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The rich are hoarding economic growth

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Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#131

Post by kgwgk »

chillwaves wrote: post #93
derping69 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's the logical consequence of the simplistic argument used by many: "raising the minimum wage is good".

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#132

Post by tobessebot »

gehwartzen wrote: post #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.

Right. The economy has a fixed amount of assets that generate money. Oh, wait.

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#133

Post by kartan »

pg_bot wrote: 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.

> Why is there no talk about the dramatic increase in the supply of workers over the last 40 years?

Because it is irrelevant. If you have 100 workers, they produce and consume as 100. If you get 100 million, they produce as 100 million, but also consume as 1000 million.

> It makes sense from an economic standpoint that the price of labor would not rise when the supply is increased

The price of labor would not fall if the demand increases also. That´s why it´s a non problem to have more people, until you hit the ceiling of Earth resources.

The problem is the distribution of the wealth created, and that´s explained in the article.

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#134

Post by kartan »

derping69 wrote: post #28
gscott wrote: 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:…

> Why stop there? Just make it 100$ and hour and everyone will be rich!

- People needs to drink 2 litres of water each day to stay healthy.

Oh! Why stop there? Just make people drink 20 litres and everyone will be more healthy!

You made an strawman argument. Yes, probably is not good to raise to 100$, but that doesn´t means that raising to 15$ is bad.

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#135

Post by kartan »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #70
pg_bot wrote: 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.

Because the rich are getting richer, and hoarded money is useless to the rest of society. Regardless of why they get richer, the economy exists to serve society. Large amounts of money lying in investments hoping to outpace inflation is not useful to society - there are practical limits on how much money can be invested usefully at all, determined by how many capital intensive tasks businesses take on as a whole. Per…

> Because the rich are getting richer, and hoarded money is useless to the rest of society.

That´s it. Once there is too much super-rich capitalism stops working, as decisions are not an average of million of small transactions, but it is a centralized economy decided by a few.

Also, the rich spend more money in luxury items that have no return value. A garage with 10 Ferraries doesn´t produces almost anything, it is wasteful. For the same cost you get 200 cars that allow workers to get to their jobs, go shoppping, etc. The same goes for an "iceber manssion" on London vs an apartment building.

And that wealth also creates corruption. So much money on so few hands creates an unchecked source of power. Why do you want to serve the public, that has no extra money to spend on you, when you can serve the elite that has more resources that they need and can share them with you?

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#136

Post by [deleted] »

prostoalex wrote: post #44
cs702 wrote: 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…

Current government policies penalize income (39.6% at the top bracket) and subsidize company-sponsored non-monetary benefits (health, dental, vision, meals, commuter benefits, ESPP, 401k matching, ISOs, NSOs), so not all that surprising that workers see less income and more of non-monetary benefits as a result. The workable solution through a tax policy might include reducing the number of brackets for personal incom…

[deleted]

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#137

Post by karimei »

cs702 wrote: 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…

This graphic is interesting, thought it might be instructive to calculate accumulated values:

  For the median (50% percentile): 1.005**36 = 1.2
  P99: 1.022**36 = 2.2
  P99.9: 1.032**36 = 3.1
  P99.99: 1.043**36 = 4.6
  P99.999: 1.06**36 = 8.1
It would be interesting to see absolute numbers. I remember vaguely that the productivty increased by a factor 8 since the eighties...

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#138

Post by fwn »

mempko wrote: post #124
WalterBright wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Banks don't loan deposits, this is a common myth.

Yes they do. The myth is that deposits are the only (or a big part of the) money which is loaned out. That is very wrong for many banks.

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#139

Post by loserboss »

jaredklewis wrote: post #80
loserboss wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meat industry would collapse due to 1. Daily foods like steak, bacon, eggs, milk would get extremely expensive leaving the population to lousy unsatisfying vegetables. Might solve the obesity epidemic :) Might also cause riots because people are not used to eating yucky foods like vegetabables.

Vegetables in the sense of wheat, peanuts, and such? Sure (but since these things will get processed, so I wouldn't hold out that it helps with our obesity). Vegetables like kale and broccoli? No way. The ratio of labor and land required per produced calorie for these kinds vegetables is far too high. In addition to existing farmland, we would need to convert large amoutns of existing natural environments areas like…

> Wouldn't prices just increase?

Prices are already astronomically low given the subsidies. No one would pay for a $15-20 burger.

> In addition to existing farmland, we would need to convert large amoutns of existing natural environments areas like forests into farms.

https://web.archive.org/web/20081216230507/https://www.ers.u...

Well, given that the majority (more than 80%) of land is used for growing grass, wheat, soybean and corn for cattle there's no fear for vegetables.

Although soy grown for human consumption is not popular now, it's the most efficient legume there is. More protein than a steak.

This went a little bit off topic, although my point was that removing subsidies on food makes things tricky. Given that in some parts of US burger price is halved if not 20% of what it should be due to subsidies on water and corn and soybean etc.

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#140

Post by Eridrus »

kartan wrote: post #133
pg_bot wrote: 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.

> Why is there no talk about the dramatic increase in the supply of workers over the last 40 years? Because it is irrelevant. If you have 100 workers, they produce and consume as 100. If you get 100 million, they produce as 100 million, but also consume as 1000 million. > It makes sense from an economic standpoint that the price of labor would not rise when the supply is increased The price of labor would not fall if…

This discounts economies of scale. Capitalism's argument is that we will always want to consume more things so we'll just make more different things, but there's really only so much one can consume.
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