The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks • Hacker News Board

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#271

Post by throwawayqqq11 » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 9:54 AM UTC

ThinkBeat wrote: post #221

sigmoid10 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The population might not be happy, but they don't have the means to change it. Revolutions don't happen when people are mad, they happen when the ones who can afford armies and equipment sense the possibility of coming out on top. 250 years ago George Washington could have financed the entire Revolutionary War out of his own pocket and he still would have retained two thirds of his wealth. Instead he put the losses o…

Revolutions can happen if enough people show up. Massive amounts of people are difficult to deal with. Smaller groups you can outright kill in daylight, but better to get to them first to torture and kill them out of sight. Once you need to kill 500.000 who are protesting and if violence to quell the hoards wakes up more people who want to see the regime fail.

If the power gap between angry peasants and fully autonomous killer robots is big enough, why not kill 500.000?

I always wondered why north korea is so stable. I think its a mix of military power, media control and chinese support.

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#272

Post by vladimirralev » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 9:54 AM UTC

weatherlite wrote: post #4

So a stock market and/or real estate crash can actually be good to reduce inequality . In fact I think its about the only way to dramatically reduce inequality. Think about young people trying to buy their 1st home now, its becoming impossible.

The Fed has a few papers on this issue. Their conclusion is basically that the young will eventually inherit the wealth and market forces will force a redistribution. Thus it solves itself eventually.

I personally think that the Fed papers are just designed as an excuse to print money, but my point is the Fed is very far from seeing this as a problem and will never act to remedy it.

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#273

Post by boelboel » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 9:55 AM UTC

hagbarth wrote: post #211

newbie578 wrote: post #119

As a person born in the middle class, I am quite sad to see it's extinction in realtime. Not sure what is the solution to this.

Higher top marginal income tax rate (was much higher in the 50s, 60s, 70s). Higher capital gains tax. And then use the income from that to distribute wealth through things like single payer health care, affordable housing etc. So the basic needed expenses don't take up such a large portion of the budget for middle income households. Also: stronger unions.

Higher marginal income taxes discourage investment and productivity and high capital gains causes high distortion/is difficult to implement/also discourage investment. Affordable housing shouldn't be tried to be solved by throwing money at it (subsidizing demand), the real way is to cause the supply to go up by laxer zoning and less restrictions. Inheritance taxes could also be used to 'level' the playing without causing huge distortion. Another good tax would be land value tax which would end up taxing those with more wealth the most as well as causing less speculation and more investment in actual companies which would fuel economic growth.

Better unions will never work in the US these days because of deindustrialization and globalization, can't really have leverage when your sector is getting smaller. There's also just no more 'union culture'.

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#274

Post by jgilias » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 9:56 AM UTC

ThinkBeat wrote: post #221

sigmoid10 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The population might not be happy, but they don't have the means to change it. Revolutions don't happen when people are mad, they happen when the ones who can afford armies and equipment sense the possibility of coming out on top. 250 years ago George Washington could have financed the entire Revolutionary War out of his own pocket and he still would have retained two thirds of his wealth. Instead he put the losses o…

Revolutions can happen if enough people show up. Massive amounts of people are difficult to deal with. Smaller groups you can outright kill in daylight, but better to get to them first to torture and kill them out of sight. Once you need to kill 500.000 who are protesting and if violence to quell the hoards wakes up more people who want to see the regime fail.

The people of Belarus put this to test not that long ago. Massive numbers of people came out, factories went on strike, even people from the military and police spoke out against the regime.

Turned out that in this day and age when the governments have unprecedented powers of surveillance and the ability to cut anyone from the respective financial system, a revolution is a really hard thing to pull off.

If the British had the kind of power that even half-competent governments have today, the American revolution would never have succeeded.

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#275

Post by lnsru » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 9:57 AM UTC

flr03 wrote: post #261

lnsru wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. Small ruling class will own everything. And the majority will have nothing and no rights to have something. It has been tried before.

You mean like today's capitalism then?

Aren’t there any sane systems in between?

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#276

Post by WastedCucumber » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 9:57 AM UTC

gniv wrote: post #256

The title uses the stock stat because it's so unbalanced. But to me the scariest statistic is the other one mentioned in the article: "the top 10% also accounts for 50% of all consumer spending". This seems extremely fragile. Small changes in the behavior of the well-off can have big negative consequences for the entire country.

And of all the metrics, spending has increased the most in the examined time period. Up from 36% in 1989.

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#277

Post by Earw0rm » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 9:58 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #212

Earw0rm wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet there's hundreds of entire villages in Mediterranean Europe that are empty apart from a few elderly people, lots of small rural towns with tracts of empty property. Usually because they're hours away from the nearest good jobs. What's happened is a massive shift from a small-scale agricultural economy to a mix of urban and large-scale agriculture, and the building of homes/apartments hasn't kept pace.

Yes, even those are out of reach for many pockets.

The properties themselves are being effectively given away.

Refurbishing them to a modern standard, of course, is quite a different story. Perhaps €100K EUR in a lot of cases.

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#278

Post by Johanx64 » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 9:59 AM UTC

fxwin wrote: post #175

In any kind of non-uniform distribution of any good, the top x % will always own a disproportionate (wrt to headcount) amount of it (In economic systems, this mathematical fact is further amplified by other factors such as financial literacy and leverage). What's always missing to me in these types of discussions is what this value should be at, and what the distribution should look like qualitatively (i.e. what shou…

>In any kind of non-uniform distribution of any good

Not in any kind. It is absolutely the case, if there's mostly untaxed generational wealth transfer. Imagine this - you are born in this world with nothing. And every parcel of land and property is owned by somebody - somebody who with high likelihood inherited it or hundreds of millions or billions of assets on spawn.

Now obviously, you can inherit all sorts of other factors too - like very valuable social networks and a set of trade skills carefully passed down and tought. But even neglecting those, the largely untaxed generational wealth transfer would naturally lead to massive inequalities and disproportionate amounts of wealth concentrated in few families.

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#279

Post by jstummbillig » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 9:59 AM UTC

Is that much, relatively? How much of everything does the top 10% own?

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#280

Post by Pooge » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 9:59 AM UTC

abnercoimbre wrote: post #253

Pooge wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's really the only explanation you can think of? Another is the fact that many choose to own luxury items or buy drugs (tobacco, alcohol are included ) instead of... you know... saving. And then self-proclaim to live "paycheck to paycheck"⋆. Middle class gets poorer and the rich get richer because inflation is literally eating away the former's life savings while the other has doubled his net worth in just 10 y…

My public school never gave me any classes on financial literacy while children of global elites receive the best guidance for it. My classmates and I were then instructed by every counselor and parent to take out six-figure student loans with variable interest. We were teenagers in high school without fully-developed brains. I can keep pulling examples out of the rabbit hat, just let me know.

> My public school never gave me any classes on financial literacy while children

None do. Even private schools don't. It's not part of the curriculum and children don't care about those topics. When you reach your 20s you realize how important it would've been but how boring you thought it was at the time. But since you graduated, "learning is over" so you won't teach yourself financial literacy.

> children of global elites receive the best guidance for it

Yeah... from their parents. I worked in the industry and I know that children from UHNW individuals do not want to talk and be taught about money. They are not financially literate, but they have money that allows them to delegate to someone else. This is true for anything in life, by the way: you either learn to do it or you pay someone else to do the job.