Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#71

Post by abetusk » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 1:38 PM UTC

goatinaboat wrote: post #50

anovikov wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vast majority of top 1% don't even have much capital to speak of. They are just workers making somewhere in the mid-6 figures - doctors, lawyers, small mom-and-pop business owners, best coders, etc. And they pay the majority of taxes, actually. Bottom half of Americans pay nothing and top 1% pays 35-40% of all taxes. You are not fair to those educated, strong, hardworking people.

To be global 1% means earning $32k/year (source: investopedia). It’s a catchy phrase but ironically basically any Westerner using it is part of it. The archetypal Occupy protestors clutching their latest-model iPhone in one hand and a Starbucks in the other

I assume you got this from the Investopedia article [1]? This seems a little disingenuous, no?

To make the top 1% in terms of income, yes, it's $32k/year but to make the top 1% in terms of wealth you would need $770k in net worth, well beyond most Americans, even with assets such as an iPhone and a Starbucks coffee.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/05061...

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#72

Post by sweeneyrod » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 1:40 PM UTC

save_ferris wrote: post #40

anovikov wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vast majority of top 1% don't even have much capital to speak of. They are just workers making somewhere in the mid-6 figures - doctors, lawyers, small mom-and-pop business owners, best coders, etc. And they pay the majority of taxes, actually. Bottom half of Americans pay nothing and top 1% pays 35-40% of all taxes. You are not fair to those educated, strong, hardworking people.

> Vast majority of top 1% don't even have much capital to speak of. I disagree, they have vastly more capital than the 99% of earners below them. Unless you're comparing those 1%ers to someone like Zuckerberg specifically, there's really no way to square this statement. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the earnings threshold to be in the top 1% of earners in 2017 was $718K.[0] That's a pretty incredible am…

But still not enough capital for the statement in the original comment to apply to them:

> There’s so much ease to global movement of capital they just move it around so they pay - no taxes - have no accounts with their name on it - launder all their money legally (if need be) - buy up property and invest without any interest in any country in particular.

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#73

Post by rb808 » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 1:45 PM UTC

sprafa wrote: post #17

Moneyland is a good book on this topic. Rich people (top 1%) don’t live or earn money “anywhere” anymore. There’s so much ease to global movement of capital they just move it around so they pay - no taxes - have no accounts with their name on it - launder all their money legally (if need be) - buy up property and invest without any interest in any country in particular. It’s a depressing read.

The top 1% of the world is 80m people, I think the book is rather about the top few thousand families.

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#74

Post by jacobush » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 1:46 PM UTC

einhverfr wrote: post #42

sjogress wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid the Faroe Islands is an autonomous region within Denmark, not Britain.

And the Faeroes have never been part of the EU or Schengen. But being part of Denmark for defense purposes, I think they are in NATO.

NATO is mostly a fiction at this point.

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#75

Post by save_ferris » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 1:46 PM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #48

save_ferris wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Vast majority of top 1% don't even have much capital to speak of. I disagree, they have vastly more capital than the 99% of earners below them. Unless you're comparing those 1%ers to someone like Zuckerberg specifically, there's really no way to square this statement. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the earnings threshold to be in the top 1% of earners in 2017 was $718K.[0] That's a pretty incredible am…

It's not threshold. It's an average value. Threshold is a lot, lot lower, must be around 350K. The table say those in top 1% but not top 0.1% make $492,311 on average so clearly threshold of 1% is a lot lower than even that. No figure in your sources but my bet would be it's ~$350K

Whoops, misread that table.

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#76

Post by sequoia » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:06 PM UTC

havetocharge wrote: post #39

kingkawn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a temporary state of affairs that will soon be resolved in a global tidal wave of resentment and desperation, not to worry

Will it though? It's a comforting thought, but is there more to it than wishful thinking? There's a shroud of secrecy around this money, so how will all this resentment will be targeted, exactly?

> so how will all this resentment will be targeted, exactly?

If you're a Jew who knows his or her history, you probably know the answer to this question already. Jews frequently get scapegoated by populists (and others) when people are targeting "stateless money changers" regardless of the fact that most of the key players mentioned here are English, Russian, and Chinese.

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#77

Post by goatinaboat » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:12 PM UTC

abetusk wrote: post #71

goatinaboat wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be global 1% means earning $32k/year (source: investopedia). It’s a catchy phrase but ironically basically any Westerner using it is part of it. The archetypal Occupy protestors clutching their latest-model iPhone in one hand and a Starbucks in the other

I assume you got this from the Investopedia article [1]? This seems a little disingenuous, no? To make the top 1% in terms of income, yes, it's $32k/year but to make the top 1% in terms of wealth you would need $770k in net worth, well beyond most Americans, even with assets such as an iPhone and a Starbucks coffee. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/05061...

This seems a little disingenuous, no?

Not at all - from the comment I was replying to “Vast majority of top 1% don't even have much capital to speak of.”

But my wider point being that it is just used to mean “anyone slightly wealthier than me”.

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#78

Post by nerdponx » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:19 PM UTC

alfromspace wrote: post #69

nerdponx wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In New York, they were deliberately intended to become ghettos, or at best a place to sequester the city's poor. http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/now/politics/216905-the-l... https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/nyregion/how-new-york-cit...

"Mayor John V. Lindsay, who took office in 1965, was determined to break this cycle, to put low-income projects in middle-class neighborhoods. He tried, memorably, in 1971 in Forest Hills, Queens, figuring that the community’s predominantly liberal Jewish population would not object to the arrival of three 24-story towers. He was wrong. The construction site was soon overrun with angry protesters." I have to wonder,…

I'm not an expert in this area, but I think the general line of thinking is that it's concentration of poverty that causes these kinds of problems in the first place. Now that the problems exist, spreading the poverty around as you point out won't make the problems go away.

I'm sure there has been research done on this, I will try to find some references.

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#79

Post by ppseafield » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:22 PM UTC

rb808 wrote: post #73

sprafa wrote: post #17

Moneyland is a good book on this topic. Rich people (top 1%) don’t live or earn money “anywhere” anymore. There’s so much ease to global movement of capital they just move it around so they pay - no taxes - have no accounts with their name on it - launder all their money legally (if need be) - buy up property and invest without any interest in any country in particular. It’s a depressing read.

The top 1% of the world is 80m people, I think the book is rather about the top few thousand families.

The article also mentions the folks who are made wealthy by working for those few thousand families.

> A class of enablers has arisen to help Moneylanders perform parts two and three of what Bullough describes as their eternal cycle: “steal-hide-spend”. London overflows with lawyers, bankers, accountants, estate agents, public relations advisers, luxury-goods sellers, restaurateurs and art dealers who make their living servicing criminals. They see themselves as neutral, highly skilled professionals who (mostly, anyway) work within the law.

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#80

Post by nosleeptill » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:22 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #4

This article is painting mobility as a bad thing, but it also has a good side. China's capital controls are a big part of how it oppresses people: if they could just leave, China would have no ability to make itself into a productive dystopia. The ideal situation would be if countries had to compete for everyone's presence, but as it stands limitations on mobility mean that only the very powerful can leap over the bo…

Really that easy huh. Why don't you ask Meng Hongwei if it's that easy, or may Fan Bing Bing if it's that easy.

When your government is willing to torture and kill you in order to get their way, and they are willing to do it on foreign soil, it doesn't seem so easy, or safe.