Never mind the 1 percent Let's talk about the 0.01 percent (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: Never mind the 1 percent Let's talk about the 0.01 percent (2017)

#161

Post by m0zg » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 9:49 PM UTC

An old and fitting Soviet joke about this:

An old man is relaxing on the couch in his apartment in 1917 Saint Petersburg. His grandson runs excitedly into the room and proclaims: "Grandfather, the revolution has begun, we're killing the rich, and nobody will be rich anymore." To which the old man wearily replies: "My generation fought so that nobody would be poor."

Simple arithmetic shows that if you were to completely strip the 0.01% of their wealth (which just isn't going to happen, since they own the Congress) and "give it all to the poor", the poor would still be pretty poor: 6T between 350M people is $17K per person, or about 3 years worth of Obamacare. And that's pre-tax.

The way you prop up the poor is by creating opportunity and competition for lower skilled labor and trades, by rejecting some parts of globalism, which forces "the rich" to pay more for their labor supply. That propping up seems to be happening as we speak: unemployment is at a 50 year low (https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-september-nonfarm-payrolls-...)

Historical reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decembrist_revolt

Re: Never mind the 1 percent Let's talk about the 0.01 percent (2017)

#162

Post by cmdshiftf4 » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 9:54 PM UTC

wyldfire wrote: post #64

Ma8ee wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is the opposite. The top people are the owners of very large, very often inherited, fortunes. Few people leave that group and few people enter it.

> very large, very often inherited, fortunes The article addresses inherited wealth: > On the 2016 rich list, two-thirds were self-made and one-third had inherited at least part of their fortune. More than 10 percent were immigrants to the US.

>More than 10 percent were immigrants to the US.

I wonder what portion of that 10% fits into the inherited wealth bracket also. Anecdotally I've met a lot of rich Indian and Chinese immigrants in tech, however they came over with family money, with strong family power networks, attended top schools and then parlayed their wealth + connections into something even greater.

It feels as though we throw "immigrants" out there to be synonymous with "broke" and "powerless".

Re: Never mind the 1 percent Let's talk about the 0.01 percent (2017)

#163

Post by Gibbon1 » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 10:11 PM UTC

bretpiatt wrote: post #124

hailwren wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was skeptical, then I checked [1] and apparently even if you separate by state you only need a household income of $512k to be in the top 1%. High, but certainly not unfathomably so to HN readers. 1 - https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/27/how-much-you-have-to-earn-to...

Many people end up in the 1% for a single year via sale of business, stock, etc. There's a huge difference between that type of 1% for a year and age 30-40 dual (or very high single) annual income earners. The former may retire with a $1-5M net worth, the latter is either spending heavily or retiring with a $10M+ (and likely $20M+ with reasonableiinvestment returns) nest egg.

There is also a difference between a $150k/y family with two wage earners and one with a single wage earner. The former is likely paying for day care, etc and have higher family expenses. And a lower quality of life in general.

Gets worse as you go down in income. Try two wage earners at $60k/year.

Re: Never mind the 1 percent Let's talk about the 0.01 percent (2017)

#164

Post by stale2002 » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 10:15 PM UTC

blunte wrote: post #155

stale2002 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you really argue that the people in the top 0.01% are contributing to society at a rate hundreds or thousands of times higher than the rest of the people? Yes. That is because of of the impact of their actions. Let's take the example of a CEO of a major company. The difference between a good CEO, and a great CEO might only change the value of a company by 1%. But 1% of a 100 billion dollar company, is 1 billion…

The executives of the big banks that caused the 2007/8 financial crisis... and cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions (in additional federal debt)... were they really contributing to society in line with their compensation? There are lots of examples of consistently bad or self-serving behavior of banks - banks which get special benefits from the people, including quantitative easing (essentially the ability to…

Think of it more in terms of expected value.

For example, it is possible that a worse executive would have had a higher chance of causing an even worse outcome than what happened.

The point is that executive compensation is a drop in the bucket, compared to the value of a company as a whole. A CEO only has to have a slighter higher chance of getting a slightly better outcome, for the math to work out and the compensation to be worth it.

Re: Never mind the 1 percent Let's talk about the 0.01 percent (2017)

#165

Post by stale2002 » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 10:17 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #143

stale2002 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you really argue that the people in the top 0.01% are contributing to society at a rate hundreds or thousands of times higher than the rest of the people? Yes. That is because of of the impact of their actions. Let's take the example of a CEO of a major company. The difference between a good CEO, and a great CEO might only change the value of a company by 1%. But 1% of a 100 billion dollar company, is 1 billion…

> Yes. That is because of of the impact of their actions. If you consider a measurement of their financial compensation to be proportional to their contribution to society. In reality, the actual impact of their actions is unknown - such things are beyond our ability to measure, we can only speculate. > therefore this value needs to be incentivized Technically, it doesn't need to be incentivized. Life would carry on…

> such things are beyond our ability to measure, we can only speculate.

Ok then. But that doesn't support the argument that compensation is too high. Maybe it isn't high enough, and should be even higher!

I can use your unknown argument to support even higher compensation, just as much.

Re: Never mind the 1 percent Let's talk about the 0.01 percent (2017)

#166

Post by Gibbon1 » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 10:21 PM UTC

claudeganon wrote: post #78

dijit wrote: post #9

Wasn’t that always the case. Nobody cares about the guy earning 250k/y. It’s the handful of people who control 90% of all wealth. “1%” was a catchy soundbite but it was always the 0.0001%

The answer I think depends on where their allegiances lie. The reason why the reactionary “PMC” [0] has become something of a meme is because you’ll often encounter people at this level of affluence who defend the ultrawealthy and their predation of the poor through things like the private healthcare system in the US. From a material perspective, it makes sense that they behave this way (the ultrawealthy are more lik…

Friend of mine has no particular family wealth. But with 20 years under his belt is a mid level manager. Sends his kid to a private school. Says the other parents at his private school are all upper class. And assume he is too. The things they casually say makes him hate them.

Re: Never mind the 1 percent Let's talk about the 0.01 percent (2017)

#167

Post by danaris » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 11:00 PM UTC

jogjayr wrote: post #118

ghouse wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It recognizes that income derived from investments is riskier and applies a discount. It's unclear why as a matter of tax policy we want to discount taxes because risk is taken. If an investment results in a loss, that loss is permitted to offset gains elsewhere.

Because the policy doesn't just cover a diversified investment portfolio where a loss on one transaction offsets other gains. Small business owners put a significant chunk of savings and all their time into their business. What gains are they going to write down if their business goes under?

Is there a reason we can't classify a wholly-owned business differently from shares of stock, for tax purposes?

Re: Never mind the 1 percent Let's talk about the 0.01 percent (2017)

#168

Post by mistermann » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 11:44 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #165

mistermann wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes. That is because of of the impact of their actions. If you consider a measurement of their financial compensation to be proportional to their contribution to society. In reality, the actual impact of their actions is unknown - such things are beyond our ability to measure, we can only speculate. > therefore this value needs to be incentivized Technically, it doesn't need to be incentivized. Life would carry on…

> such things are beyond our ability to measure, we can only speculate. Ok then. But that doesn't support the argument that compensation is too high. Maybe it isn't high enough, and should be even higher! I can use your unknown argument to support even higher compensation, just as much.

> Ok then. But that doesn't support the argument that compensation is too high

That is true, but I made no argument. You on the other hand, seemed to be explaining that such arguments are wrong, at least as I understood you.

> I can use your unknown argument to support even higher compensation, just as much.

Just as much, which is precisely zero.

You seem to be claiming that they are producing value, that needs to be compensated. You have no evidence, yet you speak as if you do.

Re: Never mind the 1 percent Let's talk about the 0.01 percent (2017)

#169

Post by asjw » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 11:46 PM UTC

tanderson92 wrote: post #52

odiroot wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately that's not always the case. Living in Germany, I've heard and read (good example /de/ subreddit) loads of hate against middle and upper-middle class people. People who are nowhere near close to being rich. This is also a group that's being taxed as much as the actual rich, or in practice even more, because the rich can afford to "optimise" their taxes. There's a sizeable group of people that just cannot…

Doctors' trade group actively lobbies to keep the supply of physicians below demand so as to inflate their guilds' average salary. Critiques of the merely well-off can sometimes be more indicative of the major problems facing America, since there are so many more in this category. For example, by critiquing this 1% class you also get into very interesting questions about land use in California.

Not in Europe, where education is basically free (few thousands euros/year)

Re: Never mind the 1 percent Let's talk about the 0.01 percent (2017)

#170

Post by hannasanarion » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 11:58 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #121

hannasanarion wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and he stopped doing all that in 2004. Why does he deserve the profits from the hard work done by thousands of engineers to make Vista, 7, 8, and 10, which he had absolutely nothing to do with?

What is your alternative? That when a founder retires, should they be stripped of all ownership of the company they founded, because they are no longer working? Or should the owners of a company receive zero of the profits of the company? Either of those will have rather large consequences, at least some of them rather negative. So... what's your plan?

How about we start with: the people who actually work in the company get the profits. Corporations are supposed to exist to fill a public need and employ people, not to make their owners richer than kings.