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Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

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Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#181

Post by nonethewiser »

coliveira wrote: post #173
nonethewiser wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you sum up the type of despair people feel pretty well. It's really more helpful to look at "middle class or better." Because yes, the middle class has shrunk. But more of that share went to the UPPER income tiers. The middle class went from 61% in 1971 to 51% in 2023. But the lower income brackets saw a +3% change while upper saw +8%. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/economy/the-incredible... >The ones…

> There simply is not a static pool of resources. Economists and rich people indeed think in terms of scarce resources. Any economics book will tell you that it is about managing scarce resources. Rich people will never allow for example the government to give increasingly more money and resources to lower income people, because they fear there's note enough for them. They don't believe in abundance for everyone.

Scarce yes.

Static, no.

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#182

Post by [deleted] »

philipallstar wrote: post #155
Buttons840 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income taxes are higher than capital gains taxes. This isn't based on economic theory or anything, it's just a political choice we have made as a country. We've chosen to reward those who move money around and trade capital more than we reward those who labor. And this at a time when, supposedly, the country is trying to increase its ability to build things. I thought this specific fact worth mentioning.

If we want to build things we need capital investment and a reward for risking capital.

[deleted]

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#183

Post by fragmede »

orochimaaru wrote: post #171
fragmede wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where in corporate America have you worked? At my previous place, there was a well defined career ladder, and what work was necessary to climb it as an individual contributor (vs a manager). Putting in more work meant climbing that ladder, which lead to pay increases and bonuses, and there was a formula somewhere on Confluence as to how those were calculated.

Where in corporate America are you working where "hard work" and not "sucking up" is translating to climbing said ladder?

[flagged]

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#184

Post by zackmorris »

Buttons840 wrote: post #172
jparishy wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're on the same wavelength. To me, I find it hard not to think about our explosive growth as a country happening at the same time we refuse to expand representation of the public. These charts are very frustrating to me: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN11547 The people in power do not want to lose control, but clearly have no idea how to manage the scale of what has been built. There's an American leadership…

We should go back to having the house filled with 1 representative per 10,000 people. Also, we should do something new and have all the representatives in the house be chosen by lottery. Normal people are not represented in congress, because politicians are not normal people, but if we chose people by lottery we would have a branch of congress filled with normal people. They would have time enough to study the issues…

I don't normally reply twice to the same thread, but I just wanted to say that I wish that the US had been founded with a co-equal branch of government comprised of people drawn via lottery (probably voluntary) like in ancient Greece:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

I believe that this was one of the great mistakes by our founders. I'm sure that many suggested it, but unfortunately their ideas were suppressed due to our roots in slavery, colonialism and aristocracy (meritocracy today).

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#185

Post by Workaccount2 »

mcntsh wrote: post #138
Spivak wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent is pointing out that the labor theory of value is nonsense. How much something is worth is totally unrelated to how hard or how long someone worked on it.

> working hard at creating value does, and that is still true today This is the point that the parent was making. How you define "value" is the topic of discussion here, which in my opinion has become so abstract that it's impossible become successful around. Investors make money on failing businesses, software engineers make money on products that never monetize, top AI researchers make millions working for 2 weeks…

Value is something that motivates people to do work (that creates value). It's like bartering (I'll fix your car if you mow my yard), but currency makes work fungible (I'll fix your car for $80, and then pay another guy $80 to mow the yard). Key to this is understanding that someone might be willing to cut the yard for $75, and someone else might do it for $60. Probably no one for $20 though.

Speculation, which you lean heavily on in your example, is essentially just gambling. (I'll get my driveway fixed up for $120, and -educated guess- it allows me to fix two cars for $80 each).

Value is found by everyone voting with their currency units on what the value of any given thing is.

99% of the time when you are confused about why something has low value, or why something has high value, you can dig into the market around it and find out why and it's almost always pretty logical (and if it's not, congrats, you can make money on fixing it). This is also fuzzy around the edges, it's never sharp lines. But the shape is consistent on the whole.

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#186

Post by coliveira »

nonethewiser wrote: post #167
malcolmgreaves wrote: post #131

Hard work has never led to success under capitalism. Having capital leads to success. And pure luck.

If success were ONLY about having capital then what would that imply? The super rich people of today would come from the super rich people of their parent's generation. This model is actually incredibly bad at predicting the richest people in the US today. Gates, Musk, Buffet, Bezos, Zuckerberg, etc. Many may have come from well off families but none of them were anything close to among the richest of their generatio…

People like Gates, Musk, Buffet are only a side show. They are there because of support from Wall Street. They're new but at the same time indistinct from old money and working for the same goals.

Moreover, a "self-made billionaire" is just a drop on the global pool of wealth. It is even good for capitalism to have these new people as a showcase, so billions will believe they can be the next, when winning the lottery if far more likely.

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#187

Post by dfxm12 »

nonethewiser wrote: post #111
stego-tech wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thanks for the information. So unemployed != unemployed. Your snark aside, actually yes, that is correct. The unemployment rate you cite is the UNRATE, or U-3. It explicitly only counts people over 16 years of age who reside in the fifty states or DC, who aren’t institutionalized, and not on Active Duty in the military. Looking at other data sets fills in the picture further. U-6 adds in part-time workers seeking f…

It's not snark. The survey uses the term "unemployed" but it is a different metric than the "unemployed" metric. >But let’s take the second part of your rebuttal - that the results may be skewed towards younger people who still live at home. Are we in an argument? I wasnt really rebutting anything. I was clarifying my original comment. Even after the clarification that it's not apples to apples, the intersection of 6…

The survey uses the term "unemployed" but it is a different metric than the "unemployed" metric.

I'm looking at the pdf you linked. I did a ctrl+f and couldn't find anything for "unemployed". I then searched for "employ" (in case there is some OCR bug) and the only hits I got were on a table that says "employment status" and the responses are "employed" or "not employed".

Can you point out where the survey uses the term "unemployed"?

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#188

Post by Izikiel43 »

jplusequalt wrote: post #99
Izikiel43 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we chase equality for everything? Or should we ensure basic rights are guaranteed and let everyone do as they prefer? The only equality on paper we chase is before the law, everything else is up to luck and decisions.

>The only equality on paper we chase is before the law When have the rich ever been held to the same standards as the average American?

Hence why I said on paper.

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#189

Post by ksaun »

zackmorris wrote: post #152
jparishy wrote: post #66

Wealth inequality is high. High enough you can feel it like a vibe in the air. The richest people in the world are telling everyone to get onboard with technology that is determined to make a lot of those same people's jobs redundant. All with an explicit goal of increasing the price of stock most of those people do not own. IMO there's two economies, maybe divided by those who participate in the stock market and tho…

I've only known a "good" economy from about 1995-1999 when the internet went mainstream and for the briefest of moments, we got a taste of what public investment in tech feels like. The powers that be quickly saw the danger in that and IMHO orchestrated the Dot Bomb, 9/11, the Housing Bubble, etc to keep as much money as possible out of public hands so that the average person wouldn't have the means to participate in…

Sincere question: Do you have thoughts as to how we can invest our $ if our goal is to support the "good economy" instead of attempting to ride the wave of the rich getting richer?

I would like to be part of the solution instead of contributing to the problem, but it is challenging to identify companies in which to invest without supporting the status quo.

I am not "rich," but wish I could better vote with what assets I do have.

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#190

Post by Buttons840 »

thesmtsolver wrote: post #135
Buttons840 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income taxes are higher than capital gains taxes. This isn't based on economic theory or anything, it's just a political choice we have made as a country. We've chosen to reward those who move money around and trade capital more than we reward those who labor. And this at a time when, supposedly, the country is trying to increase its ability to build things. I thought this specific fact worth mentioning.

1. Only long term capital gains are lower than income tax 2. Long term investors invest in things that great new jobs, it is not just moving capital around.

"Long term" is 1 year, right?

What a joke. Everyone can judge for themselves if 1 year is "long term".

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