21–30 of 320 posts
Doesn't look like it: median income in 2019 was $44K, in 2001 it was $31K. That's adjusted for inflation. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_States
I don't like it when the facts look wrong after two minutes' googling.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about wealth you build for yourself ? Many of the duplexes in town were built by small builders who passed them on to family. Now they are treated like rich landowners but in reality grandpa built the wealth.
Do you not see how this was luck? Certainly, actions were taken to encourage an outcome (holding an asset of potential future value), but luck as a component of a favorable outcome cannot be overstated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about wealth you build for yourself ? Many of the duplexes in town were built by small builders who passed them on to family. Now they are treated like rich landowners but in reality grandpa built the wealth.
Do you not see how this was luck? Certainly, actions were taken to encourage an outcome (holding an asset of potential future value), but luck as a component of a favorable outcome cannot be overstated.
Luck in exactly what sense ?
Yes, they did not die of dysentery on the trail, so evidently some luck was involved, but the wealth building seems very intentional and causal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you not see how this was luck? Certainly, actions were taken to encourage an outcome (holding an asset of potential future value), but luck as a component of a favorable outcome cannot be overstated.
They were builders, they had businesses building for other people and invested their own money and time into these buildings for their own family. Luck in exactly what sense ? Yes, they did not die of dysentery on the trail, so evidently some luck was involved, but the wealth building seems very intentional and causal.
Even investing in broad equity index funds is luck (sequence risk).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40378138
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011...
Noahopinion has a very recent interesting article on wealth and taxation. It makes me mad because it contradicts a lot of cherished ideas I have about the rich and taxation, but probably makes sense in this conversation: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/theres-not-that-much-wealth-in...
"I think income is a lot more important than wealth."
If you keep receiving all the income you want and I'll get exclusive rights to all of your wealth, surely you got the better side of this deal then? Or is there more nuance at play and blankets statements about the relative importance of income and wealth are simply pointless.
"if you have a house, no one owes you that house"?
In this case of property ownership, your rights granted to you by society is the result of an agreement by the society you're a part of not to use the resource that you've been granted exclusive rights to. The allocation of control over resources is the essence of economics. It's the whole point of the field of study. I cannot believe he's setting up an argument about how that doesn't really matter because there isn't a lot of resource control without legally associated debts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you not see how this was luck? Certainly, actions were taken to encourage an outcome (holding an asset of potential future value), but luck as a component of a favorable outcome cannot be overstated.
They were builders, they had businesses building for other people and invested their own money and time into these buildings for their own family. Luck in exactly what sense ? Yes, they did not die of dysentery on the trail, so evidently some luck was involved, but the wealth building seems very intentional and causal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They were builders, they had businesses building for other people and invested their own money and time into these buildings for their own family. Luck in exactly what sense ? Yes, they did not die of dysentery on the trail, so evidently some luck was involved, but the wealth building seems very intentional and causal.
See, you’ve caught yourself in the trap. Lots of builders fail, look at the YC startup failure rate. Even investing in broad equity index funds is luck (sequence risk). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40378138 https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011...
The problem with that mindset is that we know how it's going to end up: it's not only the 0.1% or 1% that are going to suffer the wealth tax. It's the 30%.
At first the "tax on billionaire" was supposed to be that: a tax on billionaires. But then there are already publications explaining how "taxing anyone who has more than a million (a million, not a billion) would bring x in revenue for the various countries".
Also note that it's never about distributing that money to the poor: it's always about the state getting more money. Money which is then spent in state-friendly companies.
For example the EU is hard at work now imposing a mandatory, EU-wide, tax on all its citizens to "finance EU projects". It's not a tax to give money to poor people. It's a tax to give money to companies like Thales and Airbus and a shitload of sycophantic companies that'd be bankrupt if not for the state' intervention.
Just look at how government are managing the insane money they get: do you think they're doing a good job when they're at, say, 130% debt-to-GDP ratio? Why would I want to encourage such irresponsible spenders by giving them even more?
When a country like France, which is badly in debt and has huge deficits, has about 60% of its GDP that is tied to public spending, it's not the fault of "the rich" if the country is not doing well. It's the fault of the people governing that country.
So, no, thanks but no thanks. I don't want any "let's tax the rich" discourse because I know that it's the middle-class, not the rich, that's going to end up getting owned.
Just like fighting the four horsemen of the infocalypse is an excuse used by the states to gain every more power, attacking the rich is an excuse for the state to gain ever more power. It's not about helping the poor.
"Paul paints a rosy picture but doesn't mention that incomes for lower and middle-class families have fallen since the 80s." Doesn't look like it: median income in 2019 was $44K, in 2001 it was $31K. That's adjusted for inflation. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_States I don't like it when the facts look wrong after two minutes' googling.
Noahopinion has a very recent interesting article on wealth and taxation. It makes me mad because it contradicts a lot of cherished ideas I have about the rich and taxation, but probably makes sense in this conversation: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/theres-not-that-much-wealth-in...
Wealth is unelected power, a bug. It’s reasonable to say there should be limits on wealth, considering most wealthy people were lucky (either by birth or “right place right time”) but attempt to post rationalize it as anything else. Would you want someone who won a lottery ticket to have power over your life at scale? Because that’s what excess wealth is, a power dynamic powered by a suboptimal system masquerading as…