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The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

awealthofcommonsense.com

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Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#101

Post by suraci »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #72
itake wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the rich have cash flow and can continuously invest during crashes. The top 10% aren’t losing their jobs in a crash, but the bottom 50% might. So while the top 10% keeps investing and will maximize the recovery, the bottom 50% will cash out at the bottom and won’t return to invest for years after their emergency fund has recovered.

> the rich have cash flow and can continuously invest during crashes There are a lot of levered rich people. Musk would be screwed if he got margin called on Tesla.

when Musk and you are both screwed, which of you can get the big money from the government

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#103

Post by riffraff »

ookblah wrote: post #31

I think about this from time to time and I suppose everything is cyclical in the end. Most of us would have been some peasant in the feudal age and when it gets really bad it always ends in a revolution of some sort. It's just on a global scale and timeframe now. As more of the population feels the effects of inequality they won't appeased by just fancy toys and shiny things, they will want change by force. My only s…

That is the argument made by Piketty in his book.

It's not so much "inequality is evil" (tho he surely think so), but rather "inequality breeds catastrophic revolutions".

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#104

Post by timewizard »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #76
ookblah wrote: post #31

I think about this from time to time and I suppose everything is cyclical in the end. Most of us would have been some peasant in the feudal age and when it gets really bad it always ends in a revolution of some sort. It's just on a global scale and timeframe now. As more of the population feels the effects of inequality they won't appeased by just fancy toys and shiny things, they will want change by force. My only s…

The population might not be happy, but they don't have the means to change it. Revolutions don't happen when people are mad, they happen when the ones who can afford armies and equipment sense the possibility of coming out on top. 250 years ago George Washington could have financed the entire Revolutionary War out of his own pocket and he still would have retained two thirds of his wealth. Instead he put the losses o…

> no longer having to pay taxes to the British for the economic output of his slaves.

This suggests that taxing the slaves would have better helped the poor. Was it helping them before the war? Were the poor suddenly worse off because of the revolution?

> it's just an opportunity for other rich guys to take the reigns.

Do George Washington's heirs control a significant portion of today's wealth?

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#105

Post by nabla9 »

jeff-davis wrote: post #53

Sincere question about communism: Let's say hypothetically that the distribution of stock ownership was more even across the population, and variance was largely (but not completely) due to length of time in the workforce. And further, that the stock owned by workers is a large enough block that they effectively have controlling shares at many companies. Maybe I'm talking about a different universe, but please imagin…

HN is binary. If not laissez-faire capitalism, lets talk about communism.

Let's talk about non-hypothetical real world, like Nordic model or Europe in general. Capitalism produces growth, redistribution (free healthcare, education, etc. spreads the wealth).

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#106

Post by bloomingkales »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #14

In the US you need to earn only $178,611 as a HOUSEHOLD to be in the top 10%. That's less than $90K per person. Comparatively, you need to earn $663,164 to be in the top 1%, and more than $3M to be in the top 0.1%. I just want to highlight this to remind that the top 10% is by far not made up exclusively of ultra-rich individuals like people on internet like to believe.

Money is relative though. If we stopped printing money today, the dynamics of wealth can still exist so long as we keep the delta between "Kinda well off" and "well off" relatively fixed. I have to be careful here, because I'm not arguing against Capitalism. I'm merely pointing out the infinite nature of this thing we call a "wealth gap".

There's two ways to stay the richest man in the world:

a) Get more money.

b) Stop people from getting more money than you.

And I suppose c) Do both. If that's what you are about.

A lot of people characterize corporations as a sociopath because it expresses a lot of clinical markers. I think if you frame the economy as war, you'll find similar markers. People are exhausted, shell shocked, constantly insecure, attrition or the feeling of attrition (feeling of no progress). PTSD from this everlasting war.

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#107

Post by jajko »

stuaxo wrote: post #43
denkmoon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2008 stock market crash famously reduced inequality. Definitely didn't increase inequality by leaving the average person (via government bailouts) holding the bag.

Indeed, the bailout if banks in multiple countries is the biggest transfer from the rest of us, to the rich there has ever been. Absolutely enormous amounts of money.

All major banks paid back all those loans with interest. That was actually net income for governments that lended those money. Who really lost money directly were all those speculators who had 10 mortgages on them and just kept taking more and more.

Look, I am all for hatin' the big man when he deserves it and he often does, but lets be a bit smart and not just throw random angry spits without checking the facts, shall we?

Do you even realize that during covid globally money lost some 20-30% of their purchasing power? That's real burning cash of regular folks right in front of you and everybody else.

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#108

Post by Gasp0de »

I was very surprised by the holiday budget. Less than 2500$ for 80% of the population? Does that mean that no one from these 80% stays in a Hotel or AirBnB for longer than a week with their family? No one travels overseas, or if so, only every 5 years or so? 2000$ is what you can easily spend on plane tickets for a family of 4.

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#110

Post by bawolff »

jopsen wrote: post #102

Top 10% is actually a lot of people! Wealth equality is not really a goal, it better to ask if the bottom 50% got wealthier in absolute terms, which the author answers in another post: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2024/06/the-bottom-50/

From a socital stability point of view, i think it still matters. Too much inequality (especially when combined with lack of class mobility) leads to class resentment which is bad for sociatal stability. Humans get jealous even if their wealth increased in absolute terms.
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