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The Rich Can't Get Richer Forever

newyorker.com

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Re: The Rich Can't Get Richer Forever

#91

Post by opportune »

closeparen wrote: post #68
opportune wrote: post #9

The article mentions globalization but doesn't view inequality through a global lens. If you look only within rich nations, yes inequality has increased, because the poor and blue collar middle class have lost a lot of jobs to poorer countries. But that phenomenon is actually reducing inequality as measured from a global view. The biggest issue I have with the article is that it ignores the geopolitical trends that w…

Exactly who had to get killed for Social Security to be passed?

Nobody but people did have to get killed for earlier employer-pensions to be passed. And cynically you can view a lot of the pro-labor progress in the US from the great depression through the 50s to be a response to the popularity of communism and socialism abroad

Re: The Rich Can't Get Richer Forever

#92

Post by seanmcdirmid »

barrkel wrote: post #24
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is optimistic. The rich could also just get rid of all the poor people they don’t need. Armed drones even reduce the need for human soldiers to get that done. Anyways, let’s hope for much more peaceful solutions.

Poor is fractal from this perspective. Like stack ranking, rich people would have to invent poor people in order to save their own hides when their turn comes around.

Sure. They still need people to program the robots. So...uhm, we techies become the new poor...

Re: The Rich Can't Get Richer Forever

#93

Post by paganel »

closeparen wrote: post #68
opportune wrote: post #9

The article mentions globalization but doesn't view inequality through a global lens. If you look only within rich nations, yes inequality has increased, because the poor and blue collar middle class have lost a lot of jobs to poorer countries. But that phenomenon is actually reducing inequality as measured from a global view. The biggest issue I have with the article is that it ignores the geopolitical trends that w…

Exactly who had to get killed for Social Security to be passed?

Not the OP but I’d mention the 1871 Paris Commune deaths [1]. Bismarck saw the writing on the wall (i.e. take care of the masses or they’ll end up taking all your stuff away and worse) and that’s how the modern welfare State was born. The US Social Security system is in a way just a continuation of Bismarck’s policy applied to an industrialized Western country with a considerable middle class.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune

Re: The Rich Can't Get Richer Forever

#94

Post by jddj »

throwawaysea wrote: post #52
Raidion wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument against that would be that you can give your kid a luxurious cushion, you just don't get to give him 1000x what the average person would need. Keeping your kid safe from pretty much anything you went through doesn't require 80 billion dollars.

Why not? This seems arbitrary. If I earned it, I should be able to do whatever I want with it.

At the extremely wealthy end, you almost certainly didn't.

There's hard work, and there's luck. Your genes, your environment and the randomness of the universe add to make up 100% of both of those things.

I don't think it's fair to say that the children (and their children, and their children) of someone who won the randomness / genetic / environmental lottery should be thousands of times better off than the children of someone who didn't.

In a fair and just nation/world we would try to reduce wherever possible the instances where your opportunities are dependent upon where, or to whom you are born.

Re: The Rich Can't Get Richer Forever

#95

Post by [deleted] »

advisedwang wrote: post #40
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary metric in OP is income inequality, which is historically high. You're primarily addressing wealth, which is connected, but not the same. Taxing inheritance will do very little towards income inequality.

The very essence of capitalism is using wealth (ie capital) to gain income. A wealth tax very much would reduce inequality, both in wealth and income.

[deleted]

Re: The Rich Can't Get Richer Forever

#96

Post by majewsky »

lanstin wrote: post #81
squirrelicus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally you get downvoted for doing so, but people still try to argue. I have a lot to say on the subject, but one thing I still need an argument for is why inequality is bad intrinsically. I'd love to hear a cogent argument that addresses that fundamental point, but what I end up seeing in the wild is camps of people who think inequality is some intrinsic evil, and those that don't think it's relevant to anything.

Isn’t the problem with inequality that it makes the society less stable? More envy and less feeling of being part of a group? It is good that poverty in the world is much less and there are more people in the middle class but it is also a problem that wages in the US are stagnant for large swath of the population that feels like it isn’t part of the group anymore and makes trouble because of it.

> Isn’t the problem with inequality that it makes the society less stable?

Yes. However, too much equality also makes society too static, because no one is incentivized to innovate anymore. The problem, as always, is maintaining the right balance.

Re: The Rich Can't Get Richer Forever

#97

Post by tim333 »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #69
opportune wrote: post #9

The article mentions globalization but doesn't view inequality through a global lens. If you look only within rich nations, yes inequality has increased, because the poor and blue collar middle class have lost a lot of jobs to poorer countries. But that phenomenon is actually reducing inequality as measured from a global view. The biggest issue I have with the article is that it ignores the geopolitical trends that w…

So it's OK to fuck over a large portion of your own population because it's trickling down to a poor country? The issue is that nations have a duty to their own citizens, good luck telling an entire generation that they need to make sacrifices for others while the rich keep getting richer.

I'm not sure the rising inequality in the US is really a result of the poor countries getting richer. Lots of other developed countries have traded with the world with much less of that eg. Germany, Scandinavia. It's more a result of the kind of politics Fox News pushes.

Re: The Rich Can't Get Richer Forever

#98

Post by khawkins »

nugget wrote: post #4

Implementation may be politically difficult, but the solution isn't rocket science: substantially raise the inheritance tax and abolish all trust loopholes.

The relatively high income of the most wealthy isn't the problem unless your primary motivation is spiteful envy of the wealthy. The real problems are that it's harder than it was in the past to maintain a middle class lifestyle. The necessities of such a lifestyle have only gone up in price: health insurance, college education, real estate/rent, and maintaining a vehicle. This causes debt to pile up and drives people into depression or serious stress.

In turn, fewer people in this class are investing in the future or hold stock, which means they feel little investment in the world. Instead of feeling like part-owners of the country, they feel like wage slaves with little power to escape the bondage of debt.

On top of this, it feels like just barely getting by with these things requires more time and effort than it used to. People are working more part-time jobs and both parents of a family need to work.

Taxing rich people does little to make these very real problems go away.

Re: The Rich Can't Get Richer Forever

#99

Post by _vufv »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #69
opportune wrote: post #9

The article mentions globalization but doesn't view inequality through a global lens. If you look only within rich nations, yes inequality has increased, because the poor and blue collar middle class have lost a lot of jobs to poorer countries. But that phenomenon is actually reducing inequality as measured from a global view. The biggest issue I have with the article is that it ignores the geopolitical trends that w…

So it's OK to fuck over a large portion of your own population because it's trickling down to a poor country? The issue is that nations have a duty to their own citizens, good luck telling an entire generation that they need to make sacrifices for others while the rich keep getting richer.

I read OP's comment more as a neutral statement of a fact than as a justification for the globalization processes. I'd be willing to wager that none of the actors pushing these processes are minding either of these two inequality facts (inequality in developed countries rising, inequality is developing countries falling). These actors are driven by their incentives and the current system makes it good for them to further globalization - very much in the same way that it's good for them not need to be careful to be environmentally friendly.

At least to me, "f*g over someone" would imply malicious intent - these economic agents are neither benevolent nor malicious - they simply don't care. In a slightly wider context, this is exactly why an AGI is considered dangerous.

Re: The Rich Can't Get Richer Forever

#100

Post by dlp211 »

throwaway8278 wrote: post #55
k__ wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure thing, but what do we have now? Most people are only successful because of their inheritance. If you would be forbidden to give your kids more than a million that would solve that problem pretty well, I guess.

While this is a commonly believed myth, it is a myth. The vast majority of millionaires and other "wealthy" people are self made, not made from inheritance.

This is true today, but it wasn't true in the past, and I doubt it will continue to be true in the future based on our current trajectory.

Also, due to inflation, millionaire is not what it used to be.

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