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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

#371

Post by insane_dreamer »

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 stock market crash mostly transfers wealth from the bottom rung of those who own stocks, who are forced to sell, to the top rung of stock owners, who have enough to be able to wait it out and then buy up the assets at low prices (and make a fortune when it goes back up).

It also causes a lot of companies to go out of business or reduce their workforce because of reduced consumer spending, hurting the working class more.

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

#372

Post by adrian_b »

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…

Revolutions happen relatively peacefully only when a significant part of the armed forces changes sides or at least refuses to execute orders.

With the transition from conscripted militaries to autonomous robotic weapons, there will be no more humans refusing to execute orders and no more traitors.

A future revolution will succeed only against a grossly incompetent government.

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

#373

Post by nosianu »

chii wrote: post #361
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…

> they will want change by force at no time has there been a good outcome from which this change made. The people who applied the force merely swapped with those who had wealth. Essentially, they wanted the wealth, and co-opted the masses to enable themselves. What we have today is relatively good. Just because you see some billionaire who have more yachts than you could ever hope to own, doesn't mean you aren't livi…

> I dont see america starving.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/hunger-us-continued-multi-y...

> Hunger reached its highest point in the United States in nearly a decade last year, with 18 million households, or 13.5%, struggling at some point to secure enough food, a Department of Agriculture report released on Wednesday said.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...

https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america

I mean, sure, they are not "staring", it's only hunger...

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

#374

Post by FirmwareBurner »

DecoySalamander wrote: post #345
jgilias wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Britis…

You have to both outnumber the loyalists to certain degree and show significant determination. Euromaidan did that with 800,000 protesters at its peak. As a percentage of the population that's less than what Belarus saw, but at the same time Yanukovych had significantly fewer people willing to do his bidding than Lukashenko.

>Euromaidan did that with 800,000 protesters at its peak.

Euromaidan succeeded because it also had massive support and influence from the western powers and from the western(mostly US) itelligence agencies to make the pro-Russian regime change happen.

Similar to the fall of the Berlin wall and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, it was a decades long effort from the US itelligence agencies, they didn't just sit around and wait for the local population to revolt.

People ignore how much external interference these revolutions get in order to make regime changes happen.

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

#375

Post by insane_dreamer »

carlob wrote: post #90
bawolff wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, the great depression was not a great time to be poor. [Edit:to be clear income inequality did go down, but poor people got a lot poorer, which seems like a pretty bad outcome]

The great depression in itself wasn't, but the combined effect of WWI, GD and WW2 was. We razed Europe rather than redistribute.

Also ended up with all of Europe's gold by the end of WW2, making the dollar the global reserve currency

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

#376

Post by scarface_74 »

ty6853 wrote: post #92
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…

And now we're paying 10x the fraction of our gdp as the early non war days. The feds are bleeding us dry to line they and their corrupt friends pockets and their public debt.

A quick Google search shows the median income tax as percentage of income is around 15%

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

#378

Post by nthingtohide »

FL33TW00D wrote: post #365
nthingtohide wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The home crisis can be solved if we insist that people can buy property only for living and not as an investment. Chinese are buying homes in Canada which is the reason for housing crisis there.

Why not just construct more homes?

Problematic. Nearby city centre homes will be snatched up by those who have capital while others will have earn for 4-5 years to be in a position to buy

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

#379

Post by Mashimo »

alberto-m wrote: post #189
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the importance of financial education is pretty underestimated. But just to illustrate, investing $10 a month into an index fund would mean something like $100K saved up for retirement. Even if you’re poor, it is usually possible to find that $10.

The calculation seems off by almost one order of magnitude. Even investing 10$ a month for 50 years (!), and managing to get a net return of 7% for such half a century, will build up only about 50K. Except that, by that time, even a modest inflation rate of 2.5% will make it worth less than 15K in real terms. Which makes sense, otherwise any childless person in the West with a decent job could save 1k a month and ret…

Was about to say that 7% is low, as I got ~13.5% and 15.5% return this year on medium risk profile. But it seems the average over the last 10 years was indeed 7.9%, only 10.22% on high risk profiles. (At my "bank" thing, not worldwide)

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

#380

Post by scarface_74 »

mandmandam wrote: post #207
bargainbin wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the wealth is unequal, sure, but look at how much better the human quality of life is compared to even 50 years ago. What is wealth when everyone is fed, watered and entertained? Only stating this as an explanation to why there has not been a civil revolution. People are still dying in poverty with no way to escape every day, and we need to address it.

> the wealth is unequal, sure Do you really understand just how unequal it is? Most Americans vastly underestimate it [0]. And that's from 2013; inequality has rapidly worsened since. Do you understand the effects of that inequality? > look at how much better the human quality of life is compared to even 50 years ago. I don't think this is true. There is quality of life in owning a house, a family house. There is qua…

One issue with owning a home is that it makes it harder to move where the jobs are.

The US puts too much emphasis on homeownership for wealth creation.

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