Just read this
Are super-rich people just better at making money?
411–420 of 587 posts
Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wealth isn’t zero sum but power over law (as defined by who has influence over the rules we live by) is. When you have concentration of power due to concentration of wealth, the society will become unstable and undemocratic. So even though wealth isn’t zero sum, wealth inequality is a problem that needs to be addressed for long term stability.
> Wealth isn’t zero sum but power over law… Religious extremism isn’t coming mainly from the wealthy. It’s dominantly a lower-strata southern thing, with notable metastases all around the country, yet it plays strongly in the US system. That some wealthy co-opt the extremists doesn’t change the above.
If you have a tornado coming straight at your house with your family inside you will be praying I guarantee you.
If you lived in a sparse, lonely place, with a bad economy, maybe joining a church starts sounding like a good idea.
Instead of judging people consider yourself lucky.
Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am wondering about the details. Would you prohibit anything that could be used as a residence? Office buildings would be permitted? I live in an apartment unit in a 24 story tower. It is owned by a corporation and I lease it. Would only condos owned by humans be permitted?
Me, personally? I don't know -- there are smarter people than I who can come up with lists. I was remarking about the idea itself.
These details seem to make the idea unworkable to me.
Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?
#414This yard-sale model isn't really how the economy works though, people don't continuously bet 20% of their net worth. It's something similar going on though, I think a lot of these variables would seem to be explained by considering the lognormal distribution for personal wealth. In a normal distribution, the shape of the distribution comes from a "random walk" left and right from a large number of steps of varying s…
I'm not sure it's intended to reflect the real economy. It's a useful model that shows how success and wealth inequality can arise for reasons of pure luck, and can have nothing to do with meritocracy. I'm not sure any of the points you raise really change the fundamental dynamics of what's shown here.
Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
what's to prevent a wealthy parent from gifting wealth to their children while alive? This seems like the easiest thing of all for someone with a competent accountant to circumvent. Bad for families building generational wealth who don't have it yet though, and boy do I hate the idea as a result.
In the current system 95% of families can't build generational wealth so the point seems moot It's the temporarily embarrassed millionaire syndrome. Sorry but it just doesn't happen for most people due to the way the system works
The problem seems to be education. Plenty of immigrants are able to give their children better lives.
Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?
#416What's wrong about it? Unless you also "defund the police", that is. If law enforcement is well-funded and works well - which isn't all that expensive or hard on a national scale - than what's the problem about extreme inequality?
> If law enforcement is well-funded and works well - which isn't all that expensive or hard on a national scale - than what's the problem about extreme inequality? Law enforcement in the US is insanely well funded. The NYPD, for example, has 5 billion dollars of budget for 50k employees and serves about 8.8 million citizens. In contrast, in the German state of Bavaria, a budget of 3.8 billion euros [1] supports 45.00…
The difference is probably less poor and desperately poor people.
Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?
#417The example that is used in this blog post is completely and absolutely wrong. He portrays wealth accumulation as a zero-sum game with people coin-flipping against each other. In reality, someone does not have to lose for wealth to be created.
Indeed- the more money a person has, the more adventurous they can get in producing value. It's not rocket science! (most of the time)
>the more money a person has, the more adventurous they can get in producing value.
I think it is more a case of the more access to capital they have. People who have demonstrated that they can create a lot of value usually get access to lots of capital, even if that capital is not theirs. It's pretty standard to not fund business ventures by one's self. An indication of a good business plan is buy-in from others.
Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anything can be abused, but I don't know the history; I have heard of robber barons, but not in the context of housing and Google doesn't seem to give me more than just their own enormous mansions. It would depend on if it's abused or not, wouldn't it?
You can look up the history of company towns
You load sixteen tons, whattaya get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter don'cha call me, 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
- Merle Travis, "Sixteen Tons"
The TL;DR of why this is bad is that when employees are paying, or are indebted to, their employers, even in a roundabout way, it's really easy for that relationship to become very abusive.
The company towns also often payed in scrip, which was basically credit at the company store, and, gee, wouldn't you know it, the company owns all the land to the horizon, so there are no other stores in reasonable travel distance! And if you need a little credit because your pay's terrible after your rent (to the company) comes out, and the prices at the store are marked way up, why, they'll be happy to extend some....
That's the extreme version, but it's bad enough that even inching that direction is something worthy of concern. One ought be wary any time money's flowing from an employee to an employer.
The robber-baron version is basically the thing you see in capitalist-dystopia sci fi like The Outer Worlds, but it actually happened.
Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed- the more money a person has, the more adventurous they can get in producing value. It's not rocket science! (most of the time)
Producing value? Sometimes. Sometimes extracting rent. Sometimes speculating. If private equity buys a pharma company and cuts research, jacks up prices to extract money from insurance, that might be "clever" but it is not really benefitting anyone, quite the opposite. Obviously a lot of capital is used to create more value, but it does so by using labour, so it is the creativity of the people working for that capita…
>while the capital sits back and enjoys it's growth
So people should risk their capital for nothing? I'm all for better pay and working conditions but the value from some ventures does not always come from the creativity of the workers. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't so much.
Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?
#420To solve all this, it's pretty simple, and the U.S. actually used to do it: heavily tax the super rich. Heavy taxation and then appropriate use of those funds for education, R&D funding, infrastructure, etc. is actual trickle-down economics. And mega corporations should be heavily taxed instead of holding the country economically hostage. They jumpstart their companies off of government funding and R&D and then act a…
So this redistribution... How will this ever be fair? If I work harder and smarter, save/invest instead of spending recklessly - how is it fair that the fruits of my effort are taken by the government (who incidentally created all the laws and loopholes we have now) to redistribute as THEY see fit (also known as Buying Votes).
How do you redistribute my house (expensive due to location) to others living in less expensive places? How about my car (expensive and fast). It costs more, drinks more fuel, and looks nearly new. Never mind that I paid a gasguzzler tax on purchase, sales tax, smog inspection since new(another tax in disguise). It looks new. But I care for it, handwash it, polish it, seal it, personally - my labor. I roundtrip it 90miles a day, so it as 135k miles. But it looks new. MY LABOR. Nobody offered to wash/wax it for me and make some cash. Just like I shovel snow off my driveway. And rake leaves. Nobody wants to do that work. They just want their part of the redistribution.
Y'all worry about these millionaires and their money, yet here you are, hoping to learn the secrets of success from Y-Combi companies... and become wealthy yourselves.