141–150 of 356 posts
Doubly so given that the article itself points out that the interest rate environment may have simply made it harder to generate new wealth and so necessarily biases transfers vs creation.
How's amassing through inheritance instead of squandering is a bad thing? I know a lot of people who are poor because of lack of skill or bad habits.
That's a false dichotomy. Redistributing =/= squandering.
Unless you mean the squandered billions was through literal setting piles of money ablaze or losing it all in a poker game to bigger billionaires, it seems if redistribution was the goal then squandering should be encouraged.
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.
This is a common sentiment, but surprisingly it's quite easy to start a business in a country with a more developed social net because the failure consequences are much less severe.
I think it has more to do with a culture that encourages and glorifies entrepreneurship than the safety net.
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.
One individual can own an entire town and charge people to live there indefinitely. This gets passed via inheritance and no longer equates to the initial building value.
On a micro scale, the timeframe for owning investment properties should be limited. They provide a service, but over a long period of time the owner is simply a leech.
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.
You got it wrong. It is easier to start a business in the "socialist" scandinavian countries than it is in the US. https://archive.doingbusiness.org/en/rankings
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I prefer to call it wealth re-re-distribution. The Walton family wealth, for example, is a capitalised stream of rents predicated on underpaying store staff and abusing market power with suppliers. That's a wealth transfer. That's redistribution. The Duke of Westminster is worth $11 billion because his ancestor was besties with William the Conqueror (not william the earner). These are wealth transfers and redistribut…
Distribution implies few to many, concentration implies many to few. We could call it semantics or we could call it using words correctly.
Implication is often a highly personal thing.
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…
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So he supports education vouchers and healthcare vouchers for everyone? Because that's what "wealth you can spend down for some specific purposes" is , in a practical sense. That's a welcome attitude, given that these things are often dismissed ideologically. (Also, we generally want people to have some retirement income in their old age when they can't work, and the goal of letting young folks spend down their "inhe…
I think that muddies the water as much as saying that someone who supports UBI also must support foodstamps and housing vouchers. The point is pursuing greater _equality_. We are all heirs to a society that has produced enormous value; why should a small minority of kids get a huge extra unearned boost? Purpose-constrained assistance is not _equal_ to inheritance, in that heirs to private wealth aren't generally subj…
That unearned boost is already available to anyone who manages to bequeath sufficient amounts of wealth to the next generation, and conversely becomes unavailable to those who squander that wealth instead. That doesn't really change all that much if you introduce redistribution: either way, there will always be plenty of kids who will spend the money foolishy, and forfeit that "extra boost".
It's a very hard problem to solve because it involves people's culturally ingrained attitudes; but being bequeathed a sizeable inheritance in the first place at least implies that one's attitude to managing wealth has already stood the test of time.