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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%

#191

Post by mempko »

tengbretson wrote: post #30

In my lifetime some sort of switch has flipped, where the people advocating for more taxes no longer do so with an explicit intention to pay for something greater or something new, but simply on the assumption that the act of taxing people will inherently make them more equal. Is there a coherent philosophical basis for this train of thought? Is there any historical precedent that increased taxes is what we need to b…

Well, historically when people were most equal in the US the taxes were very high for the upper class, something like 90%. Look at post world war taxes.

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

#192

Post by gowld »

gwbas1c wrote: post #174
natenthe wrote: post #57

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…

The reason for the bailouts was to avoid mass unemployment and mass foreclosures. These would have happened had major automakers or major banks went bankrupt.

Giving the money to the employees in a much cheaper way to avoid unemployment. Temporarily banning foreclosure is an easier way to avoid foreclosures.

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

#193

Post by dcolkitt »

User23 wrote: post #182

Usury, which is to say lending at interest, will inevitably in aggregate lead to a tiny minority owning virtually everything. This is obvious to anyone who has basic high school math and understands that interest compounds geometrically and wages grow linearly at best.

> wages grow linearly at best.

This isn't true at all.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-real-gdp-per-capi...

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

#194

Post by adam_arthur »

natenthe wrote: post #57

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…

Especially when coupled with the excessive fiscal stimulus.

We should absolutely help those most impacted by the pandemic, but the amount of money being injected amounts to gross negligence.

Why were people who made 6 figures and still employed being given checks, for example? The stock market is on fire, and many businesses are smashing earnings expectations, yet we inject another $2 trillion?

I've got a sizable portfolio, but the government response frankly saddens me. The green we see every day just represents inflation (of assets). Big gains in stonks, but now we have to pay 2 million dollars for a house in a nice part of town.

Really unfortunate for those without significant assets that ever hoped to own a home.

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

#195

Post by leetcrew »

User23 wrote: post #182

Usury, which is to say lending at interest, will inevitably in aggregate lead to a tiny minority owning virtually everything. This is obvious to anyone who has basic high school math and understands that interest compounds geometrically and wages grow linearly at best.

it may be true, but it's not obvious without making some unstated assumptions. inflation-adjusted returns on loans are not necessarily positive (though they usually are). interest compounds geometrically by definition, but subexponential wage growth is an observation that may depend on how you calculate inflation.

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

#196

Post by leetcrew »

dcolkitt wrote: post #193
User23 wrote: post #182

Usury, which is to say lending at interest, will inevitably in aggregate lead to a tiny minority owning virtually everything. This is obvious to anyone who has basic high school math and understands that interest compounds geometrically and wages grow linearly at best.

> wages grow linearly at best. This isn't true at all. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-real-gdp-per-capi...

gdp per capita is not a good proxy for wages.

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

#197

Post by throwaway123x2 »

User23 wrote: post #185
Pfhreak wrote: post #23

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…

> This is almost a natural law of wealth. When you have significant capital, you can do things like loan it out with interest It is a natural law of usury, which is what you describe. This is why we used to ban usury as unjust.

Again, what's the alternative?

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

#199

Post by chris11 »

zepto wrote: post #186
yepthatsreality wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Bezos continues paying people at minimum wage, hires union busting lawyers, and hires more lawyers to actively lobby to keep minimum wage low for 20+ years while he makes more money. Is he stealing from poor people or is that just people on the Internet trying to convince themselves he is stealing from poor people?

Bezos wealth isn’t cash he paid himself that he could have been distributing to the workers. It’s a number based on the value of his ownership stake of the business itself.

If significantly raising the pay of Amazon's low-paid workers would negatively impact it's value then part of Bezo's wealth comes from keeping Amazon's cost of labor low.

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

#200

Post by chordalkeyboard »

User23 wrote: post #182

Usury, which is to say lending at interest, will inevitably in aggregate lead to a tiny minority owning virtually everything. This is obvious to anyone who has basic high school math and understands that interest compounds geometrically and wages grow linearly at best.

> will inevitably in aggregate lead to a tiny minority owning virtually everything.

I’m not convinced. Perhaps this is the case with a permissive central bank encouraging consumer credit.

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