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

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

#721

Post by 8bitsrule » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:17 AM UTC

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #520

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…

Exactly. Mainstream actually educated economists are right, not people hyperventilating about money printing. On top of what you said about the effect of printing making valuations high, only temporarily and only on paper, the opposite lack of printing, is actual redistribution towards the rich in a much more real and persistent way. Insufficiently inflationary money can be used as a way for the rich to withdraw from…

I note that the Nobel Prize in Economics was created by funding from a banker. 'Mainstream economists' have certainly not 'conferred the greatest benefit on mankind' nor has 'trickle-down' lifted all boats ... only the boats in the marina. As ye sow ...

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

#722

Post by erichocean » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:17 AM UTC

NittLion78 wrote: post #243

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…

I always found this graph enlightening, but strictly on its face: https://fee.org/media/17509/prices2-1.png?width=645&height=6... I don't agree with the argument FEE is trying to make: "Consider each product or service shown. College is heavily subsidized, regulated, and exclusionary, and the costs are soaring. The textbook industry is hobbled by extreme copyright regulation, and can depend on captive buyers. Childca…

> things that are luxuries have decreased greatly in cost

That's because we govern as if public luxury is the supreme law. Luxus populi suprema lex.

Curtis Yarvin talks about it here: https://graymirror.substack.com/p/4-principles-of-any-next-r...

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

#723

Post by mike00632 » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:18 AM UTC

undefined1 wrote: post #616

TrinaryWorksToo wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

A lot of people did invest early in tech stocks... Pets.com, Webvan, Boo.com. And then there is crypto:

"144 ICOs Launched During 2017 Failed Last Year" https://news.bitcoin.com/144-icos-2017-failed/

Do I really need to illustrate how dumb it is, the idea that the stock market and cryptocurrency are the cure to poverty?

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

#724

Post by erichocean » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:20 AM UTC

anonuser123456 wrote: post #132

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 d…

> people don’t actually care about absolute inequality

People care about fairness. Hell, even monkeys care about fairness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg

Extreme income inequality is unfair. Jeff Bezos is not 1,000,000,000% "more worthy" of wealth than Richard Feynman—and everyone knows it. Very little about financial capitalism is fair.

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

#725

Post by MrMan » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:23 AM UTC

natenthe wrote: post #681

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ouch burned... except that it isn't the thesis of my post, I just started it by hooking into your argument about education.

I didn't make an argument about education. I made a comment referencing mass financial and economic illiteracy in America. An economic theory is not right or wrong, good or bad, or otherwise based what the "educated, mainstream experts" believe. The history of human knowledge is essentially a history of paradigms (sometimes temporarily useful) being proven completely wrong, with some non-mainstream ideas being proven…

How about substitute “expertise” for authority and Sagan might not have the same sanguine sagacity

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

#726

Post by maybelsyrup » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:25 AM UTC

pembrook wrote: post #549

asdffdsa wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please read the article. It clearly mentions income as a reason for income inequality and not asset value inflation which is due to the fed policy.

I was replying to OP's claims that the Federal Reserve is the "evil puppet master" behind wealth inequality. This is patently false. Inequality has been expanding since the 1970s, long before the "evil bank bailouts" and accommodative monetary policy of the 2010s Federal Reserve.

I'm confused about the nitpicking in this thread about who the boogie-men are -- the Fed, Congress, the rich, etc.

We do know these are all the same group of people, right? Same social strata, same schools, same manners, same wealth, same worldview, etc. Party makes little difference here -- R's and D's are just two right-wing parties who mainly serve special interests (industry). Clinton gutted working people as much as Reagan did -- wages continue to stagnate under allegedly liberal presidential administrations, too.

For all this to be true I don't even have to appeal to the fact that since the 70s the institutions we're talking about are all revolving doors facing each other -- work in government, then work in private industry, then back to government, then I'm Janet Yellen charging Goldman six figures for speeches but pretending they don't influence me.

It's a bit reductionist, maybe -- but by and large they're all the same people and they serve the same interests.

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

#727

Post by MrMan » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:26 AM UTC

biztos wrote: post #624

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think I follow this, but isn’t owning say an index fund just another IOU, itself made up of smaller IOU’s? And isn’t that the main way normal people’s savings can be tied to “real stuff?”

You are only permitted to own real stuff to the extent that other people can be somehow dissuaded from taking it, and instead of working against you, can be convinced to work together and to trade instead of taking things by force. It’s all trust or the lack of it, just agreements to keep moving society forward instead of reverting to more competitive models of subsistence

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

#728

Post by MrMan » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:31 AM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #687

evo_9 wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I've seen clips of Tucker Carlson talking about this sort of thing before. Not saying he's a righteous source of unbiased truth, but he's better than he often gets credit for imho.

Sounds reasonable I will check him out!

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

#729

Post by tomjakubowski » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:32 AM UTC

buzzert wrote: post #698

kaishiro wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Australia a "tiny island nation"?

Yes. The population of Australia is about the same as the greater Los Angeles metro area (25.36 million vs. 23.86 million)

what does a country's population size have to do with it? if you mean density is a factor, that's surely only true at a local scale (cities with lots of people mixing every day, crowding into subways, elevators, and cramped factories), and not averaged over a vast area such as a country? Australia has cities as dense and populated as US cities, and with a few exceptions (eg SF) the American ones suffered much worse outbreaks.

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

#730

Post by dkdk8283 » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:35 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…

> Most importantly, when the Fed decides to print money ad nauseam

Which is why we shouldn’t give stimulus bailout and let businesses run.