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America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

time.com

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Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#11

Post by pydry »

bmmayer1 wrote: post #3

Ah yes, the famous cabal of 1 percenters sitting around and committing grand larceny as they raid the bank accounts of poor people. At least that's what this headline would have you believe. The reality is much more boring. Thanks to "math," they've determined that if the ratio of incomes from 1945-1974 held steady , the bottom 90% would have "more" than they do now. Of course the bottom 90% itself is a fantasy and y…

It's of little consolation having the price of your phone decline when the price of education, healthcare and a roof over your head have skyrocketed.

Even if that were not the case, it's abundantly clear that geometrically increasing consolidated economic power is being translated into consolidated raw political power (which is zero sum). The events of the last few months and history in general have proved that this is very, very dangerous.

We couldn't play flappy birds on a mini computer in our pockets in 1970, though, so I guess that makes all that r>g and compound interest accumulating in 0.1% pockets worthwhile.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#12

Post by whatok »

yepthatsreality wrote: post #8
h3rsko wrote: post #2

Inequality seems to be a completely pointless buzzword to me. The only thing that matters is if there are more or less poor people, and how poor are those people compared to similar percentiles in the past. It shouldn't matter how rich the richest people on earth are. I really love seeing people on the Internet try to convince themselves that because Bezos or Musk are worth $100B, they must be stealing it from poor p…

If Bezos continues paying people at minimum wage, hires union busting lawyers, and hires more lawyers to actively lobby to keep minimum wage low for 20+ years while he makes more money. Is he stealing from poor people or is that just people on the Internet trying to convince themselves he is stealing from poor people?

Amazon has been paying significantly above minimum wage for several years now:

https://www.npr.org/2018/10/02/653597466/amazon-sets-15-mini...

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#13

Post by Pfhreak »

bmmayer1 wrote: post #3

Ah yes, the famous cabal of 1 percenters sitting around and committing grand larceny as they raid the bank accounts of poor people. At least that's what this headline would have you believe. The reality is much more boring. Thanks to "math," they've determined that if the ratio of incomes from 1945-1974 held steady , the bottom 90% would have "more" than they do now. Of course the bottom 90% itself is a fantasy and y…

Wealth is obviously not a zero sum game. And of course the comforts of even the poorest have increased over the past half century.

But don't discount out of hand the concern that the relative distribution is a problem. Money, and especially money that is capital, almost algorithmically and naturally captures more money.

The trend line then becomes one where more and more wealth is concentrated at the top, even if the total amount of wealth increases.

Wealth, at some level, is the ability to direct labor. As wealth becomes more concentrated, you have fewer people organizing the world's labor power. It becomes harder for the poorest to engage in self determination.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#14

Post by nemothekid »

h3rsko wrote: post #2

Inequality seems to be a completely pointless buzzword to me. The only thing that matters is if there are more or less poor people, and how poor are those people compared to similar percentiles in the past. It shouldn't matter how rich the richest people on earth are. I really love seeing people on the Internet try to convince themselves that because Bezos or Musk are worth $100B, they must be stealing it from poor p…

>The only thing that matters is if there are more or less poor people, and how poor are those people compared to similar percentiles in the past.

People who are beating the drum about inequality are arguing this; isn't this what the elephant chart shows? For the American middle and working class they are as poor, if not poorer than their contemporaries in the 60s.

The plain argument is that productivity growth has exploded since the 70s, but wage growth has stagnated. People are producing more but being paid less; that might not be outright theft but I think people are beginning to understand that something isn't right.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#17

Post by throwaway0a5e »

cjblomqvist wrote: post #10
h3rsko wrote: post #2

Inequality seems to be a completely pointless buzzword to me. The only thing that matters is if there are more or less poor people, and how poor are those people compared to similar percentiles in the past. It shouldn't matter how rich the richest people on earth are. I really love seeing people on the Internet try to convince themselves that because Bezos or Musk are worth $100B, they must be stealing it from poor p…

But isn't wealth to a large degree relative? Like, if I'm richer than I value my time higher, meaning it's more expensive to buy my time (human services). Same with other resources such as land, gold or bitcoin. There's only so much of it thus the value rises. Of course the world can become more productive and thus make everyone (in average) more "wealthy", but only for certain things.

>But isn't wealth to a large degree relative

Yes it is, but a few hundred billionaires with mansions and yachts don't really matter in the context of the broader economy.

It's the upper middle class yuppies with substantial amounts of discretionary income driving up the prices on things that makes people poorer in the relative sense. There simply aren't enough billionaires to move the needle on the goods and services people living paycheck to paycheck spend on.

We didn't have a toilet paper shortage because Warren Buffet stocked up. The used car market isn't all jacked because of Bill Gate's insatiable desire for compact pickup trucks.

The gulf between the "I can afford to care about what school district a house is in" class and everyone below them is the important one.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#18

Post by klmadfejno »

"But poor people have iphones now" when people can't afford food, healthcare, or any leisure time is the 2021 equivalent of "Let them eat cake".

The balance of wealth is insulting when we have so many basic needs not being met for those at the bottom

"Stealing" is a word that gets knee jerk reactions. But the more polite way to phrase it is that the rich benefit from societal structure 1000x more than the poor and are able to acquire wealth at an accelerated pace because of these structures. Asking the wealthy to pay a greater share to improve society is perfectly reasonable. The fallacy in complaining against taxes for the rich that are already higher than their proportional of wealth is ignoring the fact that so much of taxes goes towards systems that just increase the rate of wealth accumulation. The wealthy reap the benefits of power in compounding ways.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#19

Post by almost_usual »

splaytreemap wrote: post #9

Flagged. The original poster has a long history of posting content with the goal of starting political flamewars.

So we censor and remove content from HN because we don’t like who is posting it now? This is a Time article not some random blog.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#20

Post by Arc_Angel »

h3rsko wrote: post #2

Inequality seems to be a completely pointless buzzword to me. The only thing that matters is if there are more or less poor people, and how poor are those people compared to similar percentiles in the past. It shouldn't matter how rich the richest people on earth are. I really love seeing people on the Internet try to convince themselves that because Bezos or Musk are worth $100B, they must be stealing it from poor p…

"It shouldn't matter how rich the richest people on earth are."

It does. Bezos and Musk can influence Policy. They can influence for their own ends. Also, it depends on HOW they make their money too. Do they create things? or do they buy up everything such as Real Estate and then jack up the price. There's different kinds of "Capitalism". Rent-seeking is the worst kind. Producing goods that people can use is much better. Why are most people using Windows computers? Is it because it was so much better than other operating systems? Did Bill Gates make his $Billions because his operating system was so good? or did he use other "techniques?

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