The problem of inequality in general needs to be framed as one of power asymmetry. There are a handful of people that have managed to garner, through their wealth, similar power to states with millions of people. The solutions to this involve either making money less able to purchase power, or taking some of this money away. I suspect the latter is more likely to happen but I'll happily support either method.
America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
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Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
#22Inequality seems to be a completely pointless buzzword to me. The only thing that matters is if there are more or less poor people, and how poor are those people compared to similar percentiles in the past. It shouldn't matter how rich the richest people on earth are. I really love seeing people on the Internet try to convince themselves that because Bezos or Musk are worth $100B, they must be stealing it from poor p…
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Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
#23This is almost a natural law of wealth. When you have significant capital, you can do things like loan it out with interest, leverage it into getting loans to build more capital, etc.
If one assumes that the wealthy are using their money to buy commodities and selling those commodities with the expectation of getting their initial money back plus some delta, then it becomes fairly trivial to demonstrate that the more money you start with the more money gets concentrated around you.
For example, I could leverage my current house to purchase a rental property in my city and rent it at a profit. Over time I'd pay down my loans and the value of my two homes would increase. I could then leverage two properties to purchase more or larger rental properties. My wealth would increase because I had sufficient wealth to begin with.
Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
#24This is almost a natural law of wealth. When you have significant capital, you can do things like loan it out with interest, leverage it into getting loans to build more capital, etc. If one assumes that the wealthy are using their money to buy commodities and selling those commodities with the expectation of getting their initial money back plus some delta, then it becomes fairly trivial to demonstrate that the more…
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Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
But isn't wealth to a large degree relative? Like, if I'm richer than I value my time higher, meaning it's more expensive to buy my time (human services). Same with other resources such as land, gold or bitcoin. There's only so much of it thus the value rises. Of course the world can become more productive and thus make everyone (in average) more "wealthy", but only for certain things.
>But isn't wealth to a large degree relative Yes it is, but a few hundred billionaires with mansions and yachts don't really matter in the context of the broader economy. It's the upper middle class yuppies with substantial amounts of discretionary income driving up the prices on things that makes people poorer in the relative sense. There simply aren't enough billionaires to move the needle on the goods and services…
>Yes it is, but a few hundred billionares don't really matter in the context of the broader economy.
Billionaires buying up "stores of wealth" housing in the city I live in has driven up the price of property inordinately and almost priced me out. What you are saying here is not "they don't matter" but "I don't matter".
Then they tell people who grew up in these cities to just leave if they can't afford it.
Political power is also zero sum and they're buying up that too. This is the most terrifying part. I don't particularly want my country to become like Ukraine with two sets of oligarchs battling it out with their propaganda arms. That is what is happening.
They are not buying up toilet paper but then again toilet paper shortages only happened for about a week, didnt it?
Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
#26Ah yes, the famous cabal of 1 percenters sitting around and committing grand larceny as they raid the bank accounts of poor people. At least that's what this headline would have you believe. The reality is much more boring. Thanks to "math," they've determined that if the ratio of incomes from 1945-1974 held steady , the bottom 90% would have "more" than they do now. Of course the bottom 90% itself is a fantasy and y…
> and many other things that 1 percenters have made for us?
Jesus christ, this has to be satire. The people "making" these things are not in the 1 percent. We don't have to look up to the elites in gratitude because they deigned to give us their magical gifts.
Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
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Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
#28Inequality seems to be a completely pointless buzzword to me. The only thing that matters is if there are more or less poor people, and how poor are those people compared to similar percentiles in the past. It shouldn't matter how rich the richest people on earth are. I really love seeing people on the Internet try to convince themselves that because Bezos or Musk are worth $100B, they must be stealing it from poor p…
Poverty is not the only metric we should care about when it comes to inequality. For instance there's also financial resilience, what percentage of people will be strongly affected if they suffer an adverse event i.e. a surprise medical bill or an appliance breaking. Another one is the distribution of wealth between people that spend most of their income vs income that is held in investment accounts or savings. Having sufficient spending is essential to a healthy economy.
A third, though this is much more an ideological standpoint and I don't expect everyone to agree with it, is the marginal value of money. If an increase in income has a greater marginal effect on the health/wellbeing/happiness of people who have less of it, isn't it better to prioritize growing their incomes rather than people who already have their entire hierarchy of needs met?
Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
#29Inequality seems to be a completely pointless buzzword to me. The only thing that matters is if there are more or less poor people, and how poor are those people compared to similar percentiles in the past. It shouldn't matter how rich the richest people on earth are. I really love seeing people on the Internet try to convince themselves that because Bezos or Musk are worth $100B, they must be stealing it from poor p…
A lot of those "net worth" numbers don't translate to cold, hard cash either.
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Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
#30In my lifetime some sort of switch has flipped, where the people advocating for more taxes no longer do so with an explicit intention to pay for something greater or something new, but simply on the assumption that the act of taxing people will inherently make them more equal. Is there a coherent philosophical basis for this train of thought? Is there any historical precedent that increased taxes is what we need to become equal?