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Housing and pension wealth are a fundamentally different kind of wealth than, e.g. factories, farmland, businesses, rental properties etc. The clearest contras

Housing and pension wealth are a fundamentally different kind of wealth than, e.g. factories, farmland, businesses, rental properties etc. The clearest contrast is between a house and a factory. If you own a factory, you have economic power - you can hire workers, pay them $X dollars, and get $X+Y dollars from what they produce. The point is that housing and pension wealth doesn't produce surplus, whereas financial and business wealth does. I don't know if I fully understand the pensions argument, but I absolutely agree with the housing argument.

gjm11 9y ago
I think there's an interesting distinction to be made between wealth that naturally produces more wealth (like owning a successful business, or a share of it) and wealth that doesn't (like owning a fancy house). And (something something Piketty r>g something) there is something to be said for measuring how "productive" wealth is distributed, as distinct from things like gold and housing and bank accounts. But: That isn't what Ruccio is proposing, nor is yours or anything like it the reason he gives. My pension funds are approximately 100% equities. They will, if the businesses they're invested in do well, grow. They provide me, in principle, with a tiny amount of power over those businesses (though I'm not sure I have any way to exercise it). But Ruccio wants those excluded from my net wealth when calculating his statistics. The money in my bank account is (as far as I'm concerned) just cash. I suppose my bank gets to use (most of) it for productive investments, but it makes no surplus for me. But Ruccio wants that included in my net wealth when calculating his statistics.
thaumasiotes 9y ago
> The clearest contrast is between a house and a factory. If you own a factory, you have economic power The idea that landlords don't have economic power is pretty amusing from the perspective of Chinese communism, where "landlord" was about as bad as it gets as a term of abuse.

gjm11 9y ago

I think there's an interesting distinction to be made between wealth that naturally produces more wealth (like owning a successful business, or a share of it) and wealth that doesn't (like owning a fancy house). And (something something Piketty r>g something) there is something to be said for measuring how "productive" wealth is distributed, as distinct from things like gold and housing and bank accounts. But: That isn't what Ruccio is proposing, nor is yours or anything like it the reason he gives. My pension funds are approximately 100% equities. They will, if the businesses they're invested in do well, grow. They provide me, in principle, with a tiny amount of power over those businesses (though I'm not sure I have any way to exercise it). But Ruccio wants those excluded from my net wealth when calculating his statistics. The money in my bank account is (as far as I'm concerned) just cash. I suppose my bank gets to use (most of) it for productive investments, but it makes no surplus for me. But Ruccio wants that included in my net wealth when calculating his statistics.

thaumasiotes 9y ago

> The clearest contrast is between a house and a factory. If you own a factory, you have economic power The idea that landlords don't have economic power is pretty amusing from the perspective of Chinese communism, where "landlord" was about as bad as it gets as a term of abuse.