Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 360 posts

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#321

Post by hparadiz »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #303
hparadiz wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno why people keep bringing this up as some sort of gotcha. You don't save for retirement based on your average. You do it during your peak earning years. Which are far above average. And most households have more than one earner. So even a 5% savings based on a median 84k household yields over 750k in 20 years. Like it literally is that simple.

The number I am finding for the median household expenses for America is $67,000 annually. That's just essentials, housing, food, transportation, insurance, healthcare So if your median household makes 84k, and your median household spends 67k on necessities, where is the money coming from for saving 5%? The difference is only 17k It doesn't take much to eat up 17k. A car repair, house repair, or hospital stay (in Am…

Presumably the 67k spend contains the car repair, house repair, hospital stay part you mentioned. Everything you're saying is accounted for. Your argument is basically anti social security. I'm saying make your own social security fund and you keep going "and what about" as if that's an argument. These externalities are literally what the fund is for. And frankly you should have an HSA for medical expenses because it lets you spend pre-tax money on that stuff.

When you do non Roth it's pre-tax cash so it's much easier to run up your net worth because it's based on money that you haven't paid taxes on yet.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#322

Post by wvenable »

WalterBright wrote: post #95
shric wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walter, I believe the idea against wealth inequality is not purely that there are wealthier people but that their wealth should be redistributed such that the wealthier people are less wealthy (but still wealthier) and the poorer people are less poor (but still poorer).

There have been many attempts at taking from the rich and giving to the poor, and the result was always everybody was worse off except the people who ran the government.

Although some people due want to literally take from the rich and give to the poor, the actual problem with wealth inequality is that game is rigged.

Capitalism not natural order; it has rules and winners and losers. It's actually more like sports. With sport, the goal is to create entertainment by rewarding physical excellence, mental excellence, and successful risk taking. Similarly, the goal of capitalism to create a better society by rewarding physical excellence, mental excellence, and successful risk taking.

What happens to a sport when players cheat or exploit the rules to win? It's no longer entertaining! When the best players can no longer win that's boring. And, in sport, when that happens the rules are changed or enforced better to bring it back in line.

Capitalism is the same. We are reaching the point where we are no longer properly rewarding excellence that is benefiting society. So the rules need to be enforced and rules need to be changed to bring that back in line. Inequality of this magnitude shows that rewards have outstripped the benefits to society and needs to be corrected.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#323

Post by hparadiz »

iancmceachern wrote: post #298
esseph wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are issues of priority and revenue generation, not capability.

Soon we won't have the capabilities. See the nuclear industry and how we don't have the people and training to do the work anymore.

There are 342 million people here. We'll be fine.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#324

Post by cherry_tree »

zzgo wrote: post #290
c1sc0 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about that? Tech cuts both ways & asymmetric drone warfare has become cheaper than ever … how hard it is it to sink some yachts or down some jets?

LOL, what are you going to do? Sit at the end of Northrop field and fly a swarm of drones into the engines of a G6 traveling down the runway at over 100MPH? No way a handful of drones are going to get sucked into a jet engine at that speed. Or do you mean engage a PJ in a dogfight at 40000 feet? I suspect if drones could down a jet, we would have heard about it coming out of Ukraine by now. The reason we don't do the…

A quick google shows news articles and even videos of Ukrainian drones destroying Russian planes.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#325

Post by ModernMech »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #3

Is there any graceful way to let the pressure out of the system and begin rebuilding trust and stability or is the only way out to immanentize the eschaton?

The current proposal on the table is to have the rich pay a lot more taxes. They scoff at the idea, so probably we will end up doing something less graceful.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#326

Post by bluefirebrand »

hparadiz wrote: post #321
bluefirebrand wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number I am finding for the median household expenses for America is $67,000 annually. That's just essentials, housing, food, transportation, insurance, healthcare So if your median household makes 84k, and your median household spends 67k on necessities, where is the money coming from for saving 5%? The difference is only 17k It doesn't take much to eat up 17k. A car repair, house repair, or hospital stay (in Am…

Presumably the 67k spend contains the car repair, house repair, hospital stay part you mentioned. Everything you're saying is accounted for. Your argument is basically anti social security. I'm saying make your own social security fund and you keep going "and what about" as if that's an argument. These externalities are literally what the fund is for. And frankly you should have an HSA for medical expenses because it…

> Presumably the 67k spend contains the car repair, house repair, hospital stay part you mentioned. Everything you're saying is accounted for

It explicitly is not. The number I am quoting is for essentials, it does not factor in emergencies

> I'm saying make your own social security fund

I'm saying many people can't realistically afford to, so expecting it is absolutely ridiculous

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#327

Post by fragmede »

WalterBright wrote: post #95
shric wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walter, I believe the idea against wealth inequality is not purely that there are wealthier people but that their wealth should be redistributed such that the wealthier people are less wealthy (but still wealthier) and the poorer people are less poor (but still poorer).

There have been many attempts at taking from the rich and giving to the poor, and the result was always everybody was worse off except the people who ran the government.

The French had a few thoughts about this, back in the day.

FDR's New Deal raised taxes on the wealthy, and gave to the poor. Seems to have done America well. Post-war Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan land redistribution did well. And of course, there's the Nordic countries. Norway happens too have oil, but that doesn't explain Sweden and Denmark.

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#328

Post by fragmede »

gamerslexus wrote: post #106
avidiax wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The French Revolution is no longer possible. The surveillance state plus wealth mobility means the wealthy will be in New Zealand before anyone erects a guillotine, and the people that would foment a revolution are heavily surveilled and infiltrated.

It's kind of true: > ... federal intelligence agencies and domestic law enforcement are circulating reports with a new domestic target in mind: anti-technology extremists. > This new effort follows President Donald Trump's National Security Presidential Memo 7, which instructs the Department of Justice to target anyone holding “anti-American,” “anti-Christian,” and "anti-capitalism” beliefs. https://www.wired.com/sto…

It's laundered through data brokers and 3rd parties, but with ICE subpoenaing reddit et Al for people that shit post about ICE online, do you really think we're that far off? Especially if the person shit posting is in the US on a visa?

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#329

Post by [deleted] »

tim-tday wrote: post #123
sfblah wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I think those are also symptoms. In my opinion, the cause is: 1. Easy money for far, far, far too long in the US and a complete political unwillingness to take any risk of a recession, no matter the long-term cost required to stave it off. In my mind, this explains the rich-poor gap, the rise of crypto, insane valuations, house-price inflation, the weird delta between US and rest-of-world standard of livin…

Hey, I like easy money.

[deleted]

Re: American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn

#330

Post by hparadiz »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #326
hparadiz wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the 67k spend contains the car repair, house repair, hospital stay part you mentioned. Everything you're saying is accounted for. Your argument is basically anti social security. I'm saying make your own social security fund and you keep going "and what about" as if that's an argument. These externalities are literally what the fund is for. And frankly you should have an HSA for medical expenses because it…

> Presumably the 67k spend contains the car repair, house repair, hospital stay part you mentioned. Everything you're saying is accounted for It explicitly is not. The number I am quoting is for essentials, it does not factor in emergencies > I'm saying make your own social security fund I'm saying many people can't realistically afford to, so expecting it is absolutely ridiculous

$5583 a month is essentials? This is more than what I spend on my mortgage..... and all my bills.... and all my food.... and I live in SoCal.

This conversation is dumb. Put money into an IRA. You lower your taxable income. It's not that hard. You grow your net worth on your untaxed monies and then later when shit hits the fan you can extract it at a lower tax bracket. And you get to gain market gains on cash that would otherwise be spent on taxes. It's how people who are good with money make an extra 10-15k per year while you're being all like "woe is me. i can't afford anything".

This is how you can cover that $10-15k you mention when it does happen. You're welcome.

Post reply on HN