81–90 of 360 posts
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The inequality doesn't come from the creation of wealth so much as the destruction of it. Inflation and rising prices of staple goods (there is some covariance, but the latter seems to be outpacing the former) impact poor people disproportionately hard because staple goods are more or less fixed costs. The marginal utility of an extra dollar is much higher for someone on the poverty line vs. someone who is a multi-mi…
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The French Revolution is no longer possible. The surveillance state plus wealth mobility means the wealthy will be in New Zealand before anyone erects a guillotine, and the people that would foment a revolution are heavily surveilled and infiltrated.
Are you sure about that? Tech cuts both ways & asymmetric drone warfare has become cheaper than ever … how hard it is it to sink some yachts or down some jets?
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How about a summary of Piketty's argument? We could start off with how are you worse off because of people wealthier than you?
your first question was better. "how does creating wealth hurt others?" most of this "wealth" is not "created" out of thin air. nor created at all. more like, transferred.
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The French Revolution is no longer possible. The surveillance state plus wealth mobility means the wealthy will be in New Zealand before anyone erects a guillotine, and the people that would foment a revolution are heavily surveilled and infiltrated.
Are you sure about that? Tech cuts both ways & asymmetric drone warfare has become cheaper than ever … how hard it is it to sink some yachts or down some jets?
And for some reason there's an entire population of folks like you that wanna FAFO while they are living in literally the best time ever to be a human being. I'd sigh but I'm not surprised.
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How about a summary of Piketty's argument? We could start off with how are you worse off because of people wealthier than you?
Let me address the second part. If we define wealth as it's often used colloquially -- the amount of liquid cash one has -- then your potential share of the pie of goods and services shrinks. This is true unless the pie itself grows proportionately. Without agreeing or disagreeing with parent comment, the rate of growth of the pie certainly does not feel like it is growing as fast as accumulation of nominal wealth of…
And no, wealth is not the amount of liquid cash you have. If that were true, I'd be dead broke.
> the rate of growth of the pie certainly does not feel like it is growing as fast as accumulation of nominal wealth of some.
Wealth creators will be growing the pie at a higher rate than those who do not create wealth.
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The French Revolution was an orgy in mass murder that led to the slaughter of millions in the Napoleon wars. It really need to be romantizied much less!
It was a coalition of monarchies, so terrified of the prospect of even a single popular republic rejecting the divine right to rule, that began the bloodshed and invaded France. Blaming the Revolution for the Coalition wars is just bad history. In case you didn't notice, the Revolution won. All contemporary republics fundamentally inherit from the French Revolution - you're surprised that the systems of govt honour a…
“Fundamentally inherent from” is such a broad statement that it’s difficult to argue with, but the US constitution predates the French Revolution.
> so terrified of the prospect of even a single popular republic rejecting the divine right to rule
If the monarchies of Europe were so terrified of a single country rejecting the divine right to rule, why did many of them assist the United States, hinder Britain, or remain neutral in the revolutionary war?
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The French Revolution was an orgy in mass murder that led to the slaughter of millions in the Napoleon wars. It really need to be romantizied much less!
It was a coalition of monarchies, so terrified of the prospect of even a single popular republic rejecting the divine right to rule, that began the bloodshed and invaded France. Blaming the Revolution for the Coalition wars is just bad history. In case you didn't notice, the Revolution won. All contemporary republics fundamentally inherit from the French Revolution - you're surprised that the systems of govt honour a…
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If you're genuinely curious, a few suggestions that I personally found incredibly enlightening: Anand Giridhardas, Winners Take All: The book is fantastic, there's also his now infamous google talk where he talks about dismantling google: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d_zt3kGW1NM Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st century: Probably the most comprehensive (but at times also longwinded) outline on how wealth inequalit…
How about a summary of Piketty's argument? We could start off with how are you worse off because of people wealthier than you?
Those with wealth will tend to steer the economic system more towards their own interests in a runaway feedback loop, often in ways which create no overall net welfare for society.