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The 99 percent

economist.com

141–150 of 162 posts

Re: The 99 percent

#141
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot replace a corporate tax with a personal tax, all persons will simply become corporations.

There are already laws against that that are very strictly enforced. Try incorporating yourself and deducting the cost of your mortgage or car payment and see how long it will take for you to end up in tax court.

You gave two working-class examples. When the corporation is a REIT with milions of dollars in invested assets, or an independent contractor consulting firm, that is a different story.

Re: The 99 percent

#142

Here's why the rich get richer: because the 99% produce too damn much. Consumerism worked for a while to keep things even, but we've reached a plateau. People can only buy so much crap. But we're more productive now than ever [1]. So where does all that extra money go? The people at the top take it. CEOs don't give their employees raises, and pocket the rest. Bankers play games with your excess money you've dumped in…

The only way to simultaneously... Everytime someones says there's "only one way", that person turned out to be: * Dogmatic and * Wrong There's certainly not a single reason behind the current situation, and certainly not one single answer to it.

You are right. The other way is for a new, massive industry to open up. (Think terraforming Mars.) This would correspond to increased per-capita wealth consumption.

However the fact that you must choose four of {decrease excess wealth, decrease employment, maintain moderate per-capita consumption, maintain high per-capita work output, maintain high per-hour work output} is a logical truth.

Proof:

Wealth can be created (work), destroyed (consumed), or accumulated and held (income/wealth inequality). Wealth must be created at the same rate it is accumulated or destroyed (i.e. Wc = Wa + Wd). Since OWS wants to decrease wealth accumulated and it is undesirable to increase wealth destroyed (unless in the example given above), we must therefore decrease wealth created. Right now this is happening due to unemployment. Since OWS also wants to minimize that, we must decrease wealth created in another manner. Obviously, decreasing wealth created per hour worked is out of the question (that would mean reverting to a pre-industrial age). The only remaining option is to decrease hours worked. QED.

Re: The 99 percent

#143
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty declarative. You seem pretty sure the situation in the States would be comparable to that in Russia --I think that's a very tenuous stretch. It happens in Russia because they have collusion. Presumably we would have less chance of that happening as other candidates would be free to join in on the political race. There is non-such in Putin's Russia. In Russia, candidacies are controlled (and those two ha…

I see no reason it wouldn't happen in the US in areas where term limits might otherwise be needed.

Have you seen it happen where candidates are vetted by the state and only allow those it blesses?

I don't see a parallel. I think you're reaching very very far.

Re: The 99 percent

#144
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hoo boy are you wrong. > You are so, so wrong. ... > You've effectively described a blend of National Socialism and Stalinism. Hyperbole much? It saddens me to see this kind of nonsense on HN. Also, let me point out that your disagreement is not on the highest level of the disagreement scale. In particular, your parent brings up the very reasonable point that mankind introduced the two-day-weekend at some point dur…

The OP asks for control of wages and working hours. The plan is to use a simultaneous forced raising of wages and restrictions of working hours so that everyone can have a job. Apart from being unworkable and ridiculous, this is the starting point of a completely planned economy. Hyperbole? Maybe a little, but too many people sleepwalk into agreeing with this type of idea without thinking through the full consequence…

I think the last half century of European history proves that the sub-Hayekian argument implying increased government intervention necessarily leads to dictatorship is even more intellectually bankrupt than those in favour of a fully planned economy. 35 hour working weeks and high minimum wages are not a radical or untried idea. Arguably excessive regulation of working conditions has contributed to many of Europe's present economic and social problems, and that's a subject worth discussing, but the imagined threat of mass-murdering autocrats isn't one of them. In HN of all places we shouldn't be invoking Godwin's law at this stage of an argument.

Re: The 99 percent

#145
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hoo boy are you wrong. > You are so, so wrong. ... > You've effectively described a blend of National Socialism and Stalinism. Hyperbole much? It saddens me to see this kind of nonsense on HN. Also, let me point out that your disagreement is not on the highest level of the disagreement scale. In particular, your parent brings up the very reasonable point that mankind introduced the two-day-weekend at some point dur…

The OP asks for control of wages and working hours. The plan is to use a simultaneous forced raising of wages and restrictions of working hours so that everyone can have a job. Apart from being unworkable and ridiculous, this is the starting point of a completely planned economy. Hyperbole? Maybe a little, but too many people sleepwalk into agreeing with this type of idea without thinking through the full consequence…

I think the last half century of European history proves that the sub-Hayekian argument implying any increased government intervention necessarily leads to dictatorship is even more intellectually bankrupt than those in favour of a fully planned economy. 35 hour working weeks and high minimum wages are not a radical or untried idea. Arguably excessive regulation of working conditions has contributed to many of Europe's present economic and social problems, and that's a subject worth discussing, but the imagined threat of mass-murdering autocrats isn't one of them. In HN of all places we shouldn't be invoking Godwin's law at this stage of an argument.

Re: The 99 percent

#146
post #51

Second, that the people at the top have made out like bandits over the past few decades, and that now everyone else must pick up the bill. I have no idea what The Economist could possibly mean by "pick up the bill" in this context. They know as well as anyone that wealth isn't conserved. If my company makes twice as much money next year as this one, I've added to the world's wealth, not subtracted from it.

I think everyone understands that companies are creating wealth. The question is: who is capturing that created wealth? Right now the scales are heavily skewed toward the 1% capturing a lot more than they traditionally did.

Re: The 99 percent

#147
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A financial transaction tax is not that great in the first place, but making it $.10 per share instead of a percentage of the price paid is a bad idea. Let's do some math: Activision-Blizzard Share Price (ATVI): 13.50 Tax on a $100,000 trade: ~$7407.40 Google share price (GOOG): $586.31 Tax on a $100,000 trade: ~$170.55 Berkshire Hathaway Class A share price (BRK.A): 117,100.000 Tax on a $100,000 trade: ~$.10 Creatin…

On the Glass-Steagal reinstatement, even though you did not offer any argument against it except to repeat McCardle's claim that people don't know what they're talking about, I'll offer an argument for it even though I admit I'm not some financial expert. Glass-Steagall meant that investment banks had to entice investors to put their money into the system. The repeal allowed investment banks to raid and leverage depo…

Thanks for presenting an actual argument. However, I am not persuaded by your argument. First, there is the timing issue noted by the commenter below. Second, in general, speculative bubbles are not driven by retail savings, or the idea that they are some how extra easy money. Speculative bubbles tend to be driven by (a) sustained periods of market irrationality; and (b) low interest rates. Interest rates are driven primarily by the Federal Reserve, not by retail depositors. The housing bubble in particular was inflated in large part by overly liberal granting of unaffordable mortgages on the expectation that housing prices would continue to grow. Issuing mortgages is a classic commercial bank activity, not an investment activity. The contagion to the wider financial system was through repackaging of mortgages into derivatives, something that was largely done by entities with no commercial banking activity, such as Lehman Brothers, Goldman-Sachs, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. Combining commercial and investment banking under one roof was not particularly involved as a driver of the crisis.

I am also not persuaded by your linked argument as an argument for Glass-Steagall. It argue for the Volcker rule, which is not the same thing as any former provision of Glass-Steagall. I am not sure why the author relates the two, other than perhaps the fact that Glass-Steagall is a popular talking point. To be more clear on the difference, the provision of Glass-Steagall that tends to capture the popular imagination, and which was repealed in 1999, was a rule against combining investment banking and commercial banking within the same entity. The Volcker Rule would instead forbid banks from trading for their own account, while still allowing them to combine commercial and investment activity. I don't have enough knowledge of the Volker rule to argue for or against it, but I the sketchy argument made in its favor and the attempt to conflate it with Glass-Steagall are not terribly persuasive.

Finally I don't think there is any onus on me to offer an argument against Glass-Steagall, until someone presents an argument in its favor. Surely the burden of proof should be on those favoring a new regulation. That being said, the major reason the rule was repealed is that it made US banks uncompetitive compared to foreign banks, with no clear sign that the US banking system was more stable than foreign banking systems as a result. There is no particular reason to think this has changed. So reinstating the rule would make US banks less competitive and perhaps drive more financial activities overseas, for no clear gains.

Re: The 99 percent

#148
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the Glass-Steagal reinstatement, even though you did not offer any argument against it except to repeat McCardle's claim that people don't know what they're talking about, I'll offer an argument for it even though I admit I'm not some financial expert. Glass-Steagall meant that investment banks had to entice investors to put their money into the system. The repeal allowed investment banks to raid and leverage depo…

and we've coincidentally had 2 major bubbles since. First the dotcoms... Dotcom bubble: 1995-2000. Gramm-Leach-Bliley: Nov 1999. Further, if you measure the housing bubble in the usual way (movement in the price/rent ratio), the housing bubble also started in 1998. http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=31w

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_United_States_h... indicates United States housing bubble was from 2001-2005. However, it also says that in 1998 the nflation-adjusted home price appreciation exceeded 10%/year in most West Coast metropolitan areas.

Re: The 99 percent

#149
post #74
post #51

Second, that the people at the top have made out like bandits over the past few decades, and that now everyone else must pick up the bill. I have no idea what The Economist could possibly mean by "pick up the bill" in this context. They know as well as anyone that wealth isn't conserved. If my company makes twice as much money next year as this one, I've added to the world's wealth, not subtracted from it.

I assume it's a reference to bailouts.

You're probably right. In that case, I think it's absurd to equate "the 1%" with "the recipients of bailouts". The latter is more like "the epsilon%", with the understanding those aren't the top epsilon percent but rather merely bankers who are recipients of government largesse.

Re: The 99 percent

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that complicated. The rich get richer because they own. Specifically, they own two things - the means of production of wealth, and the debt of the 99%. Outsourcing wealth production to low-wage countries increased profit margins and enabled the meteoric rise in CEO and executive compensation relative to labor, whose wages were stagnant at best, or who were being outsourced and laid off at worst (eg, labor wa…

Or you could stop all government subsidies to corporations and set up a business tax structure that is heavily favorable to worker-owned cooperatives at the expense of shareholder-owned corporations. Corporations are just machines for extracting productivity from large numbers of people and concentrating the wealth produced by that productivity in the hands of a few. Worker-owned cooperatives do not share that design…

"Worker-owned cooperatives do not share that design flaw. They also have little to no motivation to outsource."

You can start a worker-owned cooperative now. Why don't you? You could even make it a non-profit and save on some taxes.

What you want to do is make it impossible for corporations as we know them to exist, taking away freedoms. Corporations aren't slave-owners and employees aren't slaves. You have the freedom to work for one or start your own company.

I suppose a worker-owned cooperative would be fine, as long as the workers also took on losses (IE: if sales are down this month, you might only get a $500 paycheck as opposed to a $3000 one).

Then you would have to deal with the day-to-day stuff and you would end up having a president, treasurer, managers, etc, etc, etc, essentially creating what thousands of years of human history have already told you. Bitcoin, which was suppose to get around those pesky banks, essentially gave you the reason why banks are necessary: Most people don't want to or don't have the ability to secure their own money.

Most people aren't willing to take a risk. They won't start a company and take no paycheck for months or possible years while barely scraping by hoping their idea actually is successful.

Why should someone that takes absolutely no risk get anything close to the owners of a company?

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