America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90% • Hacker News Board

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

#611

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 1:41 AM UTC

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 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.

But...the Fed doesn't do that.

Taxpayer funded [0] bailouts come from Congress’ executed by the Treasury, not the Fed.

Fed operations don't come out of tax funds except in the sense that anyone holding government securities is spending taxpayer money when they spend the proceeds.

[0] to the extent fiscal spending is accurately describes that way, which is less than one might think.

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

#612

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 1:44 AM UTC

pembrook wrote: post #480

> It amazes me why most people do not grasp this. I think it is lack of education. Huh? Literally everybody grasps this. This is the most widely parroted mainstream narrative about the economy right now on the internet. Hell, you can't throw a rock at the Wall Street Journal (conservative) or the New York Times (liberal) without hitting a sentence that mentions wealth inequality brought on by fed policy. For further…

> Literally everybody grasps this. This the most widely accepted mainstream narrative about the economy right now on the internet.

Heck, much of it (the parts that aren't confusing the Fed with other repairs of government) has been echoed by Fed board members and other (in the minority, at the time) government decision makers. Overreliance on the Fed and top-down monetary policy to do the economic job for which fiscal policy is better suited has been a recurring, mainstream criticism for years.

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

#613

Post by chii » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 1:44 AM UTC

adam_arthur wrote: post #574

23iofj wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Housing is not included in CPI, only "rents". This reads like an oxymoron to anyone who's not a property owner, which is about half the country -- all of whom are in the bottom 90% referred to in the headline.

Exactly. Inflation in home prices is great for property owners, bad for everybody else. Should renters not have the opportunity to buy a home?

> Should renters not have the opportunity to buy a home?

there should not be societal subsidies for people wanting to buy their home.

If rents are not growing at a rate that's higher than wage growth, then it is stable and thus acceptable. Owning a home is a privilege, not a right. Thus, the CPI calculations correctly only includes rental costs, and not ownership.

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

#614

Post by perryizgr8 » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 1:45 AM UTC

coolreader18 wrote: post #516

salmonellaeater wrote: post #232

The framing in the article is ahistorical. The post-WW2 period was a period of exceptionally _low_ inequality. If you look back to just the 1800s there were swings in inequality comparable to the present day. We're now moving back to the historical baseline. There are some contributing factors to the shift in inequality, a major one being that labor is now oversupplied compared to the post-war period, and the competi…

Inequality is bad, actually, and we should try to maintain low levels of it if we're given the chance to.

> Inequality is bad, actually

Why? Is there any reason for this assertion? Or is it just that you feel this way?

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

#615

Post by dxhdr » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 1:45 AM UTC

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 more polite way to phrase it is that the rich benefit from societal structure 1000x more than the poor

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal loaves of bread."

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

#616

Post by undefined1 » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 1:45 AM UTC

TrinaryWorksToo wrote: post #594

WalterBright wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how do you explain everything that happened on the wealth inequality front from the 1970s up to the financial crisis of 2009? In one word: computers. In tsunami after tsunami from 1975 to the present, computers have revolutionized everything we do. I remember one tsunami in 1975, when slide rules in September were $125 and by December they were $5 and in January they disappeared. The calculator had arrived. In 1980…

> and those smart enough to have invested in them. Correction: Wealthy enough to be able to invest in them.

or early enough

$1,000 invested in AMZN is now worth over $1M. or $10 in Bitcoin would have done the trick.

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

#617

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 1:46 AM UTC

natenthe wrote: post #502

pembrook wrote: post #480

> It amazes me why most people do not grasp this. I think it is lack of education. Huh? Literally everybody grasps this. This is the most widely parroted mainstream narrative about the economy right now on the internet. Hell, you can't throw a rock at the Wall Street Journal (conservative) or the New York Times (liberal) without hitting a sentence that mentions wealth inequality brought on by fed policy. For further…

The article that this thread is based off of is literally the opposite take from my original post. The article claims that America's 1% is responsible for the wealth inequality. That is why I posted my comment. My opinion, and the "majority" opinion according to you, is that wealth inequality is because of Fed policies, not the 1% boogey-man. The people protesting are not protesting the Fed. No institution (i.e. medi…

> The people protesting are not protesting the Fed

The Fed is not the problem. Congress is the problem. The Fed seems like the problem sometimes because Congressional nonfeasance leaves the Fed, which has a narrow role and a narrow set of controls, the only player doing anything to deal with adverse economic conditions. But Congress’ nonfeasance is the problem.

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

#618

Post by RhodoGSA » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 1:47 AM UTC

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #588

jkhdigital wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you intended to, but despite the hand-waviness this sounds like you’re making an argument for a return to hard currency...

Because I am fairly pro market but read enough mainstream economics to know that government paper retaining value more than private assets is much more of a distortion than said paper gradually losing value towards its intrinsic value of nothing. The thing is, stable money that predictably loses value is a great thing to have for the economy as it allows people to negotiate contracts and conduct business in a predict…

Great comment!

Def made me think alot. Seems you can replace your entire argument with crypto. Money printer goes brrr, money gets locked in crypto, does nothing for the economy, leading to massive inequality. Crypto can be though of as "Savings" in your analogy. BTC might cause a economic meltdown if $10T gets locked in'Savings'.

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

#619

Post by jazzyk » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 1:47 AM UTC

evo_9 wrote: post #609

pembrook wrote: post #480

> It amazes me why most people do not grasp this. I think it is lack of education. Huh? Literally everybody grasps this. This is the most widely parroted mainstream narrative about the economy right now on the internet. Hell, you can't throw a rock at the Wall Street Journal (conservative) or the New York Times (liberal) without hitting a sentence that mentions wealth inequality brought on by fed policy. For further…

No, 100% for sure everyone does not know or understand this. Most of my family are clueless about this stuff; do you think Fox News - their and many peoples only news source - are sharing that bit of insight with their audience?

Why bring politics into this? Most of my economically clueless friends are liberals who only watch CNN and read NYT. Economic Ignorance is widespread and bipartisan.

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

#620

Post by alsetmusic » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 1:47 AM UTC

pembrook wrote: post #480

> It amazes me why most people do not grasp this. I think it is lack of education. Huh? Literally everybody grasps this. This is the most widely parroted mainstream narrative about the economy right now on the internet. Hell, you can't throw a rock at the Wall Street Journal (conservative) or the New York Times (liberal) without hitting a sentence that mentions wealth inequality brought on by fed policy. For further…

> Huh? Literally everybody grasps this. This the most widely accepted mainstream narrative about the economy right now on the internet.

> Hell, you can't throw a rock at the Wall Street Journal (conservative) or the New York Times (liberal) without hitting a sentence that mentions wealth inequality brought on by fed policy. For further evidence, your comment has been upvoted to the top because everybody on HN believes the same thing as you.

You just named three institutions that cater to highly educated people. I don’t think much of this is understood by a huge portion of the general population. I’m not talking down about people who didn’t get a higher education (I didn’t finish mine). I’m just pointing out that this is a pretty weak argument for “everybody”.

Edit: a word, a punctuation