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

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#91

Post by nordsieck » Mon, May 28, 2018, 5:54 PM UTC

throwawayjava wrote: post #33

nordsieck wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Who "just has money" and doesn't control capital? 1. The vast majority of middle class wealth is locked up in (non-investment) housing. That money provides a roof and access to quality education, but in almost all cases, it's not being efficiently deployed as capital. 2. Whatever remaining money that is deployed as capital, is not done so in a way that implies control over their chosen investments. Think "majority…

> The vast majority of middle class wealth is locked up in (non-investment) housing.

There are literally 0 people I know who think owning a house is not an investment.

If you're trying to make a distinction between income generating assets and assets that don't generate income, you're just digging yourself into a hole - housing doesn't generate income, but it does save cost - namely rental cost. In that sense, it is a better investment because the return is less risky.

> 2. Whatever remaining money that is deployed as capital, is not done so in a way that implies control over their chosen investments. Think "majority shareholder" vs. "just another investor". That's the difference between "controlling capital" and merely having a bit of skin in the game.

That's well and good, but it's just as true for most people above the 10% line as for those below. You have to get to some truly lofty heights before you find the activist investors.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#92

Post by mirko22 » Mon, May 28, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

Which form of society would allow for complete equality?

Where everyone has the same things to eat, drink and learn and everyone is missing the same things (usually luxury).

I can’t think of any social system like that mostly cos it all involves people and not all people are the same and will behave differently inevitably wanting different stuff which will lead to more more inequality over time.

Maybe someone has ideas?

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#93

Post by mark212 » Mon, May 28, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

fpig wrote: post #86

If you pick 4.73% or 17.23% as the cutoff point you will reach the same conclusions, the numbers behave as you would expect. I read a similar article once that focused on the top 20% by income, this one focuses on top 10% by wealth... The reality is that there is no "aristocratic cutoff point" - people get richer (and their incomes go up) faster smoothly as you go towards the right on the curve. I don't understand wh…

because it gives him a nice chart: the top 0.1% have been taking the gains away from the bottom 90% -- while that 9.9% in between has been holding steady.

And I agree, it's a stupid core idea.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#94

Post by nostrademons » Mon, May 28, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

danharaj wrote: post #77

djajshgsjja wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those people you listed are still cogs in the machine, to varying degrees. The CEOs are beholden to the boards, who are beholden to the institutional investors, who manage my 401k. Certainly, the CEOs have higher leverage over the system on an individual basis. But anyone whose wealth is increasing mainly through return on capital is a member, if not a leader, of the capitalist class.

Sure, they're all beholden to each other but they're the ones who make the decisions about how to allocate the means of production and which labor power to buy. People who derive their income primarily from investments but don't really decide anything or buy labor power are a rung below those who do. Taxonomize it however you want provided the distinction remains.

Who would you consider more of a capitalist, the apartment block owner who contracts with a property manager or the property manager who decides who to rent it to?

The high-net-worth individual who deposits his capital with an asset manager, or the salaried fund manager who determines which securities to buy with it?

The angel investor who puts $1M of his own money into a fledgling startup, or the entrepreneur who decides how it's spent?

The hedge fund manager who has bought 40% of the company on Wall Street, or the CEO entrusted to make the daily decisions on company operation?

I'm surprised the grandparent post has been downvoted, because when you get close to how capital is actually managed and invested, it's clear that it's a lot less clear than it looks from the outside. Even people who nominally have "control" over capital expenditures are subject to market returns. If they don't invest that capital correctly, they will lose the ability to manage more capital.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#95

Post by mark212 » Mon, May 28, 2018, 6:03 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…

I disagree that it's segregating or done on purpose, but it is deeply unfair that the price of a good "public" education is being able to afford the real estate in that catchment area / school district.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#96

Post by Latteland » Mon, May 28, 2018, 6:05 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #74

AstralStorm wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t want to forcibly do anything. I want to unshackle market forces to solve the problem in a better way. Don’t ban poor people from your town. Don’t create a monopoly on local education. The rules should forcibly ensure competition rather than forcibly control how people live and get educated.

In US, each school district receives money proportional to their students, with some places raising money via levys or bonds in their district. It takes a long time to make new schools. If people could go to any school, you'd overwhelm some districts with tons of students and you can't just make a new school in a year or two, it takes a lot of time for the district to figure out they'll need one long term, raise the money, make plans, build and hire teachers. So this would just be a disaster in the say 3 year time frame.

I think a major reason some districts do better than others is that wealth of the parents is highly correlated with educational attainment of the parents and the children. It's not that the big city schools just generally suck, they have many more problems to deal with, one being older infrastructure but also a lot more poorer kids, and less parental contributions.

Being in the Seattle area, every school district is overloaded, and is struggling to plan and build new schools, and has lots of temporary buildings (aka trailers) that they have some classes in. It's true on the east side, the more wealthy side. And on the wealthy east side, it's far more conservative politically than Seattle; compare Seattle to Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Issaquah. Those are still moderate to liberal cities, but as an example Issaquah has a republican US Congressman, Reichart. These places are pretty strongly supportive of keeping the public schools the way they are.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#97

Post by sergiotapia » Mon, May 28, 2018, 6:09 PM UTC

mozumder wrote: post #12

Class differentiation is the central meaning of life. The struggle is the point. You get up and wear nice clothes in the morning so that you're better than the slob that doesn't. Nobody wants to be the same as everyone else. If everyone was equal, then there would be no point in your existence. You become a bag of mostly water. Celebrate the fact that a few billionaires and royalty and celebrities exists. Life is mor…

Life is struggle, that's what makes life beautiful. Commies want to change that but we won't let them.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#98

Post by e12e » Mon, May 28, 2018, 6:11 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #17

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.

And yet it's more than 90.1% of the population posesses... These analyses tend to overlook the age dimension. It is entirely normal that a 65-year-old about to retire would have accumulated more assets than a 22-year-old who has just graduated with student debts. So is the proportion of the population holding the wealth also the proportion of the population who has been working and saving for 30-40 years already? If…

> So is the proportion of the population holding the wealth also the proportion of the population who has been working and saving for 30-40 years already?

I doubt it: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#99

Post by JumpCrisscross » Mon, May 28, 2018, 6:13 PM UTC

sologoub wrote: post #45

p49k wrote: post #8

Rebuttal from Slate: https://slate.com/business/2018/05/forget-the-atlantics-9-9-...

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…

I don’t think that is a fair rebuttal. There has been a systemic transfer of wealth from the young to the older. Social Security and pensions get funded; universities and schools do not.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#100

Post by zneveu » Mon, May 28, 2018, 6:15 PM UTC

I really enjoyed reading this piece. The author poses several rhetorical questions that I think could use evidence to support their assumed conclusions, but overall this piece seems very well informed and sheds light on a class of people that I am very familiar with but had never divided out in my head.