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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%

#41

Post by almost_usual »

tengbretson wrote: post #37
patwolfe wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say the current biggest problem is that the highest earners simply do not pay much in taxes through loopholes and avoidance, not that taxes need to be increased across the board. EDIT: the_gastropod's comment also under this parent is a great short summary of this issue. I second their recommendation of "Capital in the 21st Century"

What do you want to do with their money though?

What are you suggesting? That poor people don’t need anything right now? Literally half the country can’t afford rent or housing?

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#42

Post by adolph »

How is this different from any random conspiracy theory? The term "counterfactual" is used instead of "I made a strawman?"

Edit: the reliance on "taxable income" instead of gross is interesting. Wouldn't a progressive tax policy look similar to the paper's stats since more income would be taxable for folks with lower income?

https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-1.html

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#43

Post by _qulr »

Pfhreak wrote: post #23

This 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…

> This is almost a natural law of wealth.

The article is about how the post-1975 period differs from the pre-1975 period. So it's demonstrably not a natural law. Natural laws don't change over time.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#44

Post by hrktb »

h3rsko wrote: post #2

Inequality 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…

For the comparison part:

> Adjusted for inflation using the CPI, the numbers are even worse: half of all full-time workers (those at or below the median income of $50,000 a year) now earn less than half what they would have had incomes across the distribution continued to keep pace with economic growth.

Another aspect is the power that comes with money. People aren’t focusing on inequality in a pure “that’s unfair” view, there are also issues on how these ultra-rich people are completely outside of the reach of most rules and can sway whole economies basically at will.

Bezos’ fortune is equivalent to whole PIBs, that’s a lot of power concentrated in a single man.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#45

Post by the_gastropod »

brandonr49 wrote: post #21

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.

> ...making money less able to purchase power

I'm not sure this is possible without breaking the entire concept of money. So long as money is a thing humans trade their time for to pay for living expenses and beyond, it can be used to bribe, coerce, etc.

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#46

Post by b3kart »

h3rsko wrote: post #2

Inequality 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…

I think this would be a valid argument if significant money wouldn't also come with significant power in the modern day and age. As soon as there is significant wealth inequality, there is also a significant power inequality, with a small number of people determining the fate of the rest of the world. Surely this isn't good?

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#47

Post by tengbretson »

almost_usual wrote: post #41
tengbretson wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you want to do with their money though?

What are you suggesting? That poor people don’t need anything right now? Literally half the country can’t afford rent or housing?

What does that have to do with taxing the wealthy though? Do you think the $3.5 trillion spent on covid relief has any relationship whatsoever with tax revenue?

Re: America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%

#49

Post by dorchadas »

the_gastropod wrote: post #38
tengbretson wrote: post #30

In 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 b…

Highly recommend reading Pikkety's "Capital in the 21st Century". The gist is this: - Historically, capital grows faster than the economy at large (generally around 5% annually) - Steep marginal tax rates help disincentivize high pay (e.g., if the top marginal rate was 90% like it was during the Eisenhower administration, a corporation would see much more of its money go to employees if it gave its lower income worke…

Another key takeaway I think is that we're just returning to the norm. The middle to late 20th century was an outlier thanks to the World Wars and all the destruction in Europe that happened because of them.
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