141–150 of 961 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Correction: The Fed's policies have taken $50T of wealth from the Bottom 90%. When you bail out irresponsibly over-leveraged and nearly bankrupted banks and corporations, and pay for those bailouts with tax-payer money, you steal from the poor and give to the rich. Most importantly, when the Fed decides to print money ad nauseam, they create massive asset inflation, which steals from the poor and gives to the rich. T…
Your comment would also imply that before there was such a thing as a Federal Reserve, income and wealth inequality didn't exist. This is false.
One is extortion under the threat of cops wielding violence and jail time. The other is a free choice.
Correction: The Government has seized 38% of my wealth by force. The top 1% I gave my money to willingly. One is extortion under the threat of cops wielding violence and jail time. The other is a free choice.
This is almost a natural law of wealth. When you have significant capital, you can do things like loan it out with interest, leverage it into getting loans to build more capital, etc. If one assumes that the wealthy are using their money to buy commodities and selling those commodities with the expectation of getting their initial money back plus some delta, then it becomes fairly trivial to demonstrate that the more…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say the current biggest problem is that the highest earners simply do not pay much in taxes through loopholes and avoidance, not that taxes need to be increased across the board. EDIT: the_gastropod's comment also under this parent is a great short summary of this issue. I second their recommendation of "Capital in the 21st Century"
What do you want to do with their money though?
That's about 1.1% of the net worth of Jeff Bezos.
I indicate this not to imply that Jeff Bezos should be solely responsible for fixing the Flint water supply, but rather to indicate that the resources are there, the problems are there, and what we lack is the will to move resources to fix public problems (be that via taxation or charity). Even problems we know will carry a larger cost moving forward... Flint is a town with a population of nearly 100,000, and a high-lead environment can basically guarantee higher costs in education, health problem remediation, and possibly crime.
"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…
> "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 iPhone is a luxury product within a category of luxury products. No one needs a smart phone to be successful in life - you don't need it to educate yourself, to find jobs, to do work, to entertained, etc. It could be used for all those things, but it isn't a prerequisi…
I take it as a sign of the deflationary nature of technology and economies of scale.
Capitalism is a very fuzzy word. I'd say markets and the price mechanism clearly work better than barter. Poorly regulated capitalism is unhealthy.
Correction: The Fed's policies have taken $50T of wealth from the Bottom 90%. When you bail out irresponsibly over-leveraged and nearly bankrupted banks and corporations, and pay for those bailouts with tax-payer money, you steal from the poor and give to the rich. Most importantly, when the Fed decides to print money ad nauseam, they create massive asset inflation, which steals from the poor and gives to the rich. T…
Except this wasn't the federal bailouts. Those are an entirely different beast. It's talking strictly about income stagnation. The study shows that if wages kept up with productivity (as was the case in the immediate post-WW2 era) the bottom 90% would earn $2.5 trillion per year more. > We document the cumulative effect of four decades of income growth below the growth of per capita gross national income and estimate…
Which rests on the fundamentally incorrect assumption that a dollar a rich person gets means that a poor person is a dollar poorer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Naval had an extremely pertinent tweet [1]: The road to socialism via inflation: • Print money, crash the reserve currency, destroy savers, and force them into inflated assets. • Asset inflation leads to inequality. Demonize asset holders and tax the nominal gains, thereby confiscating the real value of the assets. [1] https://twitter.com/naval/status/1359650086221930496?s=21
Naval is a smart man. Couldn't agree with this more. We are nearing the end of the road to socialism via inflation.
Correction: The Fed's policies have taken $50T of wealth from the Bottom 90%. When you bail out irresponsibly over-leveraged and nearly bankrupted banks and corporations, and pay for those bailouts with tax-payer money, you steal from the poor and give to the rich. Most importantly, when the Fed decides to print money ad nauseam, they create massive asset inflation, which steals from the poor and gives to the rich. T…