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20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
421–430 of 444 posts
Re: 20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
#422Earlier quoted context omitted.
In addition to flooding offshore it mostly goes into rent extraction schemes. That in turn raises the cost of living for everyone else, generally to no benefit. I've heard it called the "slumlord economy." A small percentage of it does get re-invested in actual production, but productive investments tend to be higher risk than rent extracting "investments." Conservative holders of wealth are not going to dump it into…
I would guess income tax and sales tax account for a far larger amount of tax dollars than ownership dollars -- Not well read but I'd wager it is a 100x difference or more. I.e. if so for that to work we'd have to vastly reduce government services. Either that or land tax would go way up, e.g. you have much more money from a lack of income and sales tax, but then 100x higher rent (as landlords could raise rent to cov…
You could probably make exceptions to the high tax rate for high density commercial real estate ownership so you could own a suite of offices without it kicking in as well as providing temporary tax brakes (as in, for X years after construction) to people who own multiple homes in a single new development. That way people investing in the construction of new apartment buildings aren't paying extra tax so long as they sell them in say, 5 years.
Re: 20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
You seem to be confusing the concept of money going into and out of the economy with "return on investment".
Parent called it a return. The “return”, or benefit of the operation can’t be properly understood without taking into account that you’ve taken that 20M$ from some people to give it to (presumably) others.
I don't think they called it a return, they said it did return. They don't mean it in the sense that there was a profit made in terms of benefit, the benefit they are describing comes via the money changing hands and allowing all the people it exchanges through being able to get something.
You give it to the hungry, they buy food, the people who run places that sell food do things like buy new clothes and tvs, the people who make clothes and tvs invest in things, etc.
At least as I read their argument they are suggesting a "trickle up" effect, whereby cash in the hands of people who aren't in a position to just park it in real estate or something gets spread around and improves the overall flow of cash in an economy, not the overall amount of cash
Re: 20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
#424>Billionaires now hold a 3% share of global wealth, up from 1% in 1995
A lot of that is just a boom in stock and house prices which may reprice lower one day.
Re: 20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Tax rates are marginal, meaning that more effort leads to more reward, still. > Why would you try to push forward your society if it seems like no matter what you do, wealth inequality is just going to increase Curious how you seem to flip-flop between understanding marginal gains and not understanding them. The reason you would try to push forward your society is that more effort leads to more reward, still.
What you are saying is correct in the dimension of income but not in the dimension of power. The power of those with more wealth is steadily increasing, and the power of those without wealth is steadily decreasing. To many it seems like the game is rigged and no amount of effort is going to be able to give them a say in what direction our society heads in.
Even if there is no amount of effort that will prevent your power from decreasing, more effort still gives you more power.
Re: 20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have to thank socialism and communism for reducing wealth i equality in western Europe and in the US. But no, make no mistake, NOT because they are good , but because they're so disastrously bad , as was demonstrated by the USSR, that western elites did a lot to improve the working conditions of their workers, so they would put aside the comminust manifesto and would start caring about their nice car and a cosy ho…
Worker rights in the USA had been a big issue before WWI and the Russian Revolution. The USSR was bad because they were neither socialist or communist but an oligarchy bent on maintaining power at all cost -- just like China is today. The people at the top are the aristocrats in revolutionary France.
Workers rights were an issue everywhere in industrialized nations before WWI, it's just that the dam first broke in Russian Empire, with disastrous results. So all other nations took notice and deployed measures to not be the second country to have a proletariat uprising.
Re: 20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
> To argue Regans policies didn’t bring the economy out of that mess is just being dishonest. It's only dishonest if I actually thought that Reagan's policies did any good, isn't it? Joking aside, I actually think Reagan's policies were a disaster for the USA in the long run and didn't accomplish much during his time in office[0]. It is however during this time that real wage growth for the middle/low-income complete…
No, what was a disaster was the economic policies that proceeded Reagan. You realize he was elected with some of the biggest pluralities ever in a US presidential election in 1984? Clearly the voters (on both sides) benefited.
> No, what was a disaster was the economic policies that proceeded Reagan.
I think you have to be a bit more specific here, otherwise you're just blowing hot air without anything worth discussing. I provided several reasons and sources to why I think that the Reagan presidency failed in the long run - do you care to examine and response to any of that?
> You realize he was elected with some of the biggest pluralities
A vast majority of the US population supported going to war against Iraq in 2003. Turns out this was an unmitigated disaster that has repercussions until today. It is one of the reasons - just for example - that the U.S. and coalition actions in Afghanistan failed.
Just because a plurality of people agrees to a thing, it doesn't mean we cannot look back and find out that we were wrong.
> Clearly the voters (on both sides) benefited.
I'm not sure I follow your line of reasoning. Just because the Nigerian scammer got you to transfer the funds that doesn't mean you benefited, right?
Re: 20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
Labor is what makes a wage. Moving assets is called investing. With labor the pay is tied to the number of hours worked.
The Interweb's dictionaries disagree with you. Wages are not mentioned in any definition of labor. It is simply synonymous with work, particularily the physically exhausting kind, which sitting in front of a computer shuffling numbers all day long arguably is.
It also means birthing a child.
Economically there is the distinction. If you do not agree there is you, IMHO, have fallen for the capitalist's propaganda that they "do labor", "add value" and "you can be one too if you work hard and do not spend money on useless things".
Lol.
Re: 20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The poorest person alive in a first world country today lives better than the richest 100 years ago. What? Not even remotely close. John D Rockefeller was shrouded in wealth about 100 years ago. If you think the poorest, homeless person now stuck on the streets lives better than Rockefeller did, you're confused. Do not conflate general human progress of what's available with more knowledge, science, and basic techno…
>homeless person now stuck on the streets lives better than Rockefeller did, Ok good point, not the absolute lowest, but someone in the bottom 10% has access to food from all over the world that Rockefeller did not. They are usually overweight, which poor people back then were not. They have access to medicine the Rockerfeller couldn't dream of. >Do not conflate general human progress of what's available with more kn…
> China stole every single thing it had from the US. They have developed almost zero technology. (You could very nearly say the same for Europe, though they are less socialist than China and so have developed some things on their own - barely).
What the hell are you talking about? Are you really saying all that R&D spending in other countries is going towards copy-pasting stuff made in the US?
Re: 20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doing a quick lookup over the budget of Norway, it seems like they invest directly about 4 billion USD each year (this is for year 2007, but it can't be be wildly different today). Compare that to the government letting the pension fund invest 1400 billions on the open market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor... I would say even the government of Norway recognized that the free economy wil…
I don't get it. Can you explain to me what the ROI would be if the pension fund invested their money into public infrastructure?
Not sure how to calculate ROI on infrastructure. There is a limited amount of infrastructure a country needs, once that is built the government can decide to keep pumping money into the economy (say state operated oil machinery factories, armament factories, furniture factories etc.) or they can do what the Norway government did and just dump the money in the stock market, letting the market decide what works and what doesn't.