521–530 of 1001 posts
I don't understand why Coinbase is feeling such a crunch. They are just middleman in buying and selling. Their advantage is supposed to be that they make money whether crypto goes up or down. How can they screw this up?
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Lots of America struggles under the weight of trying to pay for basic health care and dental (50% of Americans have medical debt[1]) and for many education is utterly out of reach. 11.4% of America lives in poverty (poverty being defined as "a lack of those goods and services which are commonly taken for granted by members of mainstream society"). It's disingenuous to look at the state of things and say that because…
They struggle more with being overweight. Most humans in most of human history struggled with having enough food and water to survive. They would trade their struggle for ours in a heartbeat. Americans are the people who complain when the wifi goes down or someone says the wrong word.
I don't understand why Coinbase is feeling such a crunch. They are just middleman in buying and selling. Their advantage is supposed to be that they make money whether crypto goes up or down. How can they screw this up?
I don't understand why Coinbase is feeling such a crunch. They are just middleman in buying and selling. Their advantage is supposed to be that they make money whether crypto goes up or down. How can they screw this up?
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What is the locked up value of the rock? I like it because it reminds me of my grandfather, and the cult that will buy it will lock it in their storage room. My point is: With a wealth tax, anyone with money can take anything they want from anyone without money, even if the person without money doesn't value something in the same way that the person with money does.
This is a contrived example that you've twisted yourself in knots to try and justify. There isn't a person on this planet that wouldn't sell an heirloom for $1 Billion unless the heirloom was actually worth ballpark $1 Billion. The people that wouldn't sell it for a $1 Billion are the people that would give it a way for free, ie: those that have little value for money.
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Why not btw? I mean, why is it worse for somebody to have power because he worked and invested for decades and made optimal decisions (and probably some luck) than for somebody to have power because he was born into the right family, knows all the right people in The Machine, has nice hair and is able to conceal his rampaging cocaine habit long enough to make himself too big to fail? I get that "wealth gets power" is…
There's no such thing as too big to fail in democratic politics and it is not a deterministic process of knowing people in "The Machine." FWIW, most wealthy people are wealthy because of inherited holdings and 60% of all wealth in the US is inherited.
Are you sure? Please tell me the top 10 names on the Epstein client list. I'll wait.
> most wealthy people are wealthy because of inherited holdings and 60% of all wealth in the US is inherited.
I'd like to see your sources. They probably counts by dollars, which is pointless, since one hyper-rich individual completely skews the picture - you can have a million self-made millionaires and one Elon Musk's son - and claim that the majority of millionaires is created by being Elon Musk's son. That's an obvious nonsense. It's like calculating average income of a people in a bar where Bill Gates just walked in, and making conclusions that everybody is rich. You need to count people, not raw dollars.
Mine say:
One measure of the percentage of the wealthy who are self-made is Forbes' own Forbes 400 list. In 1984, less than half the people on The Forbes 400 list of richest Americans were self-made. By 2018, in stark contrast, this same figure had risen to 67%.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rainerzitelmann/2019/06/24/amaz...
Around 41.4 percent of the wealthiest one percent say they have inherited some money.
https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2017/10/10/the-wealthie...
The market research firm analyzed the state of the world’s ultra-wealthy population — or those with a net worth of $30 million or more. The report, which is based on 2018 data, “showed muted growth” in the number of ultra-wealthy people that year, “rising by 0.8% to 265,490 individuals,” says Wealth-X. Of those folks, 67.7% were self-made, while 23.7% had a combination of inherited and self-created wealth. Only 8.5% of global high-net-worth individuals were categorized as having completely inherited their wealth.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/majority-of-the-worlds-riche...
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Also, billionaires' wealth isn't parked in a vault, right? It's invested in companies, so it's working in the economy whereas it would otherwise go to the government. It's not obvious to me that the government is going to provide more value for the public in general than industry, but I would like for that to be the case (an easy solution for inequality that doesn't shrink our economy overall).
A lot of wealth is parked in shares of companies. I'm not sure to what extent that is actually productive...?
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Let’s be conservative and say Armstrong has just a net worth of the house he bought: 150,000,000. If the average employee’s salary is 150,000, Armstrong makes 1,000 times more than them. Does this seem fair? Does he deserve higher compensation for his entrepreneurial skills? Absolutely. But 1,000? It’s hard for us to imagine the scale of 1,000 times greater than something but it seems excessive (and remember, this is…
Programmers wages in America are for the vast majority of the world obscene as well. It depends where do you draw the line, American programmer is most likely the 1% for the world.
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There's nothing wrong with people collectively giving someone money.
If Armstrong was the sole CTO, COO, CPO, CLO, designer, marketer, advertiser, programmer, and researcher, then yes, all money should go to him. But Coinbase was made what it is by many people, the majority of which have nothing close to wealth Armstrong enjoys. Why shouldn’t those people be given money? I agree there should be some incentive for entrepreneurs and the people who make “the business side” work, but does…