451–460 of 573 posts
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We have one of the worlds most prosperous economies, and half of the US is living in abject poverty while quality of life for everyone is decreasing.
I'm going to go on a limb and say half of the US is not living in abject poverty? Nor can I get behind the idea that quality of life for folks is on the down trend.
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the argument is productivity gains are increasingly driven by technological advances, which are spurred by capital investment. for example, if a company purchases software that increases their accountants productivity by 5x, should those accountants immediately be paid 4-5x more? I would contend that the accountant should not - it should flow to who bore the cost of the input (capital owners). however, if you starve…
> it destroys the consumer base that capital relies on to buy its goods and services. therefore, society requires broad wealth distribution to function This is becoming less and less true, because now consumption is becoming dominated by asset owners, to the point that a good jobs report is bad news because it means the fed are less likely to drop rates and through that inflate asset prices.
absolutely true. I am not convinced that consumption can be wholly fueled by asset owners though.
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The statistical evidence for your claim is not good. There is certainly a generational effect in that 5 year olds are typically not in the upper decile, simply because they generally have little to no individual wealth or income. But in the USA at least, most people die in the same decile they were born into.
Something I've seen a lot is claims about individuals being self made, climbing the ladder from grit and ingenuity and such. Look at Bezos, he's an example of climbing the ladder! Or Zuckerberg! And when you dig a bit more, you kinda find out this isn't really true? I mean look at this AI summary of asking "Was Jeff Bezos born into wealth" > Jeff Bezos was not born into wealth; his mother was a 17-year-old student an…
Everyone's life is a mix of skill and luck, so to discredit skill, you would need to quantify the luck. An easy example is a lottery winner, a hard example is a Bezos. Any investor with the foresight to see what Bezos could do with grans money, would jump past her in line and give him triple.
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Actually it does mean it is optimal for the economy as opposed to a central planner who somehow has all the information and does planning with precision. These are mainstream views in economics.
Actually markets are always rational, perfectly efficient and there are no speculative bubbles? Of course not. So its obviously suboptimal, only question if there is a more optimal system. > central planner who somehow has all the information Every developed country is balancing that with free markets and its the mainstream view that a balanced system is optimal (the exact ratio is of course something’s that not quit…
> Assuming that the allocation of capital is somehow aligned with what’s optimal for the economy/society seems naive
The empirical facts are that the disposable real wages have gone up by more than 50% over the last 20 years. People are way richer now than before and the growth in USA is much higher than any other developed nation other than small edge cases.
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> amount of labor being generated per person has not really changed not true, labor productivity has been steadily increasing: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OPHNFB workers are simply capturing less of the economic value generated by their labor.
Increases in labor productivity is a curious thing to think about. Do I deserve more wages for using AutoCad instead of drafting paper? - The amount I'm working hasn't increased. Still an 8 hour day. - My job honestly is easier than it used to be; certainly less menial. - Strictly speaking, the education requirement is actually lower . It's easier and a lower bar to learn to become a decent designer in AutoCad than t…
Basically it's taking fewer bodies to create more value, and that value creation is so intense that even workers getting "ripped off" feel like they are making bank.
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> Automation, robots, software etc. they are all capital share. I highly doubt automation and robots are a meaningful factor here, but IP and outsourcing have the exact same as automation.
New factories use very few people, part of the reason why it's difficult for many countries to industrialize like South Korea or China did (climbing manufacturing ladder).
That's both true and false. Yes they need very few people to operate, but building and maintaining still need a lot of people.
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Not even just Republicans, unfortunately. The generation of Americans who grew up in the Cold War were inundated with propaganda about how socialism would destroy America, and then go and say things like this https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/us/politics/moderate-demo...
Yeah. The boomers are a real problem.
Boomers created everything you like about this world, including youth culture itself, "don't trust anybody over 30".
Their predecessor generations, their parents and grandparents, believed comprehensively in things you despise.
I know this because I hated the boomers when they were young, and you all sound just like them.
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That requires their investments to keep going up in value. That doesn't last forever, the assets that people borrow against eventually need to be sold to pay back that loan. When they sell to make payments, those are taxable events.
If investments didn't grow at a faster rate than interest, why would anyone ever invest money at all instead of putting into a savings account? I don't know why it''s hard to imagine that a large loan with a relatively low interest rate might be able to be invested for more than enough profits to pay off the taxes and the loan with some to spare
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That requires their investments to keep going up in value. That doesn't last forever, the assets that people borrow against eventually need to be sold to pay back that loan. When they sell to make payments, those are taxable events.
How does it work if the loan defaults and those assets were used as collateral?