Imagine being Jerome Powell and saying with a straight face to the cameras that the Fed monetary policy has absolutely nothing to do with inequality. Pitchforks get ever closer.
I’m not sure billionaires are the problem with respect to income/wealth inequality. We’ve always had mega-rich families, but what’s driving the anger against wealth inequality now?
The new phenomenon we’re seeing now is the pulling away of the upper middle class from everyone else. I think that’s the real source of anger against inequality. I don’t think most people really care that there is some billionaire out there. All billionaires combined earn just 1% of all income, so it’s not like they’re sucking up a huge part of all income. People get mad when they feel like they’re competing for real world resources, and there just aren’t enough billionaires to do that. But the Facebook engineer making $500,000/year? They’re the ones buying up the houses and driving middle class people out of neighborhoods.
I’ve been listening to the new New York Times podcast “Nice White Parents”: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/podcasts/nice-white-paren.... The first couple of episodes talks about the conflict between lower income Black and Hispanic parents and high income white parents in a Brooklyn neighborhood school. I think when people get mad about income inequality, for the most part they’re reacting to that sort competition for limited resources in American neighborhoods. And the “rich people” that are competing for those resources aren’t billionaires, but the upper middle class.
>We’ve always had mega-rich families, but what’s driving the anger against wealth inequality now?
The anger is from realizing the future isn’t as bright as expected. If this was a rising tide lifting all boats, no one would care the FB engineer making $500k if they also had an upward trajectory.
Instead the Facebook engineer is putting many yearbook company employees out of business, and google maps engineers are putting map makers out of business, etc.
There’s nothing wrong with obviating people, but they are understandably responding to the volatility with fear and anger as there is no social safety net.
"""
But the Facebook engineer making $500,000/year? They’re the ones buying up the houses and driving middle class people out of neighborhoods.
"""
Wait this sounds like demonizing the FB engineer for making the 500k even though he would now have to pay millions for a medium size/class/type home that was previously owned by (and sold for) a crazy amount by said "middle class".
I get very worried when I see this sentiment where somehow the employees of these companies are responsible for killing the previous fabric but what is driving them to these decisions is somehow sacred?
Agreed, I think people are underestimating the potential for societal breakdown in the US. The common refrain is that inequality is necessary but not sufficient for a revolution, but that it's also the case that the absolute level of the masses needs to be bad enough that the feeling of "I've got nothing left to lose" sets in.
I think the post-covid housing crisis could be a potential trigger for that. There are going to be a flood of evictions once the moratoriums are lifted. There is already a growing belief that property ownership in the US is "rigged", and once a society has widespread disillusionment with property rights, it's usually downhill from there.
I'm not saying it can't happen, but every urban society in history has had rich landlords and frustrated renters. It'll become a more critical problem if people start getting booted out onto the street en masse, but I think there's reason to be optimistic that can be avoided, since politicians on all sides have made it clear they don't plan to let it happen.
A large proportion of those masses (Republican voters) fervently support the very policies that have been driving inequality for decades. They don't really understand that, of course, but the worse things get, the more they flock to right-wing populist nonsense, accelerating their own financial ruin.
I'm not sure how to fix it. It's clearly too late to educate them properly about how economies function.
Look at what happened to the large majority of bank-owned homes from the previous crash (~17 million of them): they let them rot. Rather than affect the price of real estate, they let these homes rot, so the trade unions of finance and insurance can charge more for mortgages and fees. Now there are about to be ~10-30 million displaced peoples. This is not an ethical society and it deserves and should expect revolt, and it should be no surprise whatsoever when people begin committing property crimes. You were warned. You just didn't listen.
The Feds have picked the lesser of two evils. QE and various monetary policy does increase inequality (of opportunity), but it also propped up some businesses which are employers and prevent an even larger economic collapse.
> But even a pandemic hasn’t stopped the relentless growth of their fortune. The Waltons are richer than ever, adding $25 billion in the past year to take their combined fortune to an estimated $215 billion
To put things into perspective, the entire Wolton fortune, accumulated over decades, would bankroll the ongoing COVID lockdowns for about a week.
To put things in perspective, a billion is a thousand million. The Waltons are worth 215,000 million dollars.
A relatively few lucky Americans may acquire a few million over their entire careers. I am a well paid developer who's had a number of good breaks and I hope to have that much some day for retirement.
They're worth that. It doesn't mean anything until that is converted into cash. So their wealth increase or decrease isn't coming at the expense of everyone else. It is a reflection of the secondary effect of millions of other economic decisions made by others.
If we could have a hard lockdown for 4-8 weeks and still come out the other end in good financial shape, that would be amazing, and really get the virus under control. If a small number of families could make that happen, let's do it.
That reads like “If a small number of families could forfeit several lifetimes’ of fortunes accumulated via serving the needs/wants of vast swaths of population, let’s take their money and do it!”
This seems like something that is much more properly paid via broad-based taxation, not by seizing wealth from a small number of families.
We have already spent 15 times that much money on the lockdowns we did have, and didn’t get the virus under control. And it’s not a “small number of families.” The top 10 richest American families could only cover about 3-4 weeks of lockdowns. The first four months of lockdowns cost as much as the total wealth of the entire Forbes 400, and we’re not even done yet.
And of course, you’re comparing wealth accumulated over 50-60 years to a one time bailout. This likely won’t be the last pandemic of our lifetime. What’ll we do next time?
Things I like to think I’d do if I made 10^9 every 2 weeks:
-pay everyone making minimum wage or below 100$ for registering to vote. Cost about 170m.
-devote some portion of it to animal safety and care taking. Even stuff like sanctuaries for feral cats, dogs, and other non-adopted creatures as opposed to euthanasia.
-public libraries that provide services people otherwise wouldn’t have. Like a public square almost. Have a clearing house match up community interests with speakers and the like. Ie inviting religious people or leaders from religions foreign to the community to come in and discuss their beliefs and culture. I also want people to be able to request and invite things like lectures from theoretical physicists. Also do stuff like letting people request time on musical equipment in the building to learn how to play - or even just see if it’s for them.
Granted, all of this would probably negatively affect that biweekly 1 billion!
Would invest almost of it in my medical charity of choice: SENS, and after that public outreach.
Some people would accuse me of making medicine only for the rich, but that is not my intention. The disease of old age affect equally both billionaire and the poorest of grandparents, and everyone in between. To have new medicine only available to the rich and only the rich would be a total failure of my aim.
Maybe someone’s seeing this discussion as OT. I see it as a discussion of opportunity costs-we’re not doing any of these in part because the funds go places like this.
I like your idea. I don’t recall much RD being put into self assembling machines. The potential there seems like obvious incentive. Like why not try to send such machines to the outer solar system and send stuff back to us?
Only 200 races? That's honestly a lot less than I expected. There's probably at least 100 contentious races in the House and Senate, for instance, and that's before even looking at state races.
And really, the important thing is the amount they give, not the number of targets. One could argue that giving $20 to ActBlue is engaging in hundreds of races, too.
the intersting bait and switch that always seems to happen is people point at billionaires and then use their wealth to justify raising taxes on dentists that make 200k. Whereas the billionaires can just offshore their wealth.
they are used as scapegoats but the damage is done to working professionals like family physicians
I was listening to the BBC the other day and someone was something they estimate there's 32 Trillion dollars in tax havens the world over.
I've never understood why some small country just doesn't invade a tax haven and seize the money. I know it wouldn't happen but it'd be a great way to disrupt crime in the world.
I agree, I think the line between low taxes and high taxes should be very high, 200k or above. 200k people don't have enough resource control to personally warp democracy. In the context of class war, it could help change the lines of battle and get 200k people to realize they are on the side of the poor
> With that much money, you could pile $1 million onto each of the 19,368 seats in the Walton arena and still have enough left to give Walmart’s 2.2 million associates about $90,000 each.
Does this measurement mean anything to anybody? It doesn't help me visualize anything.
They really need a serious billionaire tax. Something fun like: If your a billionaire and at your death your collective wealth was greater than 2 Billion. You get a public statue with a plaque that overlooks all slimy stuff you did to make that money. Also you can give your kids 1 Billion and the rest is returned to the government.
They would just put the money and company shares in trusts. It wouldn't change anything.
What we really need is for capitalism as we know it to die. It's unethical that people are having to worry about starvation, not having a roof, and not having access to medical care in the US while Mark Zuckerburg is colonizing an island of Hawaii and suing native residents out of their family land.
Readit News
Robin Williams on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etQeFJ2lbbo
The new phenomenon we’re seeing now is the pulling away of the upper middle class from everyone else. I think that’s the real source of anger against inequality. I don’t think most people really care that there is some billionaire out there. All billionaires combined earn just 1% of all income, so it’s not like they’re sucking up a huge part of all income. People get mad when they feel like they’re competing for real world resources, and there just aren’t enough billionaires to do that. But the Facebook engineer making $500,000/year? They’re the ones buying up the houses and driving middle class people out of neighborhoods.
I’ve been listening to the new New York Times podcast “Nice White Parents”: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/podcasts/nice-white-paren.... The first couple of episodes talks about the conflict between lower income Black and Hispanic parents and high income white parents in a Brooklyn neighborhood school. I think when people get mad about income inequality, for the most part they’re reacting to that sort competition for limited resources in American neighborhoods. And the “rich people” that are competing for those resources aren’t billionaires, but the upper middle class.
The anger is from realizing the future isn’t as bright as expected. If this was a rising tide lifting all boats, no one would care the FB engineer making $500k if they also had an upward trajectory.
Instead the Facebook engineer is putting many yearbook company employees out of business, and google maps engineers are putting map makers out of business, etc.
There’s nothing wrong with obviating people, but they are understandably responding to the volatility with fear and anger as there is no social safety net.
Wait this sounds like demonizing the FB engineer for making the 500k even though he would now have to pay millions for a medium size/class/type home that was previously owned by (and sold for) a crazy amount by said "middle class".
I get very worried when I see this sentiment where somehow the employees of these companies are responsible for killing the previous fabric but what is driving them to these decisions is somehow sacred?
I think the post-covid housing crisis could be a potential trigger for that. There are going to be a flood of evictions once the moratoriums are lifted. There is already a growing belief that property ownership in the US is "rigged", and once a society has widespread disillusionment with property rights, it's usually downhill from there.
I'm not sure how to fix it. It's clearly too late to educate them properly about how economies function.
Thank you for sharing the Robin Williams clip, I had not seen that before and found it hilarious and perfectly fitting.
Deleted Comment
To put things into perspective, the entire Wolton fortune, accumulated over decades, would bankroll the ongoing COVID lockdowns for about a week.
A relatively few lucky Americans may acquire a few million over their entire careers. I am a well paid developer who's had a number of good breaks and I hope to have that much some day for retirement.
215B is an unimaginable amount of wealth.
Dead Comment
This seems like something that is much more properly paid via broad-based taxation, not by seizing wealth from a small number of families.
And of course, you’re comparing wealth accumulated over 50-60 years to a one time bailout. This likely won’t be the last pandemic of our lifetime. What’ll we do next time?
-pay everyone making minimum wage or below 100$ for registering to vote. Cost about 170m.
-devote some portion of it to animal safety and care taking. Even stuff like sanctuaries for feral cats, dogs, and other non-adopted creatures as opposed to euthanasia.
-public libraries that provide services people otherwise wouldn’t have. Like a public square almost. Have a clearing house match up community interests with speakers and the like. Ie inviting religious people or leaders from religions foreign to the community to come in and discuss their beliefs and culture. I also want people to be able to request and invite things like lectures from theoretical physicists. Also do stuff like letting people request time on musical equipment in the building to learn how to play - or even just see if it’s for them.
Granted, all of this would probably negatively affect that biweekly 1 billion!
Some people would accuse me of making medicine only for the rich, but that is not my intention. The disease of old age affect equally both billionaire and the poorest of grandparents, and everyone in between. To have new medicine only available to the rich and only the rich would be a total failure of my aim.
With the resulting glut of energy I would do anything
P.S. Mild curiosity: why the downvotes. seems like a solid plan
I like your idea. I don’t recall much RD being put into self assembling machines. The potential there seems like obvious incentive. Like why not try to send such machines to the outer solar system and send stuff back to us?
>Family's political network is planning to engage in nearly 200 federal and state races in 2020.
Why not take all of that and put it toward green or fusion research?
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair
Except in this case, the salary is more like their portfolio rate of return.
And really, the important thing is the amount they give, not the number of targets. One could argue that giving $20 to ActBlue is engaging in hundreds of races, too.
Deleted Comment
they are used as scapegoats but the damage is done to working professionals like family physicians
I know where my household income ranks
https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator/
I’m in no way “rich”. But, I am intellectually honest enough not to consider ourselves “middle class” according to statistics.
This thread is rife with lack of knowledge about what wealth even is and how to re distribute it to society.
Does this measurement mean anything to anybody? It doesn't help me visualize anything.
Maybe even throw in a street name or something.
What we really need is for capitalism as we know it to die. It's unethical that people are having to worry about starvation, not having a roof, and not having access to medical care in the US while Mark Zuckerburg is colonizing an island of Hawaii and suing native residents out of their family land.
> The ranking excludes first-generation fortunes and those fortunes controlled by a single heir.
Wal-Mart has done a lot of good for people with lower incomes. Prices are low, employment is usually easy to come by.
It's not home to the finest of goods, but when the chips are down Wal-Mart is your friend.
Dead Comment