211–220 of 606 posts
As a person born in the middle class, I am quite sad to see it's extinction in realtime. Not sure what is the solution to this.
And then use the income from that to distribute wealth through things like single payer health care, affordable housing etc. So the basic needed expenses don't take up such a large portion of the budget for middle income households.
Also: stronger unions.
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It has not been possible for decades in Southern Europe countries for decades, that is why most people live with their parents and only leave home when married, and then get credits that last all the way until they retire, assuming they live that long in first place. Or eventually get the parents house from generation to generation.
And yet there's hundreds of entire villages in Mediterranean Europe that are empty apart from a few elderly people, lots of small rural towns with tracts of empty property. Usually because they're hours away from the nearest good jobs. What's happened is a massive shift from a small-scale agricultural economy to a mix of urban and large-scale agriculture, and the building of homes/apartments hasn't kept pace.
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…
"they will want change by force" Won't happen in a society where elders are more numerous than young. In the past it required a lot of young males thinking they have not much to lose, but they are becoming extinct. Old people won't revolt, middle-aged fathers that need to think of their children and mortgage won't revolt.
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Not really. Stock value is just paper. Stocks going down just means they are valued less now relative to other stuff. Imagine if everyones socks were suddenly valued a million bucks, except yours. Would you "stay in the same place" or would you suddenly be too poor to afford to buy the labor of all the newly minted millionaires? I'd bet on the latter.
It’s hard to understand this scenario at all. If everyone’s socks suddenly became worth a million dollars but nothing else at all changed, the price would immediately crash back down when the first person tries to sell them and can’t because no one is going to pay a million dollars for socks.
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Rough (not absolute) wealth equality is a goal in and of itself we want a capitalist economic system to function. Capitalism only efficiently allocates resources if the market value of a good or service closely approximatatoon its "true" value to society. And that ceases to be the case when wealth is very unevenly spread.
>Rough (not absolute) wealth equality is a goal in and of itself we want a capitalist economic system to function. No, it's not. Capitalism has nothing to do with equality. We can have extreme inequality as long as the workers actually get enough to satisfy them. That of course depends on many things like their productivity, supply and demand for labor, and preventing monopolistic abuses by corporations and labor. >C…
If everyone has equalish wealth then yes. Otherwise the hive mind becomes weighted by each person's wealth...
> This distinguishes capitalism from other systems like communism, which rely on a small number of central planners to make necessarily imperfect decisions for everyone based on limited understanding of the entire economy and all its participants.
...which ends up not being very different at all to communism in this regard. Your billionaires become your central planners. Except they're not even trying to make good decisions for other people in most cases.
Now, granted, power in western democracies in 2025 is less centralised than it was in soviet Russia, but it's a hell of a lot more centralised than it was in the 70s and 80s. And currently it's only getting worse.
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…
That’s a rather skewed take. You might see what Washington himself said about becoming that leader.
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-pr...
George Washington wasn’t a signer of the Declaration of Independence either, so this idea that he concocted the revolution for personal gain is silly. He was appointed to lead the Continental Army by John Adams because of Washington’s military experience and his being from Virginia which was an asset in unifying the colonies.
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Well, most of Elon Musks assets today are also not cash and highly dependent on the federal government going his way on key issues. He's certainly not dumb doing what he does if his goal is to get richer and more powerful. But unlike 200 years ago, we can watch live how that stuff plays out.
> certainly not dumb Perhaps but IMHO it’s a very high risk strategy and I doubt it’s necessarily optimal if more wealth is his primary goal (as opposed to his other seemingly highly megalomaniacal ambitions..) So far his actions haven’t really been that beneficial for Tesla (of course its sales growth might have significantly slowed down even if he stayed out of politics). SpaceX can only make that much even if it g…
He’s motivated by power, and the fear of power being taken away.
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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?
Whether things may get better for the poor or may not isn’t so much the point as I see it. The observation here is that the poor, and their anger, become pawns for the games of elites. Sometimes those games benefit them where an elite acts as a benevolent avatar of their anger, but this is usually a transient faux-alliance because the elite calls the shots and has no genuine interest in a positive outcome for the poor they claim to represent.
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It’s different this time around. The sheer complexity of society makes it hard to ascertain exactly the true nature of the situation. People who voted for trump aren’t even aware he’s part of the problem of wealth inequality. They aren’t even aware wealth inequality is the problem. At worst we will get an angry mob stampeding the White House with no real direction or objective. Are rich people the problem or is it th…
Because the wealth is unequal, sure, but look at how much better the human quality of life is compared to even 50 years ago. What is wealth when everyone is fed, watered and entertained? Only stating this as an explanation to why there has not been a civil revolution. People are still dying in poverty with no way to escape every day, and we need to address it.
There is more to life than autonomous vacuum cleaners and possibility of having a talk with your light bulb.
But to be serious - yes, many things have improved, yet we re losing many others.
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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…
Laborer coordination and workforce strikes.