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America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

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Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#131

Post by ryanmercer »

b3kart wrote: post #46
h3rsko wrote: post #2

Inequality seems to be a completely pointless buzzword to me. The only thing that matters is if there are more or less poor people, and how poor are those people compared to similar percentiles in the past. It shouldn't matter how rich the richest people on earth are. I really love seeing people on the Internet try to convince themselves that because Bezos or Musk are worth $100B, they must be stealing it from poor p…

I think this would be a valid argument if significant money wouldn't also come with significant power in the modern day and age. As soon as there is significant wealth inequality, there is also a significant power inequality, with a small number of people determining the fate of the rest of the world. Surely this isn't good?

> Surely this isn't good?

Certainly not. We're semi-returning to fiefdom where the wealthy make the decisions for the masses, who they also happen to employ and market their goods to.

Sure, some good things can come of this, look at what Bill Gates has done for vaccines in the past decade or so, which is now making an actual difference when it comes to covid vaccination development and deployment.

You also have questionable things though, look at the Nevada bill would allow tech companies to create governments. We've seen company towns before, it generlaly didn't work out very well for the masses... I mean, look at the Battle of Blair Mountain where mining interests went as far as to hire private planes and drop bombs on miners in the United States in retalliatin to a labor uprising https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

I love what extreme wealth can do for a given cause, but do I really want a handful of individuals making the decisions? Ehhhh probably not.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#132

Post by anonuser123456 »

klmadfejno wrote: post #18

"But poor people have iphones now" when people can't afford food, healthcare, or any leisure time is the 2021 equivalent of "Let them eat cake". The balance of wealth is insulting when we have so many basic needs not being met for those at the bottom "Stealing" is a word that gets knee jerk reactions. But the more polite way to phrase it is that the rich benefit from societal structure 1000x more than the poor and ar…

The situation is more nuanced in my reading in wealth, income and inequality.

In particular, people don’t actually care about absolute inequality. They care about progress and opportunity. As you stated, the inability to provide for basic needs trumps the fact that you have an iPhone.

But the inability to provide for basic needs is not necessarily caused by wealth divergence. Medical care costs today have little to do with wealth, and more to do with the cost disease, regulatory morass/capture and transferring costs from the young to old.

Housing costs, another huge personal expenditure, are driven by local NIMBY restrictions and city zoning planners.

Education costs are clearly not driven by the wealthy, unless you believe Bryan Caplan’s signaling theory (which I personally do). But in that case, tax transfers don’t help either.

And so here is part of the nuance. Some of the wealthy are ‘stealing’ the money via power/regulatory capture etc. Others are not, they are growing real wealth. Yet others are destroying jobs via automation whole making products cheaper.

I’m personally less well off because my Dr. can charge 3x his value and my local city vigorously defends single family zoning at the expense of non property owners. But I’m not really worse off that Elon Musk is selling cars at a competitive price or Tim Cook is selling headphones at 550 a pop.

And that nuance is important. Equally punishing the growth with ‘theft’ hurts the economy and doesn’t fix any of the underlying problems.

All of these excess costs, make it very hard for people to stay afloat let alone build capital/wealth.

And those problems persist regardless if we transfer via taxes; housing markets are artificially constrained and tax transfers will just get sucked up to bid the price up. The medical system will find ways to suck up as much money as it possibly can. Giving people more money just to have it siphoned off isn’t a great fix.

So I, as a 1%er wouldn’t mind higher taxes. But we have to fix the underlying problems first. Otherwise your just taking my money to hand off to my Dr’s Porsche fund while the less well off get nothing in return.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#133

Post by mrguyorama »

readams wrote: post #88
klmadfejno wrote: post #18

"But poor people have iphones now" when people can't afford food, healthcare, or any leisure time is the 2021 equivalent of "Let them eat cake". The balance of wealth is insulting when we have so many basic needs not being met for those at the bottom "Stealing" is a word that gets knee jerk reactions. But the more polite way to phrase it is that the rich benefit from societal structure 1000x more than the poor and ar…

The question is, based on standard of living, would you rather be poor now or some time in the past? I don't think there's anyone who would choose the past.

"Things are less shitty now" does not mean things are not still shitty now

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#134

Post by username90 »

pydry wrote: post #25
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But isn't wealth to a large degree relative Yes it is, but a few hundred billionaires with mansions and yachts don't really matter in the context of the broader economy. It's the upper middle class yuppies with substantial amounts of discretionary income driving up the prices on things that makes people poorer in the relative sense. There simply aren't enough billionaires to move the needle on the goods and services…

>Yes it is, but a few hundred billionares don't really matter in the context of the broader economy. Billionaires buying up "stores of wealth" housing in the city I live in has driven up the price of property inordinately and almost priced me out. What you are saying here is not "they don't matter" but "I don't matter". Then they tell people who grew up in these cities to just leave if they can't afford it. Political…

> Billionaires buying up "stores of wealth" housing in the city I live in has driven up the price of property inordinately and almost priced me out. What you are saying here is not "they don't matter" but "I don't matter".

Are you sure they are billionaires and not just millionaires? There are millions of people in USA with millions of wealth, they are what matters, and they can each buy up a large chunk of real estate in mid cost neighbourhoods.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#135

Post by adolph »

mdoms wrote: post #114
adolph wrote: post #42

How is this different from any random conspiracy theory? The term "counterfactual" is used instead of "I made a strawman?" Edit: the reliance on "taxable income" instead of gross is interesting. Wouldn't a progressive tax policy look similar to the paper's stats since more income would be taxable for folks with lower income? https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-1.html

> the reliance on "taxable income" instead of gross is interesting Taxable income is gross income when you're pulling a wage. Even in a progressive tax system where, for example, your first $10,000 untaxed, it's still taxable income because even if you make $12,000 then the full amount is used to determine your tax bill. > Wouldn't a progressive tax policy look similar to the paper's stats since more income would be…

I think the usage of taxable income _might_ skew the numbers in a way that looks more income inequitable than in the past but reflects better accounting of income tax-wise. An example is the alternative minimum tax which makes more non-wage income such as options to purchase stock below market value count as taxable income.

I lost my place in the PDF but it looks like they calculated based on wages etc. and not a specific tax form line item. The source data is "Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, Current Population Survey"

https://www.irs.gov/publications/p525

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_minimum_tax

https://ipums.org/projects/ipums-cps/d030.v6.0

A progressive tax policy might count more and additional income sources for high wage earners and reduce taxable income for low wage earners. The authors are more sophisticated than that though.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#136

Post by username90 »

saint_abroad wrote: post #124
raiyu wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the original post was someone who had access to reliable safe drinking water, so I'm not sure where that is coming from. Also if you look historically over the past 100 years overall rates of poverty have declined everywhere. If you look even further back in time the amount of rights that global citizens enjoy today is fundamentally a million times better than it was 100, 200, 300, 400 years ago. Humans were rul…

Progress over the last 400 years is being undone by regressions of the last 40 years. > individuals born in 1980 have only a 45% chance of outearning their parents at age 30, compared to 93% for those born in 1940. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwar...

Sounds like progress stopped, not that it reversed. When things are stable you'd expect that a bit less than 50% are richer than their parents.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#137

Post by ksec »

natenthe wrote: post #120
ksec wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It amazes me why most people do not grasp this. I think it is lack of education. I dont think that is the case at all. The concept is simple and easy enough to understand. Most people just dont care and want a single target to blame. And someone decide that target will not be government or Feds.

Bingo. I was being politically correct but actually agree wholeheartedly. Didn't want to get too conspiratorial on this forum.

Well now even the whole submission is flagged for some reason....

Edit: And it is now unflagged.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#138

Post by throwawaysea »

AlexandrB wrote: post #93
throwawaysea wrote: post #72

"Taken" is a misleading and false. They aren't taking wealth. Others are giving them money in return for something they value. If I am selling a product, or my services, or a share of stock, I'm not "taking" anything from anyone. It's incredible to me that these casual editorialized titles are acceptable so broadly in the journalism industry, and yet labels like "fake news" are reserved for only right-leaning news me…

If you want to get into the nitty gritty, the 1% rich generally don't sell products or services. They own companies who employ workers who do these tasks. Some surplus portion of the value generated by those workers is then captured by the organization (and its owners) as profit. Whether you want to call that "taking" or not is a question of ideology, not of fact. Arguably, omitting the word "taken" from the headline…

If you want to get into the nitty gritty, consider that the 1% generally don't "own companies". That is a vague trope from the Occupy Wall Street types. A significant portion of the 1% are skilled professionals (programmers, doctors, lawyers, etc.) or rare talents (actors, musicians, athletes). Many are small business owners who are taking significant risks and typically work incredibly hard to be successful (and most fail). Many may be "owners" of companies in the sense that they are shareholders, but that fractional ownership is also available to you or I. Very few are in a position of outright ownership or even majority ownership of a company that is bigger than a small business. If your intention was to claim that the 1% get income passively, I think you may be drawing your percentiles at the wrong threshold.

But I still disagree with your framing of the definition of "taking" as an ideological question and not a factual one. People have choice on where they live, what work they do, what they spend their money on, how they manage their free time, and so forth. If one person saves up, takes a risk, starts a small business, and offers employment at a certain exchange of money for time, that's not "taking" because "taking" implies an involuntary action or theft. The employer is offering a trade, and the employee is accepting it voluntarily, giving their time and labor in exchange for pay. That simply doesn't fit the definition of "taking".

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#139

Post by pydry »

username90 wrote: post #134
pydry wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yes it is, but a few hundred billionares don't really matter in the context of the broader economy. Billionaires buying up "stores of wealth" housing in the city I live in has driven up the price of property inordinately and almost priced me out. What you are saying here is not "they don't matter" but "I don't matter". Then they tell people who grew up in these cities to just leave if they can't afford it. Political…

> Billionaires buying up "stores of wealth" housing in the city I live in has driven up the price of property inordinately and almost priced me out. What you are saying here is not "they don't matter" but "I don't matter". Are you sure they are billionaires and not just millionaires? There are millions of people in USA with millions of wealth, they are what matters, and they can each buy up a large chunk of real esta…

It's a ripple effect. Billionaires end up pricing out hundred-millionaires, who price out millionaires and so on.

All of the above also buy up rental property. And wealthy foreign criminals andtax evaders get in on the act by buying up property sight unseen as a foreign bolthole.

This is how we end up with cleaners and baristas having to share a room and commute 1 hour each wayway and property prices that are, like, 17x the average wage.

It's weird how so many people are apparently in denial about this.

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