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The rich are hoarding economic growth

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Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#91
post #52
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core of the problem isn't any sort of tax setup, it's the foundation of our economy. The first employee of a startup usually gets less than 2% equity. Apple made $700k per employee in a single quarter. Our whole economy is set up to funnel money to the top. We need a new way of structuring corporations to change that.

Or create a more widespread culture of stock ownership.

This is the key. For an economic system based on capitalism we have surprisingly few 'real' capitalists. For the vast majority of people who own company equity it is tied up in retirement funds. Our system is designed to concentrate money in the hands of those that have it to begin with. As soon as more workers outside of startups start earning equity in the companies they work for we will see the income distribution change. And I suspect we would see a massive boom in worker productivity as they directly realize the financial gains.

"In terms of types of financial wealth, in 2013 the top one percent of households had 49.8% of all privately held stock, 54.7% of financial securities, and 62.8% of business equity. The top ten percent had 84% to 94% of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and almost 80% of non-home real estate."

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real value of a lot of products and services is more adjustable than your statement would lead someone to believe. Reality is absolutely not an efficient marketplace that immediately culls jobs and workers the moment a certain price of labor threshold is reached.

And yet ATMs, self-checkout lines and online shopping are a thing, and so are bank branch closures, retail bankruptcies and mall vacancy rates.

That is efficiency. We won't pay people to dig ditches when we have machines to do it. Efficiency is not the enemy, resource distribution is.

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#93
post #2

This is why I appreciate the $15 an hour minimum wage movement. Paying people more is better then taxing the rich more. The super-rich own congress but at the city and State level there is depending upon the state some room to grow wages. Higher wages equals fewer people on public subsidies which is good for cities and states.

Why stop there? Just make it 100$ and hour and everyone will be rich! Oh wait, arbitrary wage increases don't really work out in real life. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/seattles-minimum-wage-h... Seattle's socialist member of the city council fired the Unversity of Washington team after the results came out and hired an anti-capitalist professor from berkeley to ensure the study finds the right results. http:…

This post is an insult to hacker news. You are not deploying any kind of rational logic. If $100 is good, then make it $1,000,000. That is your logic and it is dishonest at best.

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#94
post #77
post #25

The title and the tone of the OP are a bit inflammatory for my taste, but the data and graphs from the research paper are eye-opening: most economic growth in the US over the past three decades has indeed gone to the top 1%, and particularly to the top 0.01%, leaving everyone else behind.[1] Here's the money shot: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9013427/Sc... However, rather than debate the causes o…

We should be taxing productive activity less and income earned through simply owning things more. The balance has moved too far in the opposite direction.

I agree, and so do many economists:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

The distinction is that mere ownership of capital, especially common goods (such as land and natural resources) excludes other members of society from access to that resource. It does not create value, but merely holds claim to existing value, seeking rent for allowing others access to it. This should be taxed. OTOH, productive activity takes that capital, adds labor and ingenuity, and creates goods or services which benefit society--such activity should be taxed less, or not at all.

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#95
Nobody seems surprised when all wealth is accumulated by one player at the end of a game of Monopoly. The figures in the article should then also not surprise anyone. This is not some flow in our system, this is the natural progression of capitalism as designed.

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#96
post #77
post #25

The title and the tone of the OP are a bit inflammatory for my taste, but the data and graphs from the research paper are eye-opening: most economic growth in the US over the past three decades has indeed gone to the top 1%, and particularly to the top 0.01%, leaving everyone else behind.[1] Here's the money shot: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9013427/Sc... However, rather than debate the causes o…

We should be taxing productive activity less and income earned through simply owning things more. The balance has moved too far in the opposite direction.

Allocating ones capital (simply owning things as you say) is a productive activity in itself. Without people competing to allocate capital for higher returns, a lot of things we all love wouldn't exist.

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#97
post #25

The title and the tone of the OP are a bit inflammatory for my taste, but the data and graphs from the research paper are eye-opening: most economic growth in the US over the past three decades has indeed gone to the top 1%, and particularly to the top 0.01%, leaving everyone else behind.[1] Here's the money shot: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9013427/Sc... However, rather than debate the causes o…

Why should we be looking for solutions? To be clear I would agree it's intuitively disturbing and seems "not fair". But do you call for solutions because: 1) There might be a way to have higher productivity than we have now. This can't be why, it's always a goal regardless right? 2) Strategies should be considered than intentionally reduce productivity and/economic growth in order to increase worker compensation. Now…

Why not? If the state of affairs is disturbing and unjust, should the disenfranchised not seek to improve their lot?

It may be easy to sit on top of the busily productive pile and insinuate that those on the bottom be satisfied with the scraps ("...those at the bottom get bigger scraps than they otherwise would have", etc.). But it's much more palatable and interesting for me to seek out how to remedy injustices (as I perceive them, I can't claim to be objective about this), to "quantum tunnel" out of this extreme gravitational well of inequality, so to speak.

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#98
post #25

The title and the tone of the OP are a bit inflammatory for my taste, but the data and graphs from the research paper are eye-opening: most economic growth in the US over the past three decades has indeed gone to the top 1%, and particularly to the top 0.01%, leaving everyone else behind.[1] Here's the money shot: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9013427/Sc... However, rather than debate the causes o…

> would be unleashed

That's the theory that the rich hoard their money in Scrooge McDuck cash vaults, keeping it out of the economy.

That's false - all of it is in the economy, via investments. Even money kept in a checking account is invested in the economy (banks loan out that money).

The only cash kept in cash vaults is the reserve that the government requires banks to keep to provide a buffer against runs on the bank.

Various times in history people have "liberated" wealth from wealthy people, and it never stimulated the economy (quite the reverse), because the wealth was already in the economy.

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#99
post #94
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should be taxing productive activity less and income earned through simply owning things more. The balance has moved too far in the opposite direction.

I agree, and so do many economists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism The distinction is that mere ownership of capital, especially common goods (such as land and natural resources) excludes other members of society from access to that resource. It does not create value, but merely holds claim to existing value, seeking rent for allowing others access to it. This should be taxed. OTOH, productive activity takes…

I'd go further and tax destructive activities, such as polluting or consumption of finite resources, instead of productive activities.

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#100
post #66
post #35

Why is there no talk about the dramatic increase in the supply of workers over the last 40 years? Globalization has brought millions out of poverty and those people are now competing with Americans when they wouldn't before. It makes sense from an economic standpoint that the price of labor would not rise when the supply is increased and is likely the cause of income inequality in the US.

Wealth concentration was the goal, globalization was the means. The rich saw a great arbitrage opportunity in the fact that the price of labor (and its legal rights) in the developing world was much lower than in the first world. In the late 90s, there was a big political struggle over globalization. The pro-globalists (the economic establishment and the Clinton administration) argued that it would (A) grow the econo…

Fox News, Breitbart et all are massively anti-globalists.

Breitbart marks Globalists in their article headlines with literal globes. Also a pure coincidence that all of those are Jewish of course.

Trump ran on abolishing NAFTA and TTIP.

How is this not a mainstream position now?

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