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

The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

awealthofcommonsense.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 606 posts

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

#561

Post by mmooss »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #327
matwood wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Numbers mean nothing when the guys who own the guns are not on your side. Not saying it will turn out differently, but there are more guns circulating in the US than there are people. Nearly everyone has or can easily get access to a gun. US culture is also quite a bit different, celebrating violence, don't tread on me, etc... Again, it might not make a difference, but I'm not sure those other situations are compar…

If it actually does come to a new civil war, my money is still on whoever owns most of the military. Small arms are nice and well, but they don't help you a lot when the other guy has got APCs and tanks.

In the US's two most recent wars, the people with small arms outlasted the US military. It happened in 3 of the 5 U.S. wars since WWII, and in the other two there was nobody with small arms.

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

#562

Post by [deleted] »

whiplash451 wrote: post #465
vincnetas wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France : top 10% own 60%, Bottom 50% own 5% USA : top 10% own 72%, Bottom 50% own 2% Sweden : top 10% own 60%, Bottom 50% own 5% Source : https://wid.world/country/france/

I don't find these numbers particularly indicative of a massive difference between the EU and the US.

[deleted]

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

#563

Post by martindbp »

peppers-ghost wrote: post #354
martindbp wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think China's economy runs on Marxist-Leninist ideas? It's capitalism with authoritarian characteristics.

China's economy is more state owned than not. The private market is strictly controlled with socialist ideology. The difference between Chinese markets and liberal markets is that the state there controls the capitalists, in the US the capitalists control the state.

Xi has been moving in that direction yes, but generally that has not been true. Also, it sounds like you greatly sympathize with Chinese authoritarianism, maybe you need to do a reality check. You can always go live in China if prefer that. I've been many times, for months at a time, since I have in-laws there. Lately I would describe it as a high-tech North Korea.

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

#564

Post by tfourb »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #536
tfourb wrote: 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 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 yo…

This is a comprehensive (I think several hundred pages) tax scheme by the German branch of Attac: https://www.attac.de/kampagnen/wer-zahlt/unser-steuerkonzept (Attac is generally far left on the political spectrum and explicitly critical of capitalism as a concept, so expect more of a radical perspective and solutions)

Das "Netzwerk Steuergerechtigkeit" has detailed concepts for a broad range of taxation schemes. This is a working paper on taxing wealth that was first published in 2021, I think: https://www.netzwerk-steuergerechtigkeit.de/infothek/vermoeg...

They also published some thoughts and ideas for a global tax on Billionaires: https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/international/21426.pdf

The political party "Die Linke" has long demanded a wealth tax: https://www.die-linke.de/themen/steuern/vermoegensteuer/

Thomas Piketty (a quite famous and well respected French economist) has proposed a global progressive wealth tax: https://www.cadtm.org/thomas-piketty-a-progressive-global-ta...

There is tons more out there if you are willing to look for it. Economists, politicians and activists have thought about the taxation of wealth for as long as modern economics exist as a concept. Wealth taxation was the original form of taxation, because it turns out that property can be hidden from the authorities much less effectively than income and you can be very rich (and have a corresponding lifestyle) with a nominally very low income. Which might be a reason that rich people love income taxes and spend a lot of money on convincing the general public that wealth taxes are the devil's own work ;-).

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

#565

Post by baobabKoodaa »

actionfromafar wrote: post #521
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, are young people buying their 1st home now? If not, is it actually easier for them to buy? No, young people are not buying their first home. Despite that, yes, it is actually easier for them to buy. What is stopping them? I would say mainly the expectation that housing prices will drop further as the economy is going further down the drain, leading to better buying opportunities at a later time.

That sounds like buying a home not to live in and start a family in. Pretty sad if so.

Things are not black and white. People who are starting a family and buying a house will typically contemplate a long time on when it's the right time to buy. It's natural that financial aspects play a part in that equation (expectation of having a job, expectation of housing market going up or down, etc.)

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

#566

Post by peppers-ghost »

martindbp wrote: post #563
peppers-ghost wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China's economy is more state owned than not. The private market is strictly controlled with socialist ideology. The difference between Chinese markets and liberal markets is that the state there controls the capitalists, in the US the capitalists control the state.

Xi has been moving in that direction yes, but generally that has not been true. Also, it sounds like you greatly sympathize with Chinese authoritarianism, maybe you need to do a reality check. You can always go live in China if prefer that. I've been many times, for months at a time, since I have in-laws there. Lately I would describe it as a high-tech North Korea.

I honestly would prefer moving there but it's pretty hard to attain citizenship. I believe the US is going to collapse and potentially balkanize in the coming years and don't want to witness it firsthand.

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

#567

Post by dredmorbius »

prasadjoglekar wrote: post #266
Almondsetat wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because the richer one is the more one can endure. In a market crash, the rich can just survive with their own stash of liquid money and when the time is ripe they can sweep in and buy for cheap the stocks of middle class investors trying to liquidate to make ends meet

Liquid money is only good if the bank stays solvent. Which SVB was not, and neither were many banks in 2008 until the federal govt stepped in and backstopped all deposits beyond the $250K limit.

In the past several US financial crises, most notably 2007-8 and 1929, it wasn't loss of faith in currency which was instrumental, it was a lack of availability and flow of currency, largely due to debt structuring.

In both cases, what eventually resolved the matter was not banks spontaneously restoring solvency, but the central bank, that is, the financial entity capable of creating new money out of thin air, which reliquidated the banks, greatly assisted in the earlier instance by vast increases in government spending as a consequence of WWII.

There's a group who likes to preach loss of faith in the US dollar; their predictive record has proved quite poor. Despite this it remains an inexplicably popular trope.

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

#568

Post by dredmorbius »

raziel2p wrote: post #96
weatherlite wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming sarcasm here. The 2008 crash was immediately offset by huge rounds of QE that most of them went to bail out financial institutions and inadvertently further inflated the prices of most assets. It may have been necessary, I don't know, but the bottom line is the stock market (and all assets generally) was inflated with huge sums of new money.

so how does this align with your opinion/idea that a stock market crash today would reduce inequality? more likely the same thing would just happen again.

As I'd just noted in another comment: in 1929 the US (and eventually global) stock markets collapsed.

This set off the greatest period of wealth equality in the US, through a combination of factors:

- Strengthening the power of the Federal Reserve to re-liquidate banks.

- Direct government employment of individuals, whether through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Civil Conservation Corps (CCC), and eventually of course the armed forces as the US entered WWII.

- Enormous strengthening of labour rights and unions within the US.

- The US stepping in as the world's leading manufacturer in the post-war era, having its industrial plant intact, raw materials available, and demobilisation providing for a vast increase in the labour force itself without wage reductions.

- Generally progressive policies in government regulation, civil rights, educational access, housing access, transportation improvements, and healthcare over the period 1945 -- 1975.

- A highly progressive tax policy.

Not all of that is obviously replicable today. The US faces strong disadvantages relative to other countries in raw manufacturing (though can produce very-high-value goods which make up in trade value what they lack in sheer tonnage) and demographic challenges (along with much of Europe and advanced Asian countries, notably Japan, Korea, and China). But other options remain available and to my mind useful. Changes in tax policy to re-distribute aggregated wealth and make tax havens (both onshore and off) far less viable would likely be good starts. These are of course politically challenging, particularly under present circumstances, but might remain within possibility.

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

#569

Post by dredmorbius »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #375
carlob wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The great depression in itself wasn't, but the combined effect of WWI, GD and WW2 was. We razed Europe rather than redistribute.

Also ended up with all of Europe's gold by the end of WW2, making the dollar the global reserve currency

Both facts may be true without the causal link being present.

Establishing the US as the global reserve currency had little if anything to do with where gold was stored, and far more to do with US economic and military power generally in the post-war era.

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

#570

Post by weatherlite »

from-nibly wrote: post #448
weatherlite wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its probably not easy but I think a policy that protects the workers instead of a policy that protects the corporations / shareholders. You can let corporations go bankrupt - thus causing shareholders to get wiped out, and compensate by protecting the workers and poorer people with government checks until they can find new employment. Banks are probably the only exception , I don't think you can let the banks fail wi…

That would massively slow the economy and the people at the top will never do that.

True , but inflating an endless assets and debt bubble in the hopes A.I will come to save us is also probably not sustainable.
Post reply on HN