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The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

awealthofcommonsense.com

531–540 of 606 posts

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

#531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> im not sure i agree that those issues are based on class division. Rule of thumb: it always, always goes back to class. No war but class war is a cliche for good reason. > Large swathes of America seem to be genuinely opposed to public healthcare. That may be kinda true, but most Americans actually want it [0]. They just have basically no representation in media or politics. These days we're 'lucky' if a Democrat g…

> Rule of thumb: it always, always goes back to class. No war but class war is a cliche for good reason. If its politically convinent to view things in terms of class then of course everything gets traced back to class. But i think that is more about trying to fit every peg into a round hole no matter how square it is. As the cliche goes, if all you have is a hammer. > That may be kinda true, but most Americans actua…

> If its politically convinent to view things in terms of class then of course everything gets traced back to class.

You think I form my views for 'political convenience'? How strange.

People trace things back to class because that's the driving force behind so much of what's wrong with the world. It's not the majority of ordinary people who are fighting for stripping environment regulations, or clamoring to make defense contractors billions of dollars, or pushing to make torture legal, or fighting to give Israel more 2,000 lb unguided bombs. It's the .1%. And that isn't really controversial, or difficult to figure out.

When the political and media class are openly bought and owned by the .1%, refusing to acknowledge classes role in politics is profoundly silly.

> I dont think the poll supports your contention. Only 57% wanted it.

"Only" 57%? 57% is 'most'. By any and every definition.

And if you compare that to the ~3% (at absolute max) of media and political figures who argue for public healthcare, you may start to see what the problem is.

> its hardly just the upper class saying no.

Yes - because 99% of the media, owned by the .1%, work every day to convince people that healthcare for profit is somehow a good and clever thing.

The American health model is a sad laughing stock. It's a bogey man all over the world, a stark example of the perils of taking privatization too far. People in other countries are still cheering for Luigi lol.

This class war which we are all in (whether we are aware of it or not) has casualties; one of them is our more vulnerable and easily manipulated brethren. That's why it's "only" 57% - because lifelong propaganda does indeed have an effect, especially on the easily swayed. A lot of Americans don't even know that this is the majority view.

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

#532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an excellent post. I think the competition idea works at the level of a country if people by and large play by the rules (a big if ). It does not work at the level of macro economics. If you (as a country) insist on competition and absence of mega corps in your country while a country next to you subsidizes mega corps that outcompete your smaller companies - you will lose. Thus in a world of competition, ever…

> If you (as a country) insist on competition and absence of mega corps in your country while a country next to you subsidizes mega corps that outcompete your smaller companies - you will lose. The assumption here is that megacorps are a competitive advantage. Let's look at a counterexample. Suppose solar manufacturing is a growth industry. China wants to dominate it, so they subsidize it. Is there now a single megac…

I think it'd be helpful to stick with just the military example. (Your comments re Oracle are well taken and I agree)

I don't think you've tackled the problem of if we're playing competition and they build nukes, we need to build nukes. It's a zero sum game and the result is nuclear holocaust.

Do you disagree with the premise and if not, what is your proposed solution?

Regarding there must be a king - I think it'd be helpful if you could summarize your political stance in a few short sentences. I'm worried that we'll be hopelessly lost discussing minutia otherwise.

ps. I've been here a while and always been a fan of your comments :)

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

#533

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…

> 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. Did they, though... The Western media depicts all color revolutions as such movements, complete with 'the military speaking out'. They did the same in Venezuela and other places. The 'military guys speaking out' turned out to b…

They did yeah. There was this whole hashtag-like thing on Telegram where people who had a regime uniform in their wardrobe would stuff it in the trash. It was mostly demobilised conscripts, policemen, and such. There was also one high ranking retired officer who openly spoke out against the regime, who’s in exile now.

Having written that, so yes and no. As in, I don’t think there were many (any?) active service members. That likely would’ve been very dangerous. But people who had close and recent ties with the military, so could be expected to be regime loyalists, yes, plenty.

EDIT: I never follow Ukraine, Russia, or Belarus on “Western media”. I read Russian, so I follow a bunch of Telegram channels from those countries. The protests in Belarus were basically covered live.

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

#534
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…

We are living in feudal system at the moment. Amazon, cloud providers and everything seems to be subscription based nowadays - as Yanis Varoufakis calls it "techno-feudalism". We have system which funnels unimaginable amounts of money to few overlords, it'll keep reinforcing itself creating more and more contrast with time. Open source everything seems to be the only answer if you ask me.

Comparing access to entertainment with access to food is disingenuous.

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

#535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rule of thumb: it always, always goes back to class. No war but class war is a cliche for good reason. If its politically convinent to view things in terms of class then of course everything gets traced back to class. But i think that is more about trying to fit every peg into a round hole no matter how square it is. As the cliche goes, if all you have is a hammer. > That may be kinda true, but most Americans actua…

> If its politically convinent to view things in terms of class then of course everything gets traced back to class. You think I form my views for 'political convenience'? How strange. People trace things back to class because that's the driving force behind so much of what's wrong with the world. It's not the majority of ordinary people who are fighting for stripping environment regulations, or clamoring to make def…

> You think I'm writing these comments for 'political convenience'? How strange.

I think you are interpreting evidence to support your preferred narrative without considering alternative explanations. Which is what i meant by politically convinent.

> Ordinary people aren't fighting for stripping environment regulations, or clamoring to make defense contractors billions of dollars.

Ordinary (working class people) people who work in those industries tend to be ok with it (arguably that is what makes capitalism insidious).

> "Only" 57%? 57% is 'most'. By any and every definition.

> And if you compare that to the ~3% (at absolute max) of media and political figures who argue for public healthcare, you may start to see what the problem is.

57% is a little more than half, which suggests the issue isn't correlated very strongly with class given you are counting only at most 3% as upper class.

Remember that if this issue had nothing to do with class you would expect 50% support (assuming the actual relavent variable was equally present in the sample group). The baseline is not 0% (or 3%) as that is what would happen if it was a class issue in the opposite direction (what you would get if lower classes hated the idea). ~50% suggests it is not a class issue but has some other cause that is more evenly distributed in the sample group.

Obviously this survey is the wrong type of survey to determine much of anything since its not broken down by demographics.

> This class war which we are all in (whether we are aware of it or not) has casualties; one of them is our more vulnerable and easily manipulated brethren. That's why it's "only" 57% - because lifelong propaganda does indeed have an effect, especially on the easily swayed.

Convinent that anyone who disagrees is just being manipulated.

I'm not neccesarily even saying that is untrue - propaganda exists for a reason; it can be very effective. However if you assume everyone who disagrees is swayed that is a dangerous path. Its non-falsifiable. How do you distinguish between people swayed by propaganda and people who legitamently disagree. Hell, if you are going down this path, why do you assume the 57% that want free healthcare are the real preference instead of the swayed by propaganda group? When you start believing this type of thing it starts to become pointless since you can always spin it as if everyone agrees with you regardless of if they actually do.

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

#536
post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take your property tax idea, and assume you solve issues like the wealthy "selling" the property to companies who "lease" them right back to their wealthy owners (the wealthy will spend a lot of time and effort avoiding the tax) But say you succeed. The wealthy sell their second homes with only a small impact on house pieces. Now your tax raises nothing (everyone sold) and the wealthy invest in something else. It's a…

>Take your property tax idea, and assume you solve issues like the wealthy "selling" the property to companies who "lease" them right back to their wealthy owners This loophole only works if you don't tax large company real estate holdings. Which would be dumb. Of course this scheme would require for real estate taxes to also be applied to companies holding real estate. And why wouldn't they? >The wealthy sell their…

> Here in Germany, I know of at least three different NGOs that have been pointing to this problem for more than a decade now and have developed detailed policy recommendations, both on a national and E.U. level.

What are the NGOs? I'd be interested to read what they recommend. I also appreciate your efforts to explain how this might work but there are still some big gaps (you may well have answers too but I think your can't fairly deal with a topic this complicated in an HN comment)

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

#537
post #323

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> People who voted for trump aren’t even aware he’s part of the problem of wealth inequality. Its just amazing as an outsider to see the other side calling Trump voters they don't understand what they voted for.

I mean if you’re rich I’m not referring to you. I’m referring to poor people who voted for trump. Also I’m not referring to people who voted for the lesser of two evils.

Democrats will probably lose the next election again with that attitude.

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

#538
post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

You are stating these things as facts, however I have not seen a single rational thought on why Elon/Bezos/... existing makes others suffer MORE, taking into account that the poorest now are objectively better off than in the past.

The delta can increase and QOL across all incomes increase (albit different rates).

If the people here just want 100% equality, just state it as intention.

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

#539
post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People who voted for trump aren’t even aware he’s part of the problem of wealth inequality. Its just amazing as an outsider to see the other side calling Trump voters they don't understand what they voted for.

I mean if you’re rich I’m not referring to you. I’m referring to poor people who voted for trump. Also I’m not referring to people who voted for the lesser of two evils.

I can't believe that people still parrot this take. This is exactly why Democrats lose, the attitude that "we know whats best for you" will always lose. You should just stop it.

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

#540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Britain and America are not exactly close...

And that's the primary reason that Britain lost the war. The war was much more expensive for the British than for the Colonists, and became even more expensive once France joined. The British didn't lose because they couldn't keep fighting, but because the cost of the war grew to be higher than the expected value of winning. It was also expensive for the French, and that cost helped bankrupt the state, which led to t…

The French revolution happened because real wealth was basically left untaxed, leaving an enormous tax burden on everyone that wasn't nobility. The situation was not unlike what Piketty described to win his nobel prize.
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