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The rich are hoarding economic growth

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Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#151

Post by JamesBarney »

AstralStorm wrote: post #147
JamesBarney wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cause matters because it tells us what the workable solutions are. For instance say a company's CEO was the only person who got a raise for 30 years. One possibility is the CEO was a real go getter who kept getting better and more valuable at his job and while everyone else stagnated. The other possibility is that the CEO locked all of his employees into non-competes, keeping their salaries low, and freeing up bu…

Both are solved with making marginal gains tax hyperregressive. Said CEO would gain little in either case on his salary. (Making it gains also closes loopholes like getting buildings, deals, land, expensive cars or such.) Regardless of whether he bargained for it or squashed the employees, someone paid for this gain. With increased productivity they didn't benefit from or with plain old loss. It probably really is th…

Do you mean hyper progressive? A regressive tax is on that taxes the rich less than the poor like cigarettes.

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#152

Post by jaredklewis »

loserboss wrote: post #139
jaredklewis wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> No one would pay for a $15-20 burger.

Why not? There are places in the world where burgers cost this much and people still buy them.

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#153

Post by loserboss »

jaredklewis wrote: post #152
loserboss wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

> No one would pay for a $15-20 burger. Why not? There are places in the world where burgers cost this much and people still buy them.

The average guy that was living on McDonalds menu won't do it every day as he does now.

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#154

Post by prostoalex »

AstralStorm wrote: post #148
prostoalex wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The thing is that the richest could easily have 90% income garnished without even moving this chart one bit.

I think you are confusing the wealth (the richest) and the high-income individuals.

Membership in the first club is more or less permanent, while the second club has a revolving door. A bunch of members of the high-income club - employees of a high-tech startup, hedge fund managers, movie producers, inventors, lottery winners, wrongfully imprisoned individuals, victims of malfeasance or drug side effects - get one large paycheck once in their life, representing sometimes decades of work at below-market rates.

They won't have another Powerball jackpot, court settlement or a startup IPO next year.

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#155

Post by dang »

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:…

Please don't use HN primarily for political or ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that (regardless of which flavor they favor) because it's destructive of what HN is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#156

Post by WhitneyLand »

sooheon wrote: post #97
WhitneyLand wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It almost makes me want to puke to think I wrote words that caused someone to think I would like to "sit on top...[while] those on the bottom [get] scraps". This is the opposite of what I believe.

The point is, everyone wants to charge forward without thinking about what are the solutions that will really work. This is a problem of economics and politics. The more that this problem can be solved by best economic evidence and theory (apolitical), the better. A solution based purely on politics gets progressively worse, all the way down to the level or torches and pitchforks.

I listed a few economic issues I see (as a lay person) that if answered could start thinking towards something that ends well. Shall we consider those, or shall we head to straight to the pitchforks?

Re: The rich are hoarding economic growth

#157

Post by WhitneyLand »

Frondo wrote: post #119
WhitneyLand wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 should we be looking for solutions?" At the end of the day, because I and the other not-ultra-wealthy want that money the ultra-wealth are capturing to be more equitably distributed. The system didn't just end up this way as a quirk of chance--the ultra-wealthy have used their money to influence laws to arrange everything this way. They didn't need a reason to make it this way, except they wanted more. Why even…

Because the people who just start running fast without looking where they are going usually have a harder time getting where they want to go.

It means nothing to say "this is wrong damn it" without thinking about how it can be fixed.

Please see my response to sooheon.

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