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Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

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Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#141

Post by zanny »

themartorana wrote: post #72
ParrotyError wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All kinds of things. Large organisations (supermarket chains like Tesco) holding onto vast "land banks," new property being bought up and left vacant by foreign investors as fast as it can been build (a big problem in London and Cambridge), construction companies and their investors who want to restrict the supply to keep prices high, a lack of suitable places to build new housing (lack of infrastructure, protected c…

Foreign "investments" in property are almost universally bad. I give you Vancouver, London, SF, and NYC as just a few examples. The very rich in other economies buy large amounts of "investment" property and do nothing other than drive up prices against - and out of step with - the local economy. This drives out the locals, and causes many actual residents to wonder how someone, even on a good salary, could afford a…

The buying up and hoarding of land and property is just one symptom of broader wealth concentration into the hands of global elite. Like you said, its universally bad, but when you have so much wealth (on a macroeconomic scale) and nowhere to in the immediate term invest it to produce reliable returns, you instead towards hoarding scarce resources as a store of value - gold, land, and essential crops and anywhere else you can trade fiat / volatile stock into less risky properties.

China has gotten very rich in the last twenty years, but it has been nothing close to an equal rising tide of prosperity. There are now uber-rich competitive with the greatest dynasties of Euro-American enterprise that want to do something with all that wealth, and particular relative to the West they have a problem with their stock market being heavily state controlled and thus an undesirable place to safety hoard capital.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#142

Post by Kinnard »

morgante wrote: post #140
zanny wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the primary problem with the discourse. People can agree pretty universally a tyrant, dictator, or emperor is a bad thing. You do not want heredity to determine power, and you do not want one individual to have violent dominance over anyone else, because you will often be the "anyone else" if you are not the aggressor. But that is about the only difference between how the modern gears of power operate versus…

> Rather than just kill your brothers and claim the throne and execute the dissidents and having your firstborn son inherit the crown from you, your children inherit ludicrous wealth that translates into the same power to buy the violent arm of the state for your own ends. Except inherited wealth is at all-time lows. If you look at the richest people in the world today, the majority of them made their own way into th…

Citation?

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#143

Post by ams6110 »

Joeri wrote: post #112
mbfg wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i understand your sentiment here, and in the view of history this is true. The problem is that now, or very soon, we are/will be in a state where the 1% can easily put down the 99% politically, socially, financially and yes militarily. So there may be a reckoning at some point. But it will and badly for the 99%. This was mostly true throughout history as well, it's just become a more certainty now.

100.000 british men simply cannot control 350 million Indians, if those Indians refuse to cooperate. Throughout history it has been the case that sustained perceived inequality inevitably leads to revolution. We're nowhere near that point, but if trend lines continue and the middle class gets wiped out, it will happen. Democracy is supposed to prevent things from getting that bad, but we have seen that free elections…

The election is looking like it will come down to Trump v. Sanders. Both of whom were the LAST choice of the "elite" who supposedly are pulling all the puppet strings.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#144

Post by nickpsecurity »

jonknee wrote: post #136
nickpsecurity wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they can. Their weapon is the media instead of bullets. They just have to convince at least half of them the British policies benefit them. Plus provide them with guns. They'll shoot the other half for the British. Just like Democrat vs Republican politics and media in the U.S.. Nation can't win if it's divided and fighting each other over the actions of elites who they continue to fund and vote in. ;)

... And yet Gandhi was right. Those 100,000 British men failed and India is today the world's largest democracy.

He was right and wrong. He was right that 100,000 British men couldn't use lead with obviously-bad situation to control India. He was wrong given small numbers of men used a careful combo of military, money, and media to control U.S., Britain, and India. Currently, India mainly serves as cheap labor to support money-making operations in U.S., Britain, and other countries.

Gandhi was ultimately wrong: original exploitation was simply using tactics without psychological acceptance today's tactics have.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#145

Post by morgante »

Kinnard wrote: post #142
morgante wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rather than just kill your brothers and claim the throne and execute the dissidents and having your firstborn son inherit the crown from you, your children inherit ludicrous wealth that translates into the same power to buy the violent arm of the state for your own ends. Except inherited wealth is at all-time lows. If you look at the richest people in the world today, the majority of them made their own way into th…

Citation?

http://www.businessinsider.com/richest-people-in-the-world-2...

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#146

Post by ommunist »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #101

My theory is it's a cartel of cartels. It was always a possibility given all the markets naturally seem to develop oligopolies and shift to cartel-like behavior. Buying off politicians to protect profit or market share was also common. So, what happened is that they started acting collectively for whatever interests them. They still compete or argue for other things but certain laws and trends are valuable for all ri…

I am giving you the important data point. 2010. Lady Barbara Judge in Astana. 2015 UK is building 5 new nuclear power stations, and public is generally unaware of the fact.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#147

Post by moultano »

ams6110 wrote: post #62
moultano wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unless subsidized or losing money, the rent is more than a mortgage payment would be. That is demonstrably false. Renting is more than a mortgage interest payment would be. Unless you feel like you have some special knowledge about the local real estate market, your capital is likely better off in the stock market.

Mortgage paymenets are almost entirely interest in the early years. So in many cases there's little difference. Rental real estate works on leverage to a greater degree than is possible with stocks. Most banks won't make loans to invest in the stock market. They will make loans for investment property. So if you have $100,000 you can buy maybe 4 or 5 $100,000 rental properties, and have your tenants pay off the loans…

>Mortgage paymenets are almost entirely interest in the early years. So in many cases there's little difference.

People generally don't buy houses in order to rent them. Usually houses are rented out when the owner is moving and decides to rent it out rather than sell, at which point the owner has a substantial amount of capital in the house.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#148

Post by ommunist »

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #134
sbuttgereit wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly thousands That is a barefaced lie. Forgetting the rest of the evil attributable to Communist ideology, the Ukrainian Genocide alone is evidence that it was many more than "hardly thousands": http://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/center-study-genocide-conflict-r... Indeed, one need only consider the ease of which one could immigrate out of USSR, or other Communist states for that matter, to know something was seriously f…

In reply to ommonuist's claim that there is "no such thing as the Ukrainian genocide", see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor . There's clearly some doublethink going on trying to justify the mass murder of the system he wants to impose on the West.

You know, in 20 years Wikipedia will tell it was only the US who fought Germany in WW2 and someone on HN equivalent will point to that article as a proof of his knowledge. History is not without the sense of irony.

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#149

Post by todd8 »

Mu37 wrote: post #76
adwhit wrote: post #35

HN tends to be extremely reactionary to posts like this. Perhaps because the tech/startup scene is all about getting rich quick, or perhaps because HN has come to partially reflect the personal views of PG. There will be a reckoning. The world is 'unsustainably unequal' at the moment. There are huge problems on the horizon - superbugs, climate change, resource depletion, environmental degradation, overpopulation. The…

Western society/governments will start looking more and more like the Chinese I feel, cause western society hasn't found any serious alternate way of reigning in the 1%. It will most likely happen after the "something bad" stuff does.

China has greater ratios of inequality than the US. See World Bank figures: http://wdi.worldbank.org/table/2.9

Re: Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

#150

Post by nazgob »

ommunist wrote: post #33
sbuttgereit wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And many millions of innocents dead.

Hardly thousands. 240 000 people die every year in car accidents and no one prohibits cars. Millions died in WW2, but it is not the USSR to blame for it. How many Indians were killed for the US to prosper? We are speaking about fhe better system you never tried. No rich, no poor, everyone has a job.

Why its not USSR to blame? USSR allied with Nazi Germany and attacked many free nations. Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland. Everywhere leaving destruction, death and misery. War war followed with bloody enforcement of communism in occupied nations.
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