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American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

economist.com

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Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#191

Post by salawat »

WalterBright wrote: post #133
mlsu wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piketty argues that if r > g, wealth will accumulate into fewer and fewer hands over time. R is the rate of return of capital (rents, stocks, bonds, etc) and g is the growth of the economy over time. If the economy grows at a higher rate than the rate of return, the pie gets bigger at a higher rate than wealth can concentrates. If the rate of return accumulates capital at a higher rate than the growth of the economy,…

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...You are using "wealth" in a way completely foreign to how I have ever seen it used linguistically. The abundance of resources available to an individual that we call "wealth" colloquially being transferable or tradable is basically the hallmark of a market economy. It can absolutely concentrate within one, because if it can be traded, it can absolutely be not traded decreasing the velocity of that value transfer to zero. So... Yes. If only one or a handful of people are buying, because everyone else is having to sell to stay alive, then wealth does, in fact, concentrate.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#192

Post by hparadiz »

Nursie wrote: post #172
hparadiz wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It literally is. People just have no discipline or skills with money. Go on the fire subreddit. 25k saved per year is a million after twenty years with a modest very conservative amount. And if you can double that with a spouse you're looking at a million in only ten years. People who stretch that to 20-25 years end up with 3-5 million.

Median net wage in 2023 the US is $43,222 as per https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/central.html You're talking about median earners putting away more than half of their pay. If we look at full time workers that may go up to about $1200 per week or (after federal income tax) about $57k per year - https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf So you're still looking at 43% of every pay packet. And 50% of full-time worker…

The average household income in the US is $83,730 and the median is $121,000.

It's also irrelevant. The average is weighed down by students and retirees. If you look at only people in their peak earning years (40-50) then the median jumps further.

But thank you for the comment. It perfectly exemplifies the attitude of most Americans. Born on third base and feeling entitled to blow their entire paycheck every month and then still asking for hand outs.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#194

Post by WalterBright »

intended wrote: post #168
WalterBright wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Then you are using terms in a manner that is effective for semantic victory, but not the spirit of actual discussion the other users are engaging in.

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Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#195

Post by srean »

WalterBright wrote: post #188
srean wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's money and not wealth and its a flow not stock and denominated in something that can depreciate, has it even been priced correctly ? I grant you that it is very hard to measure ownership of (wealth generating) assets, hidden behind legal obfuscations. Lorenz curve [0], GEI [1], Gini index of owned wealth generating assets would be the right thing to measure to see how understand one's share of the pie. But an e…

> share of the pie Using words like that imprisons one into a certain perspective. Wealth creation is not "getting a share of the pie". Wealth is not an apple pie you slice up for your guests. If Picketty uses words like pie, share, transfer, concentration, etc., then his book is about as valueless as Das Kapital.

For what it's worth they are my words not Picekty's.

It does not matter what it's called. The buck stops at the basket of goods and services I can buy. As long as this basket of goods and services is evaluated in inflation adjusted terms, it is pertinent to the discussion we are having.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#196

Post by WalterBright »

illiac786 wrote: post #158
WalterBright wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Wealth inequality leads to lots and lots of power concentrated in a few people. That’s the problem. It’s a money aristocratic system, and that’s really bad for anyone not belonging to the aristocracy. And if they continue on this path, we might see heads roll.

1 man, 1 vote.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#197

Post by euio757 »

abuob wrote: post #36
WalterBright wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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If you're genuinely curious, a few suggestions that I personally found incredibly enlightening: Anand Giridhardas, Winners Take All: The book is fantastic, there's also his now infamous google talk where he talks about dismantling google: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d_zt3kGW1NM Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st century: Probably the most comprehensive (but at times also longwinded) outline on how wealth inequalit…

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Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#198

Post by andsoitis »

305superuser wrote: post #174
andsoitis wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wealth inequality Can you explain what is wrong with people having different levels of wealth? Or asked differently, if it is bad, should every individual have the exact same wealth?

Like anything some is good too much is bad, a gradient work for a complex society, a brutal difference like kings and dark ages poor eventually bring collapse

Wealth inequality was not the defining aspect of the relationship between kings and peasants. It was also not the reason for the collapse.

The defining quality was the mechanisms by which kings extracted wealth from peasants (indirectly, through layers) which doesn’t resemble what we have in western liberal democracies today. Things like tallage and arbitrary taxation, labor dues, mill/oven/wine press monopolies, heriot, merchet.

Serfs were legally bound to the land.

The Black Death killed 1/3 of Europe’s people, giving peasants leverage because without enough workers, lords could not enforce arbitrary dues because peasant could walk out or revolt, such as the English Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.

That’s when the Dark Ages extraction model started to break down. Not because of wealth inequality, though it can see why they get conflated.

If we take the top billionaires in western liberal democracies today, they do not extract wealth from the average worker (there’s no duress, for instance), and it is clear that they have created more wealth than they have “taken”.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#199

Post by intended »

matrix87 wrote: post #25

I'm kind of confused. It's not clear to me how or why the line keeps going up. People are spending less because of economic insecurity, everything is more expensive because of tariffs and war, interest rates have been high for four years. The general cultural mood feels unsustainable. Like the peak-woke period around 2022 before the pendulum swung really hard in the opposite direction. I don't know if there's a word…

K-shaped economy, Asset bubble, and AI spending.

The retail / average consumer in America is seeing a very different world than the rich and ultra rich.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#200

Post by sevenzero »

satvikpendem wrote: post #155
sevenzero wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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An obviously flaggable comment will get flagged. If you can't say anything other than that then I'm not sure why you'd reply. And anyway, if you can't understand why digging ditches all day is not valuable (after all, look at all the hard work they're doing!) then I'm not sure what to tell you. It's a shame, 4 month old account but still succumbs to comments like this, not sure how HN moderation can fix that.

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