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

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741–750 of 961 posts

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

#741

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.

The thing is there are were a lot of dot coms back then and no one really knew which one would have been the next Amazon. The entire push behind diversifying one's income is to ensure that people who don't have lots of $1000's to spare don't lose $1000s investing it behind few stocks.

If you know the future. Tells us a few stocks where investing $1000 today would give you a million in 2 decades.

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

#742

> 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…

>Have you ever examined the idea that it could be you who lacks education?

>You're angry because it feels like everybody is getting rich and you aren't.

You could have made your point without these personal attacks.

Also, I don't understand what the parent comment said that you think was wrong. Inflation is basically a flat percentage tax on everyone with USD (and subsidy to debtors as percentage of your debt). If the government is printing money to pay back its own debts through bonds and such, it's taking money from everyone and then giving it back to only the wealthy.

You responded with, paraphrasing, "have you though about if the fed had no accommodative monetary policy?" But the parent didn't say the fed should have done nothing, (s)he said what they did do exacerbated wealth inequality. The monetary policy we got could have been one that bailed out the people whose houses were about to be foreclosed instead. Or a stimulus check to anyone who earned under a certain threshold of income. Or a more conservative approach of letting the banks fail, become liquidated, buy the bank's assets and then auction them off. There are tons of outcomes besides the false dichotomy of "no accommodative policy for the last 10 years" vs the ones we got.

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

#743
post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch the Netflix documentary. Basically cuts to the chase.

Please don’t watch entertainment (Netflix documentary) as a substitute for a book and think they are equivalent.

A documentary is more accessible to people and one can come away with the core the arguments

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

#744
post #742

> 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…

>Have you ever examined the idea that it could be you who lacks education? >You're angry because it feels like everybody is getting rich and you aren't. You could have made your point without these personal attacks. Also, I don't understand what the parent comment said that you think was wrong. Inflation is basically a flat percentage tax on everyone with USD (and subsidy to debtors as percentage of your debt). If th…

> But the parent didn't say the fed should have done nothing, (s)he said what they did do exacerbated wealth inequality. The monetary policy we got could have been one that bailed out the people whose houses were about to be foreclosed instead. Or a stimulus check to anyone who earned under a certain threshold of income.

These are fiscal policies, not monetary policies. The fed cannot do these things. The fed can only buy and sell securities, including its infinite supply of Treasury bonds, and raise and lower interest rates. It lacks the capacity to actually help individuals.

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

#745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’re asserting you already paid taxes, you don’t get to decide how much tax you pay. Neither do you, let's get this proposal to the legislature. > I concede that laws requiring clothing are akin to taxation in that one group of people imposes their values on another group without their consent. Perhaps the same can be said of all laws. > I disagree with you that taxation is necessary for society. It's voluntaryis…

> Neither do you, let's get this proposal to the legislature. I’m representing the interests of society to you, the same as the legislature. You’re no more entitled to say “no” to me as either of us is to say “no” to them. > Perhaps the same can be said of all laws. Perhaps this idea of consent and aggression could lead us to a way of making laws that do not impose values on people without their consent. > The onus i…

> You’re no more entitled to say “no” to me as either of us is to say “no” to them.

Unlike the legislature, I did not elect you, nor did I swear an oath to a constitution that empowers you.

> Perhaps this idea of consent and aggression could lead us to a way of making laws that do not impose values on people without their consent.

What makes taxation so much more objectionable than any other law? The vast majority of which you never consented to, and are backed by no more aggression than tax law? How many drones does the IRS have?

> The model is already here, awaiting critical feedback. So far the only criticism is that people aren’t going to be able to avail themselves of other people’s property.

You are imposing a model upon a category that does not apply.

> The problem is that people impose taxes on people who have not consented.

Again, you can say that about any other law that has been agreed upon a priori.

> In essence, Proudhon wishes to exert property rights over other people’s property by forbidding certain relations. Clearly this is self-contradictory and not a basis upon which to reject rents on capital.

By what basis is it self-contradictory? By what higher authority do you define the acceptable relations with regards to property rights? Is someone allowed to set fire to his house, so that all his neighbor's homes downwind are also consumed by conflagration? If you say no, then you have already begun to impose limits of what is acceptable or not to do with one's property.

> Thats not how property is defined

According to Proudhon, "[t]here are different kinds of property: 1. Property pure and simple, the dominant and seigniorial power over a thing; or, as they term it, naked property. 2. Possession. 'Possession,' says Duranton, 'is a matter of fact, not of right.' Toullier: 'Property is a right, a legal power; possession is a fact.' The tenant, the farmer, the commandité, the usufructuary, are possessors; the owner who lets and lends for use, the heir who is to come into possession on the death of a usufructuary, are proprietors."

> realize that restricting rent on capital because of its superior productivity impoverishes society by preventing society from accessing means of superior productivity

Regardless of the debatable effects of rent, Proudhon would argue that property is backed by force, which makes it inherently a product of violence and aggression. The same regime that forces you to pay taxes is the same regime that uses those taxes to safeguard property and the rents acquired through property; indeed, often force is also used by the state to accumulate property for its favored oligarchs and the conformists who support the state.

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

#746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People care about where they sit in their local monkey pile, not global. That is, they care about their position relative to their neighbor. If they feel their prospects for the future are good and they are doing as well or better than their neighbor, they are generally happy.

John Q. public could care less about Jeff Bezos unless they feel he is part of the 'theft' group listed in my original comment. People like winners that win fairly.

I doubt Feynman would have cared either. He was playing a different game.

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

#747
post #115

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…

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

Previous experiences of high inflation have turned societies conservative. See Reagan and Thatcher.

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

#748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robinhood has conclusively shown in the last month that ordinary Americans, even poor ones, have access to investing in stocks. This includes access to margin and sophisticated options trading.

Access does not mean they have $10k to invest.

If you can buy video games, beer, pot, lottery tickets, you can invest in stocks.

On the TV news a couple weeks ago was a 6 year old kid whose mom gave him $60 worth of Gamestock stock. He cashed it in for $3,000.

Besides, the article wasn't about some people. It was about the majority of people.

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

#749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's far more likely to work than investing in lottery tickets.

Besides, you can just invest in the S&P500 via SPY.

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

#750
Before modern fiscal policies did their work, indentured servitude and downright slavery ensured that the rich could get years of decades of cheap labor out of owning other's labor and oppress them to remove hope of liberty and escape. This is the precursor to 1860 and civil war, which did free millions but destroyed the south and 600k lives lost.

Can we right the ship without devastating processes, or is our system doomed to slow incremental change whereby the generations slowly grind away at societal problems? Or are those problems growing worse faster than the slow grind?

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