Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030
129 replies, posted
I think it should be more along the lines of despawning items in video games. You can take a car and drive it around, get out and walk around. But if you dont touch it for an unreasonable amount of time it despawns. If you didn't want it to despawn you would get in it for a second and get back out. If you cant do that, you obviously werent using it...
I'm certainly no economist so I dont have any idea of what the implications of that are. But I like the idea of this convo:
Rich guy: Shit i just lost $10,000
Friend: How did you manage that?
Rich guy: I didn't touch it for 15 years so it expired
Friend: Could you not have like, converted it to Canadian dollar and that would reset the exp date? And then coverted it back? Or opened a new account and moved it there? Invest it?
Rich guy: Yea but i have like, millions of dollars in many accounts so I guess I just forgot to do that to one of em and lost 10k
Friend: Okay but isn't this a bit like having the change from couch cushions stolen?
Rich guy: How so?
Friend: Well if someone told you they stole the change from your couch you'd be pissed, but if they didn't say anything you would never notice. You might be aware that there is money there and consider a part of your total wealth, but until you spent every dollar on your debit card you were never going to touch it. And you have a job so you were never going to run out of money. So you were never going to need that money. If you wanted it though, for like sentimental reasons or whatever, you could have put it in a piggy bank or your pocket. But you were never ever going to do that because you truly dont perceive the couch change.
No no the lead will get ejected by nasa and the lead would get mined manually because of their unstoppable work ethic that allowed them to get rich in the first place.
The uranium could be synthesized instead of mined, you do that by building a uranium synthesizing plant near a nuclear reactor and use its energy to make even more uranium.
The problem is their methods of investing in property and stock acquisitions isn't much different from accumulating money in a bank.
They invest into a loop that keeps the money close at hand, never seeing the light of day for places that are worth investing in.
oh by no means do i think it is good, all of their wealth being tied up in things other than cash make it an even more difficult yet important problem to solve.
That falls into the same case as just keeping it in a bank and doing nothing?
Aka something that isn't as rewarding to do.
Actually, in most cases it's not sitting in a bank account. It's invested, because that's a much more stable and reliable way to make the value of your wealth grow.
It's not good that these people have this much wealth but it's not the end of the world either.
The amount of people in here that either don't understand how "wealth" works or are confused about what their "wealth" actually entails is mind boggling.
Wealth inequality isn't good, but neither is violently destroying what we've built by virtue of it. The last time people got it in their head that they can fix this in one swift move is the period of history when deaths were counted in the millions.
Wealth inequality effects trust in the system. I have no reason to value or trust a government who's backers are billionaires who control more wealth than the voting population. It distinctly harms our societies by eroding the trust and faith in the systems of governance, it creates imbalances of power and corruption is often rampant which doesn't help either.
Jeff Bezos doesn't have billions of dollars in cash @Silence but nor does he need to have massive amounts of power to shift. Look for example, at the HQ2 fiasco around Amazon. Towns and cities are bending over backwards to give tax incentives that in some cases are absurd just to have the "Privilege" of a major Amazon cite. But we have little evidence that these massive investments ever pay off for the locations that do them in terms of transfer of wealth. The host cities, and their people, rarely gain anything from these types of transactions. Look at the other examples of major "Hometown" companies like Locheed Martin, or Boeing and their home states and the interaction there of. It benefits a few people, the workers, the companies(who's major leadership roles often abscond to whatever playground they feel like being in) but it doesn't save towns or cities. It creates one note towns, much like the mining town boom towns. Sure, services pop up to profit here and there but in todays age that money again is going back to larger multinational conglomerates.
@Silence it would help if you clarified who had what about wealth wrong so you could lay down the truth
You said it yourself here:
Yet, we've seen numerous people in this thread, not counting all of the past threads where this has been explained, say things as it it were all just money in a bank account, or a fleet of yachts. It's not. We both know it's things like stakes in companies that they have founded or absorbed. We know that it's literally in infrastructure and buildings and millions of other things that it takes to make sure a company runs. Solving the issue is not nearly as easy as "LOL TAXES AND REDISTRIBUTION BRO!", because this wealth is directly tied to, and supports our entire economy. You don't use a dull machete in a situation that calls for a scalpel.
yeah its called taxes. the more you earn, the more you pay and it should go to people who don't earn as much so everyone has a shot at life.
its super depressing seeing how most people in my life get by on a shitty job that they hate. all the while some rich, out of touch, old cunts run the world
It is a fact though, that there are trillions of dollars in various bank accounts that are un taxed though. So while Jeff Bezos doesn't have that kind of cash on hand, there is a massive issue with wealth disparity. Yes or no?
that or have the authorization to engage in large investment vehicles that only the rich and successful have access to. Hedge funds are a great example even though they have done poorly as of late, you have to be so rich to play the game, even though they have had massive returns over the years, and that's just one financial vehicle only rich can use.
but... if it's invested that means the money has already seen the light of day???
Don't worry lads - I've been on the phone to some libertarians and what they said we need is more capitalism. That'll fix it.
Wealth out of politics is a different business, that can be achieved through our system, but the key word here being through the system. It is important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The average standard of living has raised up and it is because we encourage people to improve what is in front of them, and when necessary we take public steps to fund things that ought to be funded. Anything short of international cooperation would drive money out of the economy to protect it from whatever redistribution scheme you have in mind. The option that achieves the most with the smallest amount of force is best, and that is so we can avoid both another witch-hunt, and so we can avoid breaking the self regulating system we having going. We have no clue how delicate it is, and it certainly isn't new in the grand scheme of things. From each according to their ability to each according to their need sounds great on the face of it, but there is a potentially a lot of blood between here and there.
Source.
I don't think it's that simple of a question. We all know that Jeff Bezos' wealth is in shares of his company, and that his company is the entity that actually owns everything. All this wealth is actually tied up in investments, companies, and other things that helps our economy not only locally, but globally. To just say flat out that it is or isn't a problem ignores a LOT of nuance in the subject.
Why don’t we just kill anyone who gets too rich?
like think about it, we won’t have that many rich people, and we’ll have population control
Super rich hold $32 trillion in offshore havens | Reuters
As long as returns on capital is so much higher than on work, this won't change. Sure, investment drives new jobs and stuff, but it seems like there's an imbalance here. If you have wealth, accumulating more wealth gets exponentially easier.
There’s more blood to be spilled if we do nothing so placate yourself however you want but there’s been a lot of lives lost to poverty.
I will accept this and eat my words. Now what happens when they finally try to move those funds home and use them?
They don’t need to move them home to use them, and done in a piece meal enough fashion the taxation rates would be literally nothing to them as a value.
wealth has focused into fewer and fewer hands over the last century, why people don’t see a crisis when a segment of about 7,000 people owns the vast majority of the wealth and therefore the power to minimie taxation further.
Look at Trumps Tax Cuts. Extreme wealth just bought more extreme power. I don’t know how you view this, but I know I don’t like the idea that wealth’s exuberant power just builds more power for those same people.
I don't like money in politics. I think we should have a way to insulate the government from these people. I will 100% agree with you that this money in politics is bad news. I don't think we are in disagreement with this at all.
But at the same time, I don't think you can pull wealth from them without bringing companies and the entire economy crashing down in the process. A lot of solutions people propose effectively ends in the mass devaluation and liquidation of companies.
When the poor have nothing left to eat, they will eat the rich.
Except the US has done it before. It used to have a extremely high luxury tax to force companies to invest and spread wealth. This was all during the baby boomer period. Wealth right now is just collecting in areas where the gov cant touch, or being spent/stashed personally. Stagnant money is extremely bad for the economy, and when the lower/middle class eats up the majority of the spending in the US (a nation that is mostly services focused) it spells bad news for the future.
The secret to wealth is they don't buy coffees every day, duh.
Taxing liquid assets is the easy part, but won't do much. The vast majority of this amassed wealth is in non-liquid assets. How do you tax someone owning shares in a company without forcing the person to sell the shares, and therefore causing a devaluation of the company itself?
Its called capital gains tax, just now there's loopholes getting around it for majority of your taxes. And the tax rate has dropped dramatically since bush was in office and kicked the can since then. These mega companies are a joke anyway, like how amazon pays little taxes, but cant afford basic pay for their workers and treat them like cattle.
Capital gains only works on sale. If you don't sell, you can't tax.
And the tax code needs to be updated to make sure they pay a minimum tax percentage. I don't disagree with that.
This still does nothing to solve the wealth disparity.
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