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

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

#711

Post by wernercd » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 3:52 AM UTC

newacct583 wrote: post #579

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…

> You're angry because it feels like everybody is getting rich and you aren't. This is uncharitable. In fact most middle class folks who sign on to this frame are motivated by basic ideas like justice and fairness. Realistically policies designed to address wealth inequality are going to make very little difference to anyone here making a typical engineering salary. It's easy to sign on to "a rising tide lifts all bo…

The problem is that more people are middle class+ than ever... so while you complain of "decades of waiting" the fact remains that all boats ARE rising.

The only difference is that you now have a direct connection to the few that have risen faster - there have always been those people. But you now see them. They are still the 1% but they are in your face like never before.

"it's time to try something else" What else is there? Socialism? Tried, failed worse. Communism? Even worse. In all systems man has created, there's inequality. "equity" (equal outcome) has been proven an unmitigated disaster time and time and time again.

Capitalism is the worst system ever.

Except for all the other systems which are worse.

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

#712

Post by throw0101a » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:06 AM UTC

paulpan wrote: post #319

throw0101a wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Or, you know, the Fed is not authorized to deal directly with individuals via the Federal Reserve Act. The Fed's job is monetary and financial stability through credit markets. That's the tools that it has, and it uses them when n…

> Or, you know, the Fed is not authorized to deal directly with individuals via the Federal Reserve Act. The Fed's job is monetary and financial stability through credit markets. That's the tools that it has, and it uses them when needed. Is this really true anymore? At least the past year, the Fed has taken an unprecedented powers to counter the effects of the pandemic. We've all heard of quantitative easing but the…

All allowed under the Federal Reserve Act to operate in credit and financial markets. But no individual/retail operations.

The Fed does not have the infrastructure or authority to help the Little Guy/Gal.

You may wish to examine some of the biases that the American Action Forum has:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Action_Network

Again: if you want the Joe/Jane Doe helped, that's Congress. The Fed is about Wall Street and not about Main Street, and that's by design.

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

#713

Post by railsgirls112 » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:07 AM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #680

willis936 wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is the distribution of the wealth. Can one thousand people build the same amount as one million people? No. They can’t even build 1/1000th as much. So then why is a disproportionate amount of wealth given to people who are not the movers and shakers? Society doesn’t cease to be pump blood when leeches are peeled off.

> Can one thousand people build the same amount as one million people? No. They can’t even build 1/1000th as much. Except that is one of the root causes for wealth/income disparity. A few thousand software developers can and did obviate maybe million+ secretaries, travel agents, book sellers, retail middlemen, map makers, camera manufacturers, advertisers etc. The reason tech companies have such high profits per empl…

> A few thousand software developers can and did obviate maybe million+ secretaries, travel agents, book sellers, retail middlemen, map makers, camera manufacturers, advertisers etc.

Your point isn't necessarily wrong, but it's worth pointing out how that came to be. Said software developers did not appear out of thin air, they were raised and educated by society and have inherited technology unprecedented in scale and influence. And this is only a development of the last 80 years or so. This probably calls for a reframing of how we think about individual economic value, at least in a distributive sense.

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

#714

Post by xbmcuser » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:10 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…

The biggest problem is the large disparity between income and capital gains tax. This has resulted in stock market appreciation growing the economy instead of a growing economy resulting in stock market appreciation.

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

#715

Post by 8note » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:10 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 is run by people in the top 1%, and not from the bottom 90%, so is there a meaningful difference?

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

#716

Post by dlp211 » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:10 AM UTC

alacombe wrote: post #705

DeRock wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada is probably the most apt comparison here. They have about 4x less coronavirus cases per capita [source]( https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS... ) IMO, a lot of this had to do with the federal response and cohesive messaging they provided. It wasn't perfect, but they at least took action with things like CERB payments, enforced travel quarantines, etc. On the other hand, the US is way a…

> Canada is probably the most apt comparison here. Oh come on... Canada is less populated than California with 25x more land...

You'd have a point if people were evenly distributed. They aren't.

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

#717

Post by rufus_foreman » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:11 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…

> Correction: The Fed's policies have taken $50T of wealth from the Bottom 90%

That's QAnon level stuff.

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

#718

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:11 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…

[deleted]

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

#719

Post by refurb » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:12 AM UTC

ska wrote: post #677

refurb wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not arguing all doctors and lawyers are in the top 1%, just a significant percentage of them. Your average specialist salary will get you very close to that threshold and being a specialist is not exactly a "capital owner who doesn't have to work". To say that all top 1% are "capital owners who don't need to work" isn't accurate. There are plenty of wage earners in the top 1%.

The whole point of medians is that half of them are below that. So half of physicians don’t get there even if they double up (2 physician incomes per family) I’m certainly not arguing that all of the 1% are living off capital only, but it’s worth noting that the people in there that primarily do it off a wage are unusual even amongst high wage earners. Absolutely the top 0.01% is different than the top 1%. But that d…

There you go, someone did the analysis. For top 1%, salary makes up the same fraction of income as capital gains.

” This fraction declines and for the top 1 percent (those making $783,000 or more), their income is about equally split between capital and labor income.”

I’d bet if you looked at those in the top 1% but under $1M range the vast majority of income is salary.

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/let-me-tell-you-about...

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

#720

Post by erichocean » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:13 AM UTC

biztos wrote: post #643

stefan_ wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah well the 1800s were also a time where people barely traveled 50kms outwards in their whole life and slaves existed so why on earth would we take that as a barometer for anything.

I wonder how the enslaved population gets counted for calculating income equality. If you’re legally someone else’s property, isn’t your economic inequality to that person immeasurably high? Not a number?

Slaves don't have income. It'd be like asking if monks in a monastery are experiencing "income inequality"—and how much? The question itself is nonsense.