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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

#191

Post by lostlogin »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #166
kelseyfrog wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative of last resort is always violent revolution[1]. Wealth redistribution is the olive branch. There seems to be an open question among the wealthy and political class of how far inequality can go given the modern police state and effectiveness of technology in accomplishing the goal of maintaining or exacerbating the current political economy. 1. See historical populist grivences against aristocracy that…

Overwhelmingly, violent revolution doesn't actually bring about the goals of the revolution. It just installs a new power structure with variations on all the old problems. Sometimes much worse. So it isn't really a "last resort". It's more of a "well you didn't compromise, so now our choice is to burn the whole system down"

> Overwhelmingly, violent revolution doesn't actually bring about the goals of the revolution. It just installs a new power structure with variations on all the old problems. Sometimes much worse.

There are examples either way, and sadly you seem right.

I recently read but now can’t find a discussion around this that argued that extreme times promote extreme individuals. A violent revolution is clearly an extreme time and any leader that emerges is likely to have fought hard for their position.

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

#192

Post by orangepurple »

boeingUH60 wrote: post #133
Ekaros wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of them an average person can name? And how many of those are still alive? Name is known, but I don't think they are as individuals known very much at all.

There are multiple Rothschilds on the Forbes and Bloomberg billionaire lists. The family name is attached to many endowments, scholarships, museums, think tanks, hospitals, etc. Virtually everyone who cares to look knows they're wealthy, but some conspiracy theorists prefer to act like they're a secretive cabal controlling the world, lol

Almost by definition billionaies are the cabal if nothing else due to their purchasing power.

The ones in the four comma club rule entire nations and fund wars and stay wealthy by obtaining ownership rights of conquered territories for a relatively low cost.

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

#193

Post by digging »

bertjk wrote: post #142
digging wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a false dichotomy. Redistributing =/= squandering.

How is it different? Squandering typically means spending, which means the money is re-entering the economy, typically to people at lower rungs of the wealth ladder, and is not much different than other forms of redistribution. 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 typically means spending

Squander means to spend thoughtlessly or foolishly or wastefully. It's not a synonym of "spend".

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

#194

Post by alweirjt »

zozbot234 wrote: post #150
abeppu wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> why should a small minority of kids get a huge extra unearned boost? 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 mo…

> 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.

I don't believe so. At best it means perhaps your parents knew how to manage wealth. It doesn't imply the child inheritors will manage it well, or better than anyone else. At worst, it might simply mean the parents had so much wealth they were unable to spend it all before dying, and so some of it went to their offspring.

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

#195

Post by fsckboy »

hellotomyrars wrote: post #49
gsky wrote: post #20

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.

If the bar for being successful is to inherit a pile of money that means you never have to worry about anything ever without losing it all, then boy is that a low bar. Plenty of people with a stupid amount of money lack skills and have bad habits. The difference is if you’re born poor you’re at a disadvantage from the jump. It is harder to climb out of poverty than to lose hundreds of millions of dollars of your inhe…

> Plenty of people with a stupid amount of money lack skills and have bad habits. The difference is if you’re born poor you’re at a disadvantage from the jump.

the glaring error here is to bring up people's lack of skills and good habits, and to conclude that the main disadvantage of being poor is the lack of money. It's a bit of an assumption that abolishing the rich is going to lift people from poverty to the middle class.

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

#196

Post by iNic »

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…

It turns out the thing that Picketty missed was that he grouped land with Capital. Land should be treated differently as it can not be created or destroyed. If you seperate out the data into land and capital (w/o the land) then all of the outsized returns come from rich people hoarding land[1]. This is in line with the observations of Riccardo[2].

[1]: https://www.salon.com/2015/01/02/joseph_stiglitz_thomas_pike...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent

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

#197

Post by futureamish »

chrischattin wrote: post #130
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…

Hardly empirical. The data shows the opposite. ~80% of current billionaires in the U.S. are self-made first generation.

Are we calling them "self-made" now for strapping some http requests to old, purposefully gate-kept banking systems? Or is it the ones that we allowed to horizontally expand with zero regulatory system to stop them? Or is it the ones who ruined housing the world over? So many useful people.

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

#198

Post by thechao »

themagician wrote: post #188
kasey_junk wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a stat that is never sourced and is mostly cited by the wealth planning industry that have an ulterior motive for making people believe it. I’d love to see a rigorous backing of this stat.

That's because it's just not true in any meaningful sense. What happens is that the wealth is often transformed and split between separating couples, but it mostly stays in the same class. The idea that generational wealth is lost is a great story though. It's part of the "American Dream". Anyone can do it. The "self-made" man. Rags to riches. If you spend any real time with the wealthy people—almost anywhere in the…

My favorite factoid article about the concept of wealth sticking around in specific families:

https://www.vox.com/2016/5/18/11691818/barone-mocetti-floren...

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

#199

Post by Moomoomoo309 »

beaeglebeach wrote: post #182
kelseyfrog wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative of last resort is always violent revolution[1]. Wealth redistribution is the olive branch. There seems to be an open question among the wealthy and political class of how far inequality can go given the modern police state and effectiveness of technology in accomplishing the goal of maintaining or exacerbating the current political economy. 1. See historical populist grivences against aristocracy that…

Good luck with that in USA. I'd rather die some billionaires minimum wage security squad protecting his gold plated yacht than let some violent freeloaders take my shit and install some cuban-tier communist hell-hole where there's no incentive to produce even basic grain stocks.

The solution is simple: Don't be that rich. If you can manage that, then you'll be fine. You're probably not a temporarily embarrassed millionaire.

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

#200

Post by iNic »

seydor wrote: post #129
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…

Piketty's claim seems empirically obvious, but also virtually obvious to anyone who has created a gaming economy. The rich get richer faster than anyone can catch up, so you have to introduce artificial constraints like increasing prices for rich people.

As I said in a different comment in this thread, Piketty's claim does not hold for all capital, it only holds for land. This is perfectly in line with theoretical predictions by David Ricardo[1]. The solution to this is a Land Value Tax as proposed by Henry George[2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

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