Economists Are Rethinking the Numbers on Inequality • Hacker News Board

Re: Economists Are Rethinking the Numbers on Inequality

#121

Post by koheripbal » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

el_cujo wrote: post #40

This is kind of a touchy subject. I feel like a lot of people would balk at the idea of the top 1% not doing better and better, not because they have any extra insight into the topic but because to say this seems like you're defending the ultra-rich (and by extension attacking everyone else). In reality, even if the rich aren't getting even richer at quite the rate we thought, it doesn't mean you really need to have…

Conflating the top 1% with the ultra-rich is another big problem.

If we assume that most people achieve peak earning years between 45-50 years old, then about 30% of people end up in the top 1% at some point in their lives.

Re: Economists Are Rethinking the Numbers on Inequality

#122

Post by pksdjfikkkkdsff » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #107

kofejnik wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, exactly; to have equality, you'll have to reduce everyone to the lower common denominator, which will be rather low Also, I don't see why exactly inequality is inherently bad. I'm poorer than Bezos, _and that is a good thing_. Pretty much like Steph Curry is better than me at basketball and so he should have a lot more ball possesion should we be playing on the same team, Bezos is much better than me in allocati…

> Bezos is much better than me in allocating resources, so he should have a lot more resources to play with. How do you know that, though? Have you had the opportunity to be in the exact same place he was for the exact same time? Do you sincerely believe there aren't, in the billions of people on earth, someone with better resource allocation skills than Bezos? Having more money is not proof of ability.

We know that because he did it. He literally proved it by becoming a Billionaire.

Yes, lots of people were alive in the exact same time when he started Amazon.

Re: Economists Are Rethinking the Numbers on Inequality

#123

Post by xorfish » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

aqme28 wrote: post #102

xorfish wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not on income or cap gains Why does it matter how it is taxed? If the capital returns 4% and is taxed at a 30% rate, you will have the same effect as if the capital is taxed at a rate of 1.15%. I think the biggest injustice is that return of capital isn't taxed at the same rate as income from labor. Someone who earns $100'000 from labor and $50'000 from return on capital should be taxed at the same rate as someone…

Note: capital gains taxes are closer to around 15%, not 30%. They're also only realized when they're liquidated, which makes a big difference.

I know, that is why I said that it is an injustice that return on capital isn't taxed the same as income from labor

Re: Economists Are Rethinking the Numbers on Inequality

#124

Post by BurningFrog » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 4:02 PM UTC

taffer wrote: post #24

60654 wrote: post #7

This Economist article points out some of the many small academic works that quibble over details with Piketty and Saez. But that's not anything new. The major points of their work, and especially of Piketty's monumental _Capital for the 21st century_ still stand: that capital is a positive feedback loop in a way that labor is not; that mid-20th-century laws that put brakes on this feedback loop have been removed; th…

> This Economist article points out some of the many small academic works that quibble over details with Piketty and Saez [...] that capital is a positive feedback loop in a way that labor is not Well the article mentions that: > Matthew Rognlie, now of Northwestern University, argued that the rise in America’s capital share was accounted for by growing returns to housing, not by the shares and bonds which are held d…

Housing is rising in value because of regulatory capture. It's illegal to build competing housing in most major cities.

Money is power, and the powerful make the regulations.

So maybe regulation is really the positive feedback circuit?

Re: Economists Are Rethinking the Numbers on Inequality

#125

Post by koheripbal » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 4:02 PM UTC

_qwfv wrote: post #30

Isn't this one of the thesis of Marx's Capital? That there's a loop in the flow of commodities, money, and labor that generally results in capital extracting more capital from the economy. (Typically from wage labor.) It seems to me that without someone applying the brakes to that loop and changing the way distribution or production is done, we're just going to keep riding this positive feedback loop.

But that's an oversimplification. The system has its own brakes in the form of corporate bankruptcies and liquidations. The market landscapes are constantly changing and companies get destroyed regularly.

... and this returns that stored capital back into the liquidity system.

There's little evidence of a persistent imbalance.

Re: Economists Are Rethinking the Numbers on Inequality

#126

Post by ikeboy » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 4:04 PM UTC

leto_ii wrote: post #62

el_cujo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at your methodology critically is crucial to all fields of science though, as is changing your conclusions and interpretations as more findings come forward. Dismissing someone outright for challenging something that has become dogma is anti-scientific even if that dogma is based on facts. If it's actually true, then it will stand up to scrutiny.

I absolutely agree. However I'm not at all sure Piketty's ideas are dogma. If anything he's the challenger to the neoliberal dogma. Secondly, the fact that there are diverging sides to an issue doesn't mean those sides have the same likelihood of being true. To take a trivial example, flat-earthers are challenging the dogma that the Earth is round (spherical to be more precise) - should this mean that their position…

Yes, Piketty and co are the challengers. Therefore the burden of proof is on them to convince people their ideas are true, and presenting their ideas without pointing out how the rest of the field thinks of them would be the analogue of your climate deniers in your comment above.

Re: Economists Are Rethinking the Numbers on Inequality

#127

Post by dwiel » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 4:04 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #121

el_cujo wrote: post #40

This is kind of a touchy subject. I feel like a lot of people would balk at the idea of the top 1% not doing better and better, not because they have any extra insight into the topic but because to say this seems like you're defending the ultra-rich (and by extension attacking everyone else). In reality, even if the rich aren't getting even richer at quite the rate we thought, it doesn't mean you really need to have…

Conflating the top 1% with the ultra-rich is another big problem. If we assume that most people achieve peak earning years between 45-50 years old, then about 30% of people end up in the top 1% at some point in their lives.

I agree with your first sentence, but I'm having a hard time with the implied reasoning in the second. Could you expand your logic a bit further?

Re: Economists Are Rethinking the Numbers on Inequality

#128

Post by ianleeclark » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

pksdjfikkkkdsff wrote: post #119

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's silly - compared to cavemen, even workers in third world countries are "rich", being able to trade things for goods and services and not being required to hunt and gather. Inequality solved?

Why exactly is inequality a problem? Because people suffer from their envy? People starving, having no health care, low life expectancy, that sort of thing, are problems. Their neighbor having more money in the bank is not really a problem. There are also actually differences in skills, performance, diligence, and so on. It would be very unfair if some people weren't allowed to earn more money than others. Whether it…

> People starving, having no health care, low life expectancy, that sort of thing, are problems. Their neighbor having more money in the bank is not really a problem.

Most people, when they critique wealth inequality, aren't critiquing their neighbors because most people in the same zip code are going to be at similar levels. When people critique wealth inequality, they're talking about the Koch brothers, or other parties who leverage capital to gain unfair advantage and political powers and then work against the first half of your statement.

> Whether it should be possible to be arbitrarily rich is another question.

I, too, am in favor of a 100% wealth tax upon death. No more freeloading failsons.

Re: Economists Are Rethinking the Numbers on Inequality

#129

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

pksdjfikkkkdsff wrote: post #122

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bezos is much better than me in allocating resources, so he should have a lot more resources to play with. How do you know that, though? Have you had the opportunity to be in the exact same place he was for the exact same time? Do you sincerely believe there aren't, in the billions of people on earth, someone with better resource allocation skills than Bezos? Having more money is not proof of ability.

We know that because he did it. He literally proved it by becoming a Billionaire. Yes, lots of people were alive in the exact same time when he started Amazon.

How is that proof of ability more than luck?

Re: Economists Are Rethinking the Numbers on Inequality

#130

Post by BurningFrog » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 4:10 PM UTC

60654 wrote: post #7

This Economist article points out some of the many small academic works that quibble over details with Piketty and Saez. But that's not anything new. The major points of their work, and especially of Piketty's monumental _Capital for the 21st century_ still stand: that capital is a positive feedback loop in a way that labor is not; that mid-20th-century laws that put brakes on this feedback loop have been removed; th…

> capital is a positive feedback loop in a way that labor is not

If that's true, capital sounds awesome!

An automatic wealth generator is something everyone should have, not something you want to tax out of existence!