The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy • Hacker News Board

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#61

Post by AstralStorm » Mon, May 28, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #55

jokoon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. What the article is trying to point out is that the 9.9% thinks he's not so wealthy, so he is against inequality, but he still, somehow, for his own comfort and merit belief system, likes his higher income. Trying to talk about ranges of income, would it the top N%, is pointless. You could strip out the hypocrisy like so: "I am not at the top, so I am still against inequality, but I am comfortable, but si…

Yup! Asking someone "How much money makes a person rich?" is like asking someone "How many drinks makes you an alcoholic?". The answer is typically "Someone who drinks more than I do."

Actually, there is a qualitative difference in play. It is reached at millions USD in (relatively) liquid assets or highly concentrated political power.

It is the potential to do almost anything w here only another big player or a whole society can blunt it and not necessarily effectively.

It is the difference between playing the rules and making the rules.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#62

Post by DrPhish » Mon, May 28, 2018, 4:38 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #59

sologoub wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Key paragraph: “He neglects to mention that many of them are actually just retirees. According to Saez and Zucman, whose data Stewart uses, more than 40 percent of all wealth belonging to Americans between and 90th and 99th percentiles is held by the the elderly, meaning age 65 or older. This is what makes wealth data a tricky way to measure class below the very tiptop of the distribution. Stewart’s “9.9 percent” inc…

This is a great rebuttal. We seem to ignore that wealth changes over a person's life. When average wages are dropping, are they actually dropping or are wealthy people leaving the workforce at a greater rate than lower income people (just starting their careers) entering it? Kind of what we'd expect when the baby boomers retire, no?

Census Canada has an income explorer that includes wealth percentiles by age (and sex, by province etc)

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/dv-...

It's quite a stark difference in the percentiles from 20 to 40 to 60.

Slate is absolutely right that without further controls for things like age, these percentiles are misleading

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#63

Post by Zigurd » Mon, May 28, 2018, 4:39 PM UTC

nordsieck wrote: post #19

danharaj wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, it obfuscates class distinctions between those who control capital and policy versus those who just have money. I'm somewhat cynical but I think this is an intended obfuscation. It's important for petit bourgeois and wealthy skilled workers to understand their position in the class hierarchy, but calling a class whose power is dwarfed by the capitalist class an aristocracy is fluffy rhetoric.

> those who control capital and policy versus those who just have money Controlling policy is one thing. Who "just has money" and doesn't control capital? Anyone who has money actually has some sort of capital or an equivalently powerful financial instrument be it stocks, loans to other companies, government bonds, a house, etc.

There is a big difference between being in the target market for discretionary investments and small-time political fundraising, and being able to buy influence.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#64

Post by AstralStorm » Mon, May 28, 2018, 4:41 PM UTC

beager wrote: post #20

anbende wrote: post #2

Some of the points about privilege might be accurate, but breaking economic status in to .1%, 9.9%, and 90% is arbitrary and misleading. The author tries to make the point that “the 9.9%” have the majority of the wealth and this issue is as big or bigger than the concentration of wealth at the very top. The problem is that this is largely an artifact of the division system. The distribution is highly skewed, and the…

I think the point TFA was making is that the 9.9% hasn’t experienced a decline in wealth in order to feed the accretion of wealth in the top 0.1%, and that such a situation creates an aristocratic attitude among that 9.9%, dulling any motivation to fix wealth inequality or economic immobility in the bottom 90%. I believe that the term 9.9% is a slogan though.

The difference between comfort and struggle, hmm?

Three real question is what the 9.8% can do even if completely united to fix the problem that the top 0.1% cannot stop. Unless you mean politicians (who are typically in top) - because power and wealth are related but nor equivalent - and transferable plus exchangeable.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#65

Post by sabarn01 » Mon, May 28, 2018, 4:44 PM UTC

wybiral wrote: post #35

ainiriand wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have people very rich, more than ever before. And that is just by itself something worth of careful examination. But a lot of that wealth is new. There are effective mechanisms to not being poor. More people can access to self-improvement tools than ever before. So yes, we should focus on the lower end of the scale.

> a lot of that wealth is new Where is the "new" wealth coming from? > There are effective mechanisms to not being poor. That seems like a generalization to me that doesn't factor in location, race, access to good education, medical conditions, existing debt, etc. > So yes, we should focus on the lower end of the scale. Why not both?

Where I grew up there was around 60% poverty, and most of the poverty was communicated via terrible life choices passed one generation to the next. Every one I know who left have done well and that includes people who join the military to those who went to collage. So much of poverty is about the culture you are born into which translates into bad decision and poor outcomes. If we could do anything destroying the cultures that create these conditions would get us more for our buck.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#66

Post by AstralStorm » Mon, May 28, 2018, 4:48 PM UTC

temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #37

distances wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> letting the family choose where to stick their education dollars could alleviate the vast difference in K12 education that keeps the “9.9%” in continuous power. Could you elaborate what you mean by this? Wouldn't the best course of action to give each school the same funding based on the number of pupils, and additional funding for troubled areas in need?

A K-12 student's performance correlates strongly with the family's wealth [1], and interacts with several other factors like race category, stable home life, and the low incidence of everyday violent crime. If rich people successfully exclude poor people, which can be done with legal price mechanisms instead of illegal discrimination, public school performance remains high. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201…

Even without price there are other mechanisms - accumulation of rich in specific places by word of mouth alone... where the influence and money is accumulated and applied.

We see this even in primary education even in Europe, even in non-private schools. Then there are extracurriculars which take money amd time...

A typical person out of place won't be able to keep up.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#67

Post by AstralStorm » Mon, May 28, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #58

distances wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> letting the family choose where to stick their education dollars could alleviate the vast difference in K12 education that keeps the “9.9%” in continuous power. Could you elaborate what you mean by this? Wouldn't the best course of action to give each school the same funding based on the number of pupils, and additional funding for troubled areas in need?

I think that we should let students from poor towns go to awesome schools in rich towns even if they aren’t residents of the rich town. The wealthy self-segregate by limiting low-income housing in their area to keep out the poors. Similarly I think it should be easy to create a new school (charter or whatever you want to call it) to compete with bad schools in poor districts. But even without option 2, option 1 would…

It is not just this. Pulling strings without separating out housing is enough.

If you build a new school it will still start or with the segregated out "worse material". The only way out is indeed to forcibly randomize and disperse - Even then there will be local social clustering.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#68

Post by vostok » Mon, May 28, 2018, 4:55 PM UTC

matthewaveryusa wrote: post #7

The top 10% is 120k in income or 1.2m in net worth -- would be nice to see the demographics. In any case, 1.2m in net worth is a house with some retirement money, not exactly what I would call aristocracy.

For the 30-34 age category, the top 10% is a household networth of $260k or so.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#69

Post by Mbioguy » Mon, May 28, 2018, 5:01 PM UTC

tscs37 wrote: post #18

mrybczyn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet it's more than 90.1% of the population posesses... Interestingly, some estimates of (formal) Polish aristocracy in the 17th century place it around 10% of the population. Maybe this is just some natural distribution of socio-econo-political status of human groups.

As another comment here pointed out; 90.1% possess about 30% of the wealth. 9% possess another 30% of the wealth. The remaining 0.9% possess the rest. Is the 9% to blame for inequality?

It's not about blaming the 9.9%. It's about convincing the 9.9% that they are part of the problem. The way the author writes, he is in that group, speaking to them. "We."

Compare to slavery. Obviously Southern slaveowners bear responsibility. But were non-slaveowners, Northerners, etc free of the taint? No. Ulysses S. Grant married into a slaveowning family and for years was supported by them. Northern factory owners turned profits off the products of slavery. Regular northerners purchased products produced by the system of slavery. Sure, some are more responsible than others, but the whole country from North to South bore the taint of slavery. Individuals giving up slaves didn't end slavery. Raising awareness of slavery's evil to the point where it hit critical mass, and then using power to force slaveholders to cease, that's how it ended.

This article is a member of the 9.9% speaking to others of the 9.9%, telling them they cannot absolve themselves; that they cannot expect to escape without consequence if the world turns again, as it has in the past.

In my mind the only question left to be addressed is how the power will be wielded. Will it be a politicolegal revolution or a violent one?

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#70

Post by throwaway080383 » Mon, May 28, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

hyperpape wrote: post #41

anbende wrote: post #2

Some of the points about privilege might be accurate, but breaking economic status in to .1%, 9.9%, and 90% is arbitrary and misleading. The author tries to make the point that “the 9.9%” have the majority of the wealth and this issue is as big or bigger than the concentration of wealth at the very top. The problem is that this is largely an artifact of the division system. The distribution is highly skewed, and the…

> I would hypothesize that even within this 9% we’d find the wealth concentrated at the top in the “2nd 1%”, i.e., the top 2% likely make the middle class look mostly irrelevant. I doubt this particular point. The 98th percentile of earners make something like $200-$300k a year, the 89th percentile make about $100k/year[0]. That's a big difference, and it will equate to an even bigger difference in wealth, but not en…

Note that the article and comments are talking about wealth, not income. I know a few young software engineers who are likely in the 98th percentile for income but not even the 90th for wealth.

According to https://dqydj.com/net-worth-percentile-calculator-united-sta..., the ratio between the 98th and 89th percentile of wealth actually is roughly 5-6x. (89th is around 1.1 million, 98th around 5.8 million).