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The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

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

#301

Post by schnitzelstoat »

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.

A collapsing stock market wouldn't make it any easier for young people to buy their own home though.

It would probably make it harder if it were anything like 2008.

The issue with housing is that throughout the Western world we've made it incredibly difficult to get new housing built.

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

#302

Post by weatherlite »

renewiltord wrote: post #42
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.

You guys are so obsessed with inequality because you're always looking in the other guy's cup. I don't care about inequality at all - only absolute living standards. The US has been an unequal place all its history and it's a tremendous country to live in. Here's a recipe for happiness: stop comparing yourself to others and stop trying to keep up with the Joneses. It's old advice, but it's clearly been forgotten.

> The US has been an unequal place all its history and it's a tremendous country to live in.

It could be way worse but it could also be better. There are people in the U.S without good health care or access to dignified jobs (or at least - a livable salary). These are issues that can be improved by a lot, it's not a law of nature.

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

#303

Post by vineyardmike »

mirekrusin wrote: post #235
ookblah wrote: post #31

I think about this from time to time and I suppose everything is cyclical in the end. Most of us would have been some peasant in the feudal age and when it gets really bad it always ends in a revolution of some sort. It's just on a global scale and timeframe now. As more of the population feels the effects of inequality they won't appeased by just fancy toys and shiny things, they will want change by force. My only s…

We are living in feudal system at the moment. Amazon, cloud providers and everything seems to be subscription based nowadays - as Yanis Varoufakis calls it "techno-feudalism". We have system which funnels unimaginable amounts of money to few overlords, it'll keep reinforcing itself creating more and more contrast with time. Open source everything seems to be the only answer if you ask me.

I love open source as much as the next guy, but unless you consider mortgage or rent a subscription, then I don’t think that it’s really a primary issue for most people today.

That said, the subscriptions do keep growing. But, in fairness, most cloud services have ongoing cost to the business, so ongoing consumer costs make sense.

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

#304

Post by ken47 »

ookblah wrote: post #31

I think about this from time to time and I suppose everything is cyclical in the end. Most of us would have been some peasant in the feudal age and when it gets really bad it always ends in a revolution of some sort. It's just on a global scale and timeframe now. As more of the population feels the effects of inequality they won't appeased by just fancy toys and shiny things, they will want change by force. My only s…

Not saying that the ultra-wealthy have the right to be tyrants, but "peasants" of today's age have a quality of life that is orders of magnitudes better than peasants in the feudal age. This simple truth seems to get lost so easily when talking about inequality in a vacuum.

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

#305

Post by Earw0rm »

pjmlp wrote: post #293
Earw0rm wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Now try that on a 1 000€ salary, or 2 000€ assuming married and both working at a good enough place (minimum wage in Portugal is 870€ brutto), while having a family, paying credit on the car (as public transport sucks), various kinds of insurances, supermarket, electricity, water,... Even me with my seniority most likely won't pull more than 1 500€ netto at most places.

Yep, that's a big part of why people aren't doing it. I guess with 2000€ income you can get a loan for 100K€ (certainly the case here), but it doesn't solve the problem of there being almost no work within a ~1hr drive in any direction.

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

#306

Post by fxwin »

Johanx64 wrote: post #278
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 oth…

That statement had nothing to do with taxes or inheritance (or any specific financial process in fact). It was simply a (admittedly rather reductive) mathematical statement, which remains true independently of the nature of the underlying good.

My point was that pointing out "Top x% own Top x+y% of good z" doesn't say anything meaningful without contextualizing why (if) this is a bad thing, and what x and y should be for a given z.

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

#307

Post by p3rls »

WastedCucumber wrote: post #254
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…

I think that's a very narrow and largely inaccurate view of revolutions. A lot of revolutions were carried out by people with very little resources - Mao led his army from under-developed hills, the October Revolution didn't have much of an industrial base either, nor did the left in the Spanish civil war (although the military eventually won, but hey, they had a fighting chance). And aside from that, many revolution…

For me it alternates between mind-numbing and mind-blowing the models of political violence people hold.

It's one of the refreshing things about the crazy rightoids of late, how they emphasize how their larp revolution will cash out and retire enemies of the state.

But here on HN we get ESL-Occupy Wallstreet jeremiads that'd make Sorel blush.

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

#308

Post by schnitzelstoat »

Given they don't have such a high percentage of total wealth and an even lower percentage of real estate, it seems this is largely due to financial education.

I know a lot of working class people with significant savings (more than I have) but they tend to just put it in a savings account at a bank or perhaps invest in a property to let out.

Many people see the stock market as a casino even though you have far less risk in index funds than you do by renting out property.

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

#309

Post by fxwin »

m000 wrote: post #300
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…

> 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 should the ideal Lorenz curve look like). Just looking "more uniform" would be a great starting point. The optimal distribution is left as an open question for future research. Not having the perfect solution upfront should not block incremental improvements,…

> The optimal distribution is left as an open question for future research.

What makes you think the optimal distribution is "more uniform" rather than less? I'm not taking sides in this question, simply pointing out that the headline is rather meaningless without context

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

#310

Post by pjc50 »

vixen99 wrote: post #286
FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marxism is when people stand up for their rights I guess?

There are zero rights without obligations. Why do we never hear about the latter? To read about people standing up for their rights in a Marxist State read Robert Conquest's 570 pages of 'The Great Terror' - an account of the crimes committed against humanity in the name of the Soviet Communism that emerged from the 1917 revolution. 'We'll do it differently' is the usual response. Sadly this always leaves out appreci…

> How about evolution rather than 'eggs in one basket' revolution?

That's the premise of social democrat parties, and the UK Fabian society (named after Roman general Fabius "the delayer") & Labour party!

Revolutions only happen when peaceful change is thwarted.

Of course, America is the least fertile ground for a left revolution. It's in the middle of a right-populist one.

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