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Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

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Re: Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

#111

Post by Buttons840 »

Fauntleroy wrote: post #81
abeppu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think it's worth calling out that his follow-up, "Capital and Ideology" in its latter sections includes several suggestions for counteracting the trend to increasing inequality. One of these is basically that _every_ person should have a windfall inheritance when they're in their early adulthood, which would give them opportunities to pursue education, try starting a business, or whatever else. And naturally,…

People whine about "wealth distribution" day and night, but at the end of the day what alternative is there to combat the (continually increasing) concentration of wealth at the top? At some point there will have to be redistribution, in some form, and the sooner society comes around to that the better off we'll all be.

Wealth redistribution and making it easier for new businesses to enter markets and compete. These often go hand-in-hand; safety nets allow people to take risks, and new competition prevents markets from colluding and ceasing competition.

Re: Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

#112

Post by [deleted] »

pmorici wrote: post #87

This doesn’t appear to breakout by country. This isn’t surprising for more socialist countries like in the EU where it is harder to start and build businesses (wealth) in general. I’d be surprised if it was the same in the US where studies have shown that the majority of wealth is not inherited.

[deleted]

Re: Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

#115

Post by steveBK123 »

1-6 wrote: post #51

When you have the assurance that you'll get wealth handed down to you, it opens up the possibility to explore things you're good at and take on more risk to amass greater wealth. So really, it's a push and pull situation. Billionaires do indeed know how to get rich but they're from stable backgrounds which permits them to do so. Meanwhile, most of us are stuck at 9-to-5 jobs and worried about making good on our inter…

I mean, you'd hope so but if you look around at the offspring.. mostly not. Trust fund kids end up in nepobaby jobs in media/acting/modeling/music/politics, in senior roles in family businesses, or getting really into things like equestrian riding.

Ever look at what for example.. Gates/Jobs/etc kids do for a living?

Re: Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

#116

Post by verall »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #90
yboris wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0 taxation on assets or income and it's available to people living outside of the state. So rich people can avoid paying taxes.

It’s for avoiding federal taxes. The federal government can fix the situation anytime it wants, and it won’t matter where in the US people live.

> [A functioning federal government could] fix the situation anytime it wants

Re: Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

#117

Post by Analemma_ »

Qem wrote: post #53
mushufasa wrote: post #17

This is the conclusion of Thomas Picketty's 2013 book, "Capital in the 21st Century." Due to the historical averages of the rate of return on capital, he concluded empirically that wealth will continue to concentrate to the point to inheritors, to the extent that individuals become increasingly unable through labor to achieve parity to the inheritors. The book was very provocative in economist circles, but even the c…

We are devolving to the status quo from the nineteen century and before. A couple owners of inherited wealth and huge dispossessed masses.

More specifically, the post-WWII era is ending and now we're reverting to the mean of most of human history, which was oligarchic wealth and authoritarianism. It's sort of a tragic irony that the largest generation thus far saw the 1945-1975 period as "normal" and how things should be, because it was actually a highly anomalous point in history generated by a perfect storm of factors (the demographic peak from previous medical advances, multiple huge agrarian economies rapidly industrializing, a huge war that resulted in massive downward wealth redistribution) which will not repeat, and now it's coming to an end.

Re: Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

#118

Post by lainga »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #58
suoduandao3 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting model and in my opinion, provides a much better model for the 'fourth turning' pattern than the mechanism put forward by the authors. The predictable return on capital Picketty points to after all only happens during times of stability, during times of instability wealth disparities actually decrease. If too much concentration of wealth leads to crisis and crisis is a 'distributing' mechanism this…

>> If too much concentration of wealth leads to crisis and crisis is a 'distributing' mechanism this is basically a self-correcting dynamic. Doesn't this imply that economic hardships lead to unrest and wars? It certainly seems so and seems like a logical conclusion. It may be primarily anecdotal, but the last 100 years or so seem to confirm it.

For the opposite (not quite converse logically!) argument that unrest and wars lead to economic equality, I recommend Walter Scheidel's "The Great Leveler".

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691183251/th...

Re: Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

#119

Post by boeingUH60 »

raincom wrote: post #6

There are more secret billionaires, who don't appear on the billionaires list. I know of two such billionaires. One is super, super secretive, who passes off as a multi millionaire. There are special trusts that billionaires make use of. Treat a trust like a corporation, with its own independent existence. Such trusts can be set up for multiple generations: these trusts (corporations) are run by professionals, while…

They don't appear on the lists because their companies are usually private and hard to value because Forbes and Bloomberg et al don't even know who owns what.

Take, for example, Jeff Yass, who didn't appear on Forbes until 2021. Well, according to the ProPublica tax leaks, he was not just a billionaire but someone who made over $1 billion in annual income(!) from 2012 upwards [1]

1 - https://www.propublica.org/article/jeff-yass-susquehanna-tik...

Re: Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS

#120

Post by [deleted] »

gretch wrote: post #86
Qem wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are devolving to the status quo from the nineteen century and before. A couple owners of inherited wealth and huge dispossessed masses.

This is true if you view the world from a zero-sum perspective. If the rich are winning, then the poor must be losing. But I would argue the world is not zero-sum. Modern life for middle class or poor class people is a lot better than the vast majority of history (the 2 notable exceptions are post WWII USA and post Cold War USA, when America was punched through as an undisputed global superpower). We are a looooonnng…

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