Could it be that some people, some families, actually invest...instead of buying cheap plastic shit
Shakes head
More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe
101–110 of 230 posts
Re: More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe
#102The Chinese have a saying 富不过三代 which means "wealth does not survive three generations".
Have there been three generations in China since the Communist revolution?
Yep, just! Wealth certainly didn't survive that one, except by moving to Taiwan, and its economy is tanking right about the three generation mark...
Re: More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe
#103Piketty showed in Capital that most modern work about the trends in economic inequality was flawed. We usually think of the industrial revolution and modern era as periods where power and wealth became much more fairly distributed. However, if you go far back enough into the records, as he did, you can see a clear trend of concentration of wealth even now in the current system. The trend was briefly disrupted by the…
Didn't Rognlie @ MIT show that almost all of the out-performance of wealth was due to real estate prices? Couldn't the solution to wealth inequality therefore be a radically different approach to building codes and land value taxes? And doesn't it follow that wealthy landlords in California massively benefiting from proposition 13 and decrying wealth inequality at the same time sit at the pinnacle of political and ec…
> In the postwar era, developed economies have experienced two substantial trends in the net capital share of aggregate income: a rise during the last several decades, which is well-known, and a fall of comparable magnitude that continued until the
1970s, which is less well-known. Overall, the net capital share has increased since 1948, but when disaggregated this increase comes entirely from the housing sector: the contribution to net capital income from all other sectors has been zero or slightly negative, as the fall and rise have offset each other. [0]
That doesn't mean that the gains for capital since the 70s are from housing. Only that the gains from the 40s are. It also doesn't address the industrial revolution's affect.
Re: More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I guess mom made the right decision coming here Where's here? Oh, from your Hacker News profile -> Twitter profile ( https://twitter.com/doreen_michele ) which says "Southwest Coastal Washington".
I'm sure you were just making polite conversation but it's maybe not so great to follow two pointer hops to someone's personal details. People have many reasons for being sensitive about these things. I've never thought about it before, but your comment made me realize that maybe the best thing is to feel free to mention what's in someone's HN profile but leave it at that. On the other hand, I broke that myself only…
Those that are sensitive about such things shouldn't post such details online, and having that veil of secrecy penetrated and posted publicly might be a wakeup call.
There's no point in protecting someone's imaginary privacy, if their personal details are a google search away, they have no privacy and if that's important to them, they shouldn't post their private details in their profile.
Re: More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe
#105Piketty showed in Capital that most modern work about the trends in economic inequality was flawed. We usually think of the industrial revolution and modern era as periods where power and wealth became much more fairly distributed. However, if you go far back enough into the records, as he did, you can see a clear trend of concentration of wealth even now in the current system. The trend was briefly disrupted by the…
How then is it possible that some four in five American millionaires inherited no more than ten thousand dollars, according to The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley?
This sounds like a big number, but consider this - if less than 10% of Americans are millionaires then this means that millionaire parents are more than twice as likely to have millionaire children as non-millionaires.
This shouldn't gel well with someone who values meritocracy/social mobility.
Re: More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
How then is it possible that some four in five American millionaires inherited no more than ten thousand dollars, according to The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley?
This sounds like a big number, but consider this - if less than 10% of Americans are millionaires then this means that millionaire parents are more than twice as likely to have millionaire children as non-millionaires. This shouldn't gel well with someone who values meritocracy/social mobility.
Parents have influence on how well their children do. Nature and nurture. Is this not the whole point of parenting?
If millionaire parents are only twice as likely to have millionaire children I would be surprised.
Re: More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Modern inheritance should be inherently dissipative, as the estate is repeatedly divided among the heirs, amplified by death/inheritance/estate taxation. The problems arise when the wealth accumulation overpowers the dissipative effect of inheritance, combined with increasingly absurdly high wealth levels that go far beyond providing for children and grandchildren. As for the "golden area" you mentioned; yes, the war…
Wouldn't the trend towards fewer children and smaller families decrease the dissipative effect? In the extreme case of a "one child" policy, inheritance would be amplified because the wealth of both parents (and presumably four sets of grandparents) would flow to a single individual. Similar to assortive mating, if wealthier families had fewer children relative to poorer families, then this would worsen inequality ov…
Often stated as "the rich get richer and the poor have children".
Re: More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really. Inflation reduces the value of money, but not assets. A wealth tax would tax assets as well.
Which is probably also why it would be hard to implement :) Also I'm not sure discouraging invests is a good side effect.. But it's an interesting thought nonetheless.
This is why taxing wealth is done at the time of inheritance.
Re: More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The tax system seems to prefer this to actually earning money for some reason. The tax system favors unearned income over earned income to adjust for risk. If you work a job you're guaranteed to be paid for the hours you worked (assuming an honest employer). Investments have no guarantees and you could lose all the money you put in. There's an argument to be made that the top tax rate for unearned income is too low…
There may be reasons unrelated to investment risk. For example, the risk of losing an earned income stream because my (assumed honest) employer (fires me, goes bankrupt, etc.) seems much higher than the risk of losing an unearned income stream based on my investment in bonds backed by the US government.
If you lose a job, you just lose the income stream and 2 weeks of salary at most (+ whatever time it takes to find a new job). With an investment there's a risk of losing the asset entirely. Rental property gets buried in a landslide, company goes bankrupt, gold gets stolen etc. There's also the risk of not making any return at all: rental property remains vacant, company barely breaks even, gold only tracks inflation etc.
> investment in bonds backed by the US government.
Those bonds have a correspondingly low yield, to reflect their low risk.
Re: More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe
#110I suspect a lot of inequality is due to better access to wider markets. How rich could you get if your marketplace was just your village? Now, with the internet and cheap global transport, an entrepreneur has access to the globe, and so can make much more money.