deeply confused. Buying up housing does not reduce the supply of liv…

When there are 100 houses and 100 buyers in market, demand and supply is met and likelihood that transactions will yield fair prices is high. When investors from China and Wall Street descend on markets, you suddenly have 200 buyers and only 100 houses in market. If you live in a major city in western world, go meet the real estate agent nearest to you. Ask them how many bidding wars happen and how many deals are all…

You are conflating supply of housing with real estate speculation. You might as well complain that GOOG is up $750 and AMZN is $630; this is completely true, but it doesn't make searching the internet or buying stuff online cost more.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#233

Post by crzwdjk »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #232
sytelus wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When there are 100 houses and 100 buyers in market, demand and supply is met and likelihood that transactions will yield fair prices is high. When investors from China and Wall Street descend on markets, you suddenly have 200 buyers and only 100 houses in market. If you live in a major city in western world, go meet the real estate agent nearest to you. Ask them how many bidding wars happen and how many deals are all…

You are conflating supply of housing with real estate speculation. You might as well complain that GOOG is up $750 and AMZN is $630; this is completely true, but it doesn't make searching the internet or buying stuff online cost more.

He may be doing that, but he is not alone: the government has spent the past 8 or so decades trying to conflate the two in everyone's mind, and at this point, the only way to keep that up is to make housing into a de-facto collectible by strictly limiting its supply. This means that all those terribly high housing costs in SF are mostly economic rent, which is not productive and also tends to increase inequality. But that's not a problem caused by billionaire business owners, for the most part. It's caused by upper middle class worries about their speculative investment and the schools their children would go to, and the resulting regulatory capture.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#235

Post by dredmorbius »

cryptica wrote: post #113

I think one of the biggest problems that we have today is that intelligent, hard-working people are the poorest they've ever been. In the past, if you studied and worked really hard, you would usually achieve something. Today you can study and work very hard for a very long time and still end up with nothing. Being smart or trying hard has very little value, it's all about who you know and what assets you own. Today,…

You've a peculiarly brief view of "ever".

But yes, from a mid-20th century all-time peak, real middle class wealth in the US is declining.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#236

Post by tomp »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #210
tomp wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're wrong at least 3 times in a single post. Roundup doesn't contaminate plant products, because it's applied when the plant is still tiny. It does, however, contaminate rivers. Farmers don't get sued by Monsanto because they accidentially get seed blown on their fields - that's practically legally impossible, given that Monsanto enforces its policies using licencing laws, not patent laws. If you disagree, please…

> You're wrong at least 3 times in a single post. No. > Roundup doesn't contaminate plant products, because it's applied when the plant is still tiny. Monsanto successfully lobbies EPA to raise levels of glyphosate allowed in food: https://www.rt.com/usa/monsanto-glyphosate-roundup-epa-483/ Can you explain why they would bother to do that if it doesn't end up in food? > It does, however, contaminate rivers. It does a…

Thanks for the reply. I'm glad I have more arguments against Monstanto now.

Reading the Monsanto vs Schmeiser case, however, it seems pretty clear that Schmeiser infringed the patent (he intentionally used it without having the legal right to do so); we can argue (and probably agree) whether patenting of genes should be allowed or not, but assuming the patent is valid, Monstanto had morally won the case.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#237

Post by 13thLetter »

collyw wrote: post #189
merpnderp wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 100 million civilians murdered by communist/socialist governments is well documented. What are the numbers for capitalist governments murdering their civilians without even the semblance of a fair legal system?

Pinochet is the first person that comes to mind. He was capitalist wasn't he?

And how many people did Pinochet kill, compared to the number of people Stalin or Mao killed?

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#238

Post by Turing_Machine »

vidarh wrote: post #197
Turing_Machine wrote: post #98

"I think the propaganda of "The Communists" has been drilled into the American public so solidly" You mean the part where communists murdered 100 million people in the last century? That "propaganda"?

Define "communist", and we can have a meaningful debate. This is the point: The US right tries to label anything they perceive as to the left of it socialist or communist and by extension to equate all of these ideologies with Soviet or Chinese inspired socialism with total disregard for the fact that while it also includes related ideologies, this spectrum also encompasses ideologies that are further apart than Repu…

Oh, the Soviet Union, Mao, Pol Pot, the Kim dynasty?

You've heard of those people, I take it.

You're trying to set up a "No True Scotsman" argument. Won't work.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#239

Post by Turing_Machine »

dang wrote: post #213
Turing_Machine wrote: post #98

"I think the propaganda of "The Communists" has been drilled into the American public so solidly" You mean the part where communists murdered 100 million people in the last century? That "propaganda"?

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10829000 and marked it off-topic.

Your house, your rules. Still won't make the stink of all those bodies go away.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#240

Post by Turing_Machine »

dang wrote: post #214
Turing_Machine wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think modding this down is going to make those 100 million corpses go away? 'Cause it isn't.

Please stop taking HN threads on generic ideological tangents. Also, please avoid going on about downvotes in HN comments, as the site guidelines ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I wasn't the person who took it on a "generic ideological tangent". That would be the person I replied to.
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