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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%

#921

Post by fuzzfactor »

rdevsrex wrote: post #489
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…

Don't get me started on how the Fed (not to mention the income tax) was originated in secrecy by the rich.

No reason to finish so soon . . .

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

#922

Post by fuzzfactor »

MrMan wrote: post #828
holografix wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complete collapse of the financial markets would not have been good for anyone. Why the perpetrators are not in jail is what on my opinion is the true betrayal of the common person. I strongly believe the rise of the alt/far right is a direct byproduct of the complete disintegration of trust in the established political class. All over the world atypical politicians rose in popularity, even when they weren’t popu…

I think it is due to effective marketing techniques employed by big money interests who benefit from mass acceptance of libertarian narratives, and those like the social media who benefit from volatility / uncertainty in the information network.

>big money interests who benefit from mass acceptance of libertarian narratives

I would say it's every interest who benefits from mass acceptance of completely stupid & misguided narratives from almost all Democrats & Republicans.

Libertarians, especially non-Party members, are the least of my worries.

Besides the fact that what now passes for leadership ability can not even rise high enough to polish the shoes of Dwight Eisenhower or JFK and they weren't good enough either compared to the Founding Fathers.

Corporations worldwide have modeled themselves on this American trend of precipitiously declining competence at or near the top, plenty of money can always be made by Bozos after true leaders have built the money-making machines.

By the time Reagan & Clinton came along it was far too late.

Clinton knew it so well that's why one of his earliest (naturally unfulfilled) campaign promises in 1991 was to give every citizen $5000 if they wanted to start their own business. At the time nothing else could be seen that would allow wage-earners to escape to the prosperity their forefathers had worked for and truly earned up to that point in the 20th century.

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

#923

Post by fuzzfactor »

readams wrote: post #88
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 question is, based on standard of living, would you rather be poor now or some time in the past? I don't think there's anyone who would choose the past.

>would you rather be poor now or some time in the past? I don't think there's anyone who would choose the past.

Sheesh, I know what you mean.

It was such a drag in the 1960's having to save every penny you could working minimum wage, and it still took a year or two before you could afford to pay cash for a new Ford Mustang or F-150.

By the 70's gasoline had skyrocketed to 50c per gallon too, so then you could only afford to drive across the country once or twice a year.

Motel 6's had already gone up to $8, that's just how bleak it was.

While those with trust funds never had to worry about these types of limitations.

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

#924

Post by fuzzfactor »

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.

Imagine what it would have been like if the million+ were uplifted instead by the same amount of developer effort.

Now I expect most tech creatives will never know how much more you can get done when you have an above-average secretary compared to just another average engineer.

Apple and their kind have such high profits per employee because all the outsourced workers don't count as Apple employees.

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

#925

Post by fuzzfactor »

webmaven wrote: post #510
readams wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly a myth that there was a 90% marginal tax rate. It's technically true, but when the top tax rate was removed they also removed all the loopholes and deductions that were being used to reduce the effect tax rate on top earners to below 45%. All the while the proportion of tax receipts as a percentage of GDP has remained constant. Meanwhile, the proportion of taxes paid by the top quintile earners has increa…

> Meanwhile, the proportion of taxes paid by the top quintile earners has increased from 55% in 1980 to 70% by 2013. Citing the amount collected from the top quintile is moving the goalposts a bit. A typical 20%er is someone like a successful dentist. Sure, they probably have a stock portfolio, but that's for funding their retirement. It doesn't help that the statistics are always presented in misleading ways. We rea…

Estate tax won't help you now.

Neither will income or property taxes.

Successful dentists are not much different than fast-food workers compared to multi-billionaires already.

Only taxing commerce can be sustained over the long term, and there need to be tariffs calibrated to insure any currency leaving the land of its fully-backed legal tender is replaced with incoming amounts of the same in a timely way.

Of course nationals need to be taking fair profits in both directions, and everything will eventually work out just fine.

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

#926

Post by fuzzfactor »

refurb wrote: post #674
ska wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you ignore the increase in income? I'm not claiming I know what is actually happening in the US, it's complicated and I haven't spent enough time looking at it to be confident. However, it's true that if there is a) an increase in total income that b) is entirely captured by a small percentage of people, then naturally their share of the total income tax paid will increase and everyone else's will decrease as…

What is means is if you control for income, the top 1% are paying a bigger share of total income tax. So even if they weren’t earning more, they be paying more taxes.

Even if you taxed them to the bone it wouldn't be enough so you're going to need to tax the bulk of the commerce instead of just the residuals after it falls into their relatively idle hands.

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

#927

Post by fuzzfactor »

Weebs wrote: post #426
machello13 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and many other things that 1 percenters have made for us? Jesus christ, this has to be satire. The people "making" these things are not in the 1 percent. We don't have to look up to the elites in gratitude because they deigned to give us their magical gifts.

A professional trains nearly 20 years under the guidance of other dedicated professionals to develop the potential to advance technology. The can't get the capital on their own to create technology, and instead sell their labor to ownership class They go on to develop revolutionary technology. The owner class claims the IP, massively profits, and maybe gives the professional a bonus if they're lucky before being told…

"Feed rats to the cats and cats to the rats and get the skins for nothing"

It's better than a chinchilla farm.

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

#928

Post by unishark »

parasubvert wrote: post #910
unishark wrote: post #869

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The boy who cried wolf was eventually correct too. A broken clock is right twice a day. Etc. Yes. That's what I said. You said he was consistently wrong for 15 years. I don't know who to believe regarding gold and bitcoin, but it doesn't help me trust your opinion when you go overboard in your criticism of Schiff.

He has been consistently wrong for 15 years, if he was right, it was a half truth by accident. Let’s look harder at his theses since 2007 or so: 1. US Equity Markets Crash. Okay, that happened in 2008. But, did it he get the reason why? He claims it is all about Debt and easy money. That interest rates should be up and ultimately we should be tethered to hard currency. That’s a really, really simplistic and ahistoric…

You mean because his reasoning is Austrian and not Keynesian it is wrong even when the crash happens which he predicted would happen? That's convenient.

Gold has also done pretty well hasn't it?

You can list wrong predictions all day, but if the guy is occasionally right you need to give credit.

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

#929

Post by fuzzfactor »

ryanmercer wrote: post #131
b3kart wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this would be a valid argument if significant money wouldn't also come with significant power in the modern day and age. As soon as there is significant wealth inequality, there is also a significant power inequality, with a small number of people determining the fate of the rest of the world. Surely this isn't good?

> Surely this isn't good? Certainly not. We're semi-returning to fiefdom where the wealthy make the decisions for the masses, who they also happen to employ and market their goods to. Sure, some good things can come of this, look at what Bill Gates has done for vaccines in the past decade or so, which is now making an actual difference when it comes to covid vaccination development and deployment. You also have quest…

Gates has still not done the full 1 percent of what he would have been capable of if he was really dedicated and started philanthropy as soon as it was within reach.

And if he could have held Microsoft to making money through engineering more so than anti-recycling it would have been massively better for the environment rather than relatively destructive too.

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

#930

Post by fuzzfactor »

cjblomqvist wrote: post #10
h3rsko wrote: post #2

Inequality seems to be a completely pointless buzzword to me. The only thing that matters is if there are more or less poor people, and how poor are those people compared to similar percentiles in the past. It shouldn't matter how rich the richest people on earth are. I really love seeing people on the Internet try to convince themselves that because Bezos or Musk are worth $100B, they must be stealing it from poor p…

But isn't wealth to a large degree relative? Like, if I'm richer than I value my time higher, meaning it's more expensive to buy my time (human services). Same with other resources such as land, gold or bitcoin. There's only so much of it thus the value rises. Of course the world can become more productive and thus make everyone (in average) more "wealthy", but only for certain things.

>Like, if I'm richer . . . I value my time higher, meaning it's more expensive to buy my time

You could also afford to give away your time better than ever if you were so inclined.

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