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

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

time.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 961 posts

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

#531

Post by Apocryphon »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #508
Apocryphon wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good, then you’ll have no objection to me helping myself to your surplus. For “the good of society.” I don't evade taxes, so you're welcome to my surplus. > Its interesting how people are often quite concerned with someone else’s perceived lack of things, but references to someone being a victim of violence are dismissed. By all means, please expound upon the victims of violence caused by taxpaying in modern day Am…

> I don't evade taxes, so you're welcome to my surplus. The taxes were already accounted for, my claim is on top of what you already contributed. > By all means, please expound upon the victims of violence caused by taxpaying in modern day America. Its all very simple, if you don’t give them what they want, they threaten you at first and then they come take what they want. > Are you referring to This isn’t helpful. >…

> The taxes were already accounted for, my claim is on top of what you already contributed.

Not according to you, as you view taxes as inherently illegitimate. Though if you have a Patreon or GoFundMe to validate your claim then by all means.

> Its all very simple, if you don’t give them what they want, they threaten you at first and then they come take what they want.

If you don't wear clothes, you'd be arrested for public indecency.

> You get a lot for your trouble when you give up aggressive violence.

Tell it to the Iroquois, sadly.

> If your society is dependent on violence and coercion, then perhaps your society shouldn’t exist.

Then say you don't believe in society.

> You get a lot for your trouble when you give up aggressive violence.

Then why not give away property, as well? There are arguments to be made that private property violates the NAP.

> For my part, the only way to find an answer is to have the debate.

There really isn't an answer to be had in a debate, because fundamentally both sides are operating from stances so alien from one another to essentially be in different languages. "Taxation is theft" and "taxation is not theft" is not really meaningful in this context, as there is no agreed upon definition of what theft is. Despite its unanswerable nature, it is still quite enjoyable.

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

#532

Post by onethought »

anonymousiam wrote: post #528
omosubi wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so the american 1% alone has created 50T in wealth in the last several decades? seems unlikely

50T looks about right according to this chart: https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...

That chart doesn’t strengthen your point. What (direct) action did those 1% take that generated 50T?

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

#533

Post by notahacker »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #397
learc83 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're talking Austrian economists, who are the primary proponent of the "fed is the bad buy, bring back the gold standard" argument, they explicitly reject any attempt at modeling or mathematical analysis. They are only interested in arguments based on "self evident" axioms. I've read many of the books you're talking about, and there's a reason they are "unpopular" and “discredited".

I think their main point is that mathematical models, without connection to reality and logically tracing out the fundamentals of how and why people act, are dangerous in isolation. Statistics is useful, but statistics can lie. Having a conceptual framework of why people do things is valuable. Then add the mathematical models on top.

Sure, but having a conceptual framework of why people do things, with models on top [theoretical and empirical] is how mainstream economics works. Pointing out conceptual flaws in each others' models and how that leads to prediction error is how economists debate.

The Austrian School on the other hand, is centred on Mises, whose magnum opus insisted that all his conclusions were logically deduced from the premise "humans act with purpose" and therefore unfalsifiable, stated that "no measurement is possible" in the field of economic activity (!) and who later described econometrics as "childish play with figures". That's a very different position from the many other mainstream and non-mainstream economists who simply think other economists' models are insufficiently connected to reality .

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

#534

Post by tylerhou »

josho wrote: post #427
tylerhou wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bunch of these graphs are misleading, especially the ones from the EPI. /r/badecon can explain better than I can: https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/6rtoh4/produc... TL;DR: 1. The pay line is for the bottom ~80% of workers, while the productivity line is for all workers. If you graph all workers wages vs all workers productivity, then the gap shrinks quite a bit. (Of course, maybe we should redistribute…

> Average hourly wages doesn't take into account workers' increase in benefits. I can't help but feel /r/badecon's rebuttal is dishonest. For many people benefits haven't increased, so the fact that it is excluded is a non-issue. E.g. The growing number of workers who are kept below full time hours to avoid being given fulltime benefits as one of many examples I could list. Regardless, if it is accurate I'm very curi…

Badecon addresses this — in fact, it’s the top comment.

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

#535

Post by anonymousiam »

kar5pt wrote: post #526
anonymousiam wrote: post #501

Wealth is not a zero-sum game. The whole premise that the rich make money by taking it from poor people is flawed. This premise has been the basis for many political uprisings (e.g. Venezuela) where wealth has been destroyed instead of created.

But if there's an alternative tax/regulation structure that can make distribution more equitable without affecting production too much, then the game can be zero sum, or close to zero sum. We don't have to choose between America and Venezuela. That's a false dichotomy.

I did not intend to draw any comparisons. My point was that the narrative about "Taking" wealth is false, and that it has been used for evil political purposes.

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

#536

Post by [deleted] »

jb775 wrote: post #487
tchalla wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Fed is stabilizing the price of the USD because of the coronavirus pandemic. If it were not printing money, then there would likely be a deflationary spiral that would cause a depression. And by doing that, we have the Cantillon Effect [0]. > The Cantillon Effect refers to the change in relative prices resulting from a change in money supply. The change in relative prices occurs because the change in money supp…

What's a good hedge against the Cantillon Effect?

[deleted]

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

#538

Post by jackcosgrove »

tylerhou wrote: post #383
anchpop wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is risky, because if the fed accidentally injects too much money by buying back too many bonds, they can always un-inject it by selling the bonds back (and banks are compelled to buy). This lets the fed be more aggressive because it knows that if it goes too far and starts seeing more inflation than it intended, it can always walk back its decision. But there's no realistic way to do that after having given $100…

Taxes?

Changes in tax rates require Congress to act. Too slow moving to be a money supply control.

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

#539

Post by staticman2 »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #464
socialist_coder wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Americans don't have disposable income to invest in the stock market.... there is no amount of investing that will turn their "barely making ends meet" wages into a living wage.

The median US household has ~$1000/month in investable cash left over after all ordinary expenses. Per the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) which tracks in detail how much people actually spend on myriad things in each income decile. Americans are notoriously poor at actually saving or investing that money compared to their counterparts in other developed countries, but $12,000/year is quite a lot to invest in th…

"You'd have a comfortable retirement" implies stock returns are knowable, which they are not. And the people assuming forward returns will be like past returns seem to be the least knowledgeable on evaluating assets.

12,000 a year is a lot less per year if you are saving for your child's college education.

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

#540

Post by jay_kyburz »

letstaxtherich wrote: post #396
jay_kyburz wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel like "inequality" is a problem in and of itself. I don't care that there are a lot of people with a lot more money than me. I would get upset if they don't make a fair contribution to running and maintaining our society. I get upset when I read that there are some very large organizations that don't pay tax. I get upset when our government hands out bailouts. I get upset when polluters don't pay to clean…

> I don't feel like "inequality" is a problem in and of itself. That's because it doesn't effect you. You don't have to face death because you can afford insulin or food or housing.

The lack of insulin, food, and housing is the problem. That really has nothing to do with how much money somebody else has. You could give everybody fee insulin, food and housing and not take anything away from the 1%. We the 99% simply choose not to.
Post reply on HN