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Faster Growth, Fairer Growth: Policies for a High Road, High Performance Economy

niskanencenter.org

101–102 of 102 posts

Re: Faster Growth, Fairer Growth: Policies for a High Road, High Performance Economy

#101

> At the same time that the major factors expanding the economic pie were losing momentum, other powerful forces emerged that would push toward dividing the pie more unequally The framing of the issue influences what conclusions one draws. Here, the authors think of the economy as a "pie" created by "factors" that gets "divided up". What naturally follows is that if some get a bigger "slice" than others, it is inhere…

Bob starts with 11 units of utility. Fred starts with 2. It costs 1 unit of utility to exist. Each of Bob and Fred invest their remaining utility in the utility market, which grows at 10% per year regardless of what either of them do. 25 years later, Bob has 109 units of utility, and Fred has roughly 12 units of utility. At the beginning of this thought experiment, Bob had 5.5x the utility units of Fred. At the end,…

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Re: Faster Growth, Fairer Growth: Policies for a High Road, High Performance Economy

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But finite life expectancies effectively act as a cap on that process. In the very best case, you only have about half a century to compound wealth. Modern America is not very conducive to preserving intergenerational wealth. Of the top ten richest Americans, only one is not a first-generation billionaire. Rockefeller despite amassing an enormous fortune, equivalent to $400 billion today, does not have any heirs in t…

What you say is simply not true - we know this because the fundamental measure - concentration of wealth - is continually increasing. Intergenerational mobility, particularly at the very top, is interesting, but ultimately irrelevant to most people. What is relevant are the vast quantities of people who suffer from poverty and grotesque inequality. Imagine explaining to some homeless person that society was pretty fi…

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