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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

#481

Post by ben_w »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #464
adrian_b wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Someone programs the robots. They can be a traitor. They can refuse, or put in a back door kill switch.

"Hey Grok, I just fired the entire Optimus team, write me some code for the robot so I can sell it to private security…"

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

#482

Post by justsid »

rcxdude wrote: post #342
bigfatkitten wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

George Washington didn't have Lockheed Martin's hand in his pocket. Wars were much cheaper when all you needed were men, horses and small arms.

Not relatively. They were incredibly expensive compared to the resources at the time, not least because of the difficulty of moving supplies around and the huge amount of opportunity cost in the lost work of the men recruited into the military.

Being able to outspend the other side is definitely a good indicator of winning odds. There is some friction of course, but it’s a very rough approximation of how much industrial might you can put into the field. And just having money isn’t enough either, you have to be able to spend/convert it into a military power in some way.

So it stands to reason that wars will be as expensive as possible. It’s pay to win to a degree.

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

#483

Post by ryandrake »

wolvesechoes wrote: post #150
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" Won't happen in a society where elders are more numerous than young. In the past it required a lot of young males thinking they have not much to lose, but they are becoming extinct. Old people won't revolt, middle-aged fathers that need to think of their children and mortgage won't revolt.

Young people, in general, don't even bother to vote in the USA. They're not going to be participating in a revolution any time soon.

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

#484

Post by tfourb »

Gasp0de wrote: post #269
pjc50 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes? How long has it been since you checked what income percentile you are in? I would expect most of the posters here to be in the top 5%, with a short tail of unemployed and retirees. The number of Americans with passports is at an all time high of 48%, and some of that is simply for convenience ID for internal flights.

My partner and I are in the top 20-25% of Germany (looking at combined household income, we earn about the same). Not poor, but not (very) rich as well.

Income does not equal wealth and wealth is what this article is referring to. Wealth is a much better measurement for this kind of stuff, anyway. I'm living in Germany as well and I'm probably in the top 10% in terms of household wealth, but easily in the bottom 50% in terms of household income. My wealth is much more impactful in terms of how I live my life, compared to my income. I'd describe myself as rich.

I'd expect that if you look at your wealth instead of your income, you probably come to a similar conclusion. If you are in the top 20% income bracket but do not feel rich, my guess is that you are probably in a lower wealth bracket (i.e. you have a house but still a huge mortgage on that house and not a lot of other assets, putting you somewhere in the top 40-50% wealth bracket.

If your wealth puts you in a similar bracket as your income (i.e. top 20%) and you still don't feel rich, this is more a case of your perception being out of whack. Top 20% in terms of wealth in a society like Germany by definition makes you a very rich person. But even our millionaire future chancellor described himself once as "middle class", so this is a common mistake to make ;-).

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

#485

Post by tfourb »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #430
jonplackett wrote: post #210

This guys has been saying this for ages https://m.youtube.com/garyseconomics

I really enjoy Gary Stevenson - both his YouTube channel and his book - but his very convincing message that wealth inequality is a problem isn't really accompanied by any particularly good solutions. Tax the wealthy yes, but how do you do it exactly? How much does it raise? How should the revenue be spent?

He actually provides the solution quite explicitly in several of his videos: Tax non-moveable assets of the ultra-rich, i.e. real estate.

His theory (which sounds plausible to me) is that a lot of the wealth of the ultra rich is actually bound up or linked to immovable assets. At the same time, investments in these assets is what makes them unaffordable for everyone else (i.e. your kids won't be able to buy a house anywhere in the country, despite them earning more after adjusting for consumer goods inflation).

By taxing large real estate wealth accumulation (think personal wealth in the tens or hundreds of millions and up), you get the best of both worlds: The (ultra) rich who want to stay invested have to pay your taxes (they can't move real estate to a tax haven) and thus transfer part of their wealth back to society. And if they divest from real estate, it puts downward pressure on real estate prices, thus making it more affordable for the rest of us. Win-win, from a society's perspective.

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

#486

Post by ryandrake »

ozim wrote: post #389
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…

Absurd. Inequality doesn’t matter really nowadays. There will be no revolution as most of people are out of poverty despite what narration on the internet is. Living conditions as today day poor person are immensely better than 18 or 19th century peasants. Whoever has billions does not affect me having running water in faucets and me enjoying life. Warm water is not all there is to life but it is a lot.

> Whoever has billions does not affect me having running water in faucets and me enjoying life.

Whether or not people are in subsistence poverty is not the only measure of a functioning society. It's great that extreme poverty is going down, but let's not declare Mission Accomplished just yet. The existence of billionaires might not affect your running water, but it does distort the market and negatively affect how much everything around you costs, from housing to healthcare to groceries. The existence of billionaires also affects your share of power in democracy. A billionaire is right now, running amok, griefing workers and tearing down institutions. All because his billions bought him the power to do that.

You might change your "billionaires existing doesn't bother me" Enlightened Apathy if they one day kill a government service you rely on or decide your job must end because they need double digit stock growth again this year.

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

#487

Post by ryandrake »

nthingtohide wrote: post #378
FL33TW00D wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Exactly. If the problem is "Rich people and private equity are snatching up every home that gets built, as investments" then the solution cannot be "just build more homes." Those homes will just get snatched up by the same people.

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

#488

Post by dttze »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #284
beardyw wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Russia in 1917 is a more recent and valid parallel. But it takes hunger rather than disapproval to fuel such a revolution.

It's actually pretty similar when you get to the bottom of it. Lenin was a member of the nobility during the Tsar rule. He saw his oppurtunity when Russian leadership was weakened after the first World War (similar to how the British were weakened after the Seven Years' War) and took it. The biggest difference is that he had unsuccessfully tried before and was orchestrating the whole thing from his exile base in Swit…

> Lenin was a member of the nobility during the Tsar rule.

This is not true at all. Where is your source for this claim?

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

#489

Post by ryandrake »

nickjj wrote: post #417
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.

As far as I know the stock market has winners and losers. If you're not rich but invested whatever you could over the course of your life and now the market tanks to where you've lost half (or more) of what you had then someone else is going to win that from you. A massively rich company can hold out a lot longer than a software developer who tucked away what they could over the years. If a real crash happens that so…

In other words, if your retirement savings is $200K and you lose 50% of it, at best you're going to have to make major changes to your plans. At worst (depending on how much debt you have) you're in for some real pain.

A billionaire with $200B in wealth could lose 99% of that and still have $2B, generational wealth that will perpetually fund an entire family tree down to great great grandchildren.

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

#490

Post by quacksilver »

dqv wrote: post #181
Gasp0de wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100$ for four beds including breakfast? I live in Europe, perhaps that's why the prices feel off. I pay around 100$ per night without breakfast here in most places, for 2 people.

$100 for two queen beds and continental breakfast. The way my family did it is the parents would sleep in one bed and then the siblings would trade off sleeping in the other bed and sleeping in a sleeping bag/on a couch/on a cot.

We used to stay in places that had a queen bed and a sofa with a pullout mattress

Parents get the bed and me and my brother would decide between the sofa and the mattress (or share a second double bed)

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