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> The point is, 1944 - 1991 is a HIGHLY unusual economic state This part I agree with. > and it's not reasonable to expect that the mobility that existed then

> The point is, 1944 - 1991 is a HIGHLY unusual economic state This part I agree with. > and it's not reasonable to expect that the mobility that existed then should still exist today. This part I absolutely do not. Perhaps the social mobility wouldn't be exactly the same, but surely we can do better than the current state of affairs? I wonder how many people could be elevated to comfortable middle class status with all the money hoarded so Jeff Bezos can have over 20 different extravagant homes? And that's to say nothing for the cost of college going through the roof while conferring even less benefit to people's careers, stagnant wages, ever-rising taxes on the 99% since the IRS finds it difficult to audit the wealthy...

rpiguy 7y ago
Higher income taxes only protect the rich, because their wealth is largely asset, not income based. Unless you go full Marxist and seize property (assets) higher income taxes only prevent the middle class from accumulating wealth. Warren's asset tax for medicare for all is the fist serious contemplation of asset seizure that I can think of by a mainstream politician in recent memory. Similarly, massive redistribution of wealth just further divides society into givers and receivers. The elite will continue to control the government, education, and big corporations and continue locking out the receivers. In Europe, for example, the same families have been rich and in control forever, because the high income tax scheme protects them from new entrants, while their assets continue to appreciate. The middle and lower classes are supplicated through state benefits, so moving up the ladder isn't as much of a concern. By the way, I am not against high taxes and redistribution, but people should be totally aware of the trade offs being made. High taxes and redistribution are often sold as "socking it to the rich" but in reality it is the complete opposite and cements the position of the rich. I agree University reform is absolutely needed in the US. The cost is too high, we subsidize garbage degrees, rich kids benefit the most from it, grades are too subjective (because outside of engineering/medicine objective testing is racist/sexist/etc.) Kick out the legacy students that shouldn't be a factor at all.
tachyonbeam 7y ago
> how many people could be elevated to comfortable middle class status with all the money hoarded so Jeff Bezos can have over 20 different extravagant homes? More fundamentally: money is created through debt. Central banks print money to increase the money supply. This money is being used to buy assets to float up the stock and real estate markets. In other words, central banks are a form or corporate welfare for the rich. It doesn't have to be this way. We could print money and use it to build housing for those who can't afford it. That would also stimulate the economy. The problem is that we think of real estate as an investment, when housing is actually a fundamental need.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  There's a sense in which it's true that central banks print money to increase the money supply. But it's not at all the case that central banks say "hey, Jeff Bezos, have some of these millions". There's no transaction where the central bank just hands people money for free.
- felri 7y ago
  >This money is being used to buy assets to float up the stock and real estate markets. This can't go on for to long, here in South America a big % of the people I know (20/40 years old) lives with their parents and have no plans to buy real state because the prices are absurd.
- wonderwonder 7y ago
  "The problem is that we think of real estate as an investment, when housing is actually a fundamental need" This is a very important fact that is so often overlooked. Rent escalates in cities because people own multiple homes / units and are looking to make a profit so the price goes up. In the mean time housing is becoming an increasingly larger portion of the non wealthy's expenses. Further complicating this is that the less wealthy are forced to move to poorer areas and in many states, schools are funded largely through property taxes. This means the less wealthy are forced to send their children to lower quality schools perpetuating the wealth gap.
swalsh 7y ago
> I wonder how many people could be elevated to comfortable middle class status with all the money hoarded so Jeff Bezos can have over 20 different extravagant homes I think this is ultimately the crux of the issue. Without rapid economic growth, the only way to make society rapidly more "fair" is to focus on redistribution. I'm actually not completely against the idea either. I can think of a number of institutions, like education, healthcare, and childcare (pre-k) that make a whole bunch of sense to make more "equitable". But I do believe we need to have a level sense about what is reasonable to expect. It's not ever going to be close to the levels we had in the second half of the twentieth century. If we go at it too aggressively, we're risking a lot.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  > not ever going to be close to the levels we had in the second half of the twentieth century Why not? Lack of inequality wasn't down to Bretton Woods, but to taxation and regulation that were the result of trying imperfectly to learn from the The Great Depression and World War 2. It's disassembling all of that which has brought us to another gilded age. We're already seeing a rise in extremism and rejection of politics that are very analogous to the thirties. The cult of Neoliberalism from 1980 on, and its socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor is what is generating the risk.
- kiba 7y ago
  We have a lot of room of improving everyone's conditions, but we don't due to structural issues.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    The devil is in the details. The problem seems simpler than it is because it's common to view the economy as a static system, like a force of gravity. But the economy isn't like that. Ultimately, people loaning money want to get back more than they gave, and if they can't get that they'll stop loaning money, and everything goes downhill from there until the next thing you see is everyone being worse off than they would be 100 years ago. This is the risk any proposed structural changes need to mitigate.
lotsofpulp 7y ago
> with all the money hoarded so Jeff Bezos can have over 20 different extravagant homes? Not many. A significant portion of the value of AMZN comes from having Bezos owning and operating the company.
- FussyZeus 7y ago
  I'm not saying Bezos isn't entitled to the fruit of his labor, and he should certainly be wealthy. But what does he do at Amazon that is worth $45,000 a SECOND. Not per year, or per month or even per day, but per SECOND!? I put forth no single human being is capable of generating that much value for anything, at any time, ever, and certainly not the guy who made it so I can remotely order Tide with 2 day shipping. As a concept, I don't hate the rich. Some people will inevitably have more than others and I believe it's a solid carrot to dangle from a stick to get people to put in their best. But there comes a point where people are making so much money, to the detriment of the economy as a whole, and it's not doing anything. It's just running up a score for the person involved. What on Earth can you even DO with 112 billion dollars? There's nothing you can't buy. You could buy everything a few times over and still have enough money to never work again. And in and of itself, I wouldn't really care, except we have millions of people who can barely afford food, let alone the other necessities. We have diabetics dying because they can't afford insulin. We have combat veterans killing themselves because we broke their brains and don't take care of them afterwards. It should be a source of national embarrassment for us.
  - rpiguy 7y ago
    He doesn't have 112 billion dollars, he owns shares in a company worth that much, which have to be sold to be converted into dollars. If the government seized 75% of it, the government would be left holding 80 billion dollars worth of stock, which they can't really do anything with. The problem with stocks is that when you sell it you have to have buyers on the other end. This is called liquidity. I doubt there are enough buyers of Amazon out there to sell 80 billion worth, so what is the government to do, just hold onto it? They could try to sell it all at once, causing the stock to crash. Or they could sell a little over time. I suppose you could create a sovereign wealth fund with the seized assets, sort of like what other countries do with oil reserves (Norway, etc.) But all that does is create a giant, government run investment fund, which will invest in businesses, etc. Not exactly redistribution...
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Can't you easily calculate that? Bezo's wealth is openly estimated. The government collects statistics on population and income across all class groups. Seems like you could easily calculate a good ballpark figure for how many people could be elevated into the middle class with a few minutes on Google.
- pawn 7y ago
  When I Bing Jeff Bezo's net worth, it gives me $155 Billion. I don't know what number should be used to say "this amount will fundamentally change someone's life", but I'm going to arbitrarily pick $50,000. $155 Billion / 50,000 = 3.1 million. That's approximately the population of Arkansas.
Merrill 7y ago
> I wonder how many people could be elevated to comfortable middle class status with all the money hoarded so Jeff Bezos can have over 20 different extravagant homes? Jeff is worth $112 Billion. Amazons total assets are $162.6 B, and it has 645,000 employees. So if you create Amazon equivalent jobs, you could presumably create 645,000 * (112/162) = 446,000 jobs with Bezos fortune. However, Amazon jobs with $174,000 assets/job may not be what you consider middle class. If you are talking about manufacturing jobs Ford, for example has $256 B assets and 200,000 jobs or $1,280,000 in assets/job. So good manufacturing jobs would be more like $112 B/ 1.28 M = 87,500 jobs.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  You're double counting here. Almost all of Bezos's net worth is Amazon stock.
  - Merrill 7y ago
    I'm assuming that Bezos sells his stock to some private equity firms, investment bankers, etc., for cash, and that he then uses the cash to build another company with the same ratio of assets to employees. Or, more improbably, that the government seizes control of his stock, sells it to the public, and then uses the $112 B to create new jobs with the same asset per job ratio as Amazon or Ford. Of course, in this case, the $112 B would be frittered away on administrative expense, graft, corruption, etc. and no actual long-term employment would be created.
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      If private equity firms and investment bankers have some cash, and we think that cash would be put to better use building a company, what does that have to do with Bezos?

rpiguy 7y ago

Higher income taxes only protect the rich, because their wealth is largely asset, not income based. Unless you go full Marxist and seize property (assets) higher income taxes only prevent the middle class from accumulating wealth. Warren's asset tax for medicare for all is the fist serious contemplation of asset seizure that I can think of by a mainstream politician in recent memory. Similarly, massive redistribution of wealth just further divides society into givers and receivers. The elite will continue to control the government, education, and big corporations and continue locking out the receivers. In Europe, for example, the same families have been rich and in control forever, because the high income tax scheme protects them from new entrants, while their assets continue to appreciate. The middle and lower classes are supplicated through state benefits, so moving up the ladder isn't as much of a concern. By the way, I am not against high taxes and redistribution, but people should be totally aware of the trade offs being made. High taxes and redistribution are often sold as "socking it to the rich" but in reality it is the complete opposite and cements the position of the rich. I agree University reform is absolutely needed in the US. The cost is too high, we subsidize garbage degrees, rich kids benefit the most from it, grades are too subjective (because outside of engineering/medicine objective testing is racist/sexist/etc.) Kick out the legacy students that shouldn't be a factor at all.

tachyonbeam 7y ago

> how many people could be elevated to comfortable middle class status with all the money hoarded so Jeff Bezos can have over 20 different extravagant homes? More fundamentally: money is created through debt. Central banks print money to increase the money supply. This money is being used to buy assets to float up the stock and real estate markets. In other words, central banks are a form or corporate welfare for the rich. It doesn't have to be this way. We could print money and use it to build housing for those who can't afford it. That would also stimulate the economy. The problem is that we think of real estate as an investment, when housing is actually a fundamental need.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
There's a sense in which it's true that central banks print money to increase the money supply. But it's not at all the case that central banks say "hey, Jeff Bezos, have some of these millions". There's no transaction where the central bank just hands people money for free.
felri 7y ago
>This money is being used to buy assets to float up the stock and real estate markets. This can't go on for to long, here in South America a big % of the people I know (20/40 years old) lives with their parents and have no plans to buy real state because the prices are absurd.
wonderwonder 7y ago
"The problem is that we think of real estate as an investment, when housing is actually a fundamental need" This is a very important fact that is so often overlooked. Rent escalates in cities because people own multiple homes / units and are looking to make a profit so the price goes up. In the mean time housing is becoming an increasingly larger portion of the non wealthy's expenses. Further complicating this is that the less wealthy are forced to move to poorer areas and in many states, schools are funded largely through property taxes. This means the less wealthy are forced to send their children to lower quality schools perpetuating the wealth gap.

swalsh 7y ago

> I wonder how many people could be elevated to comfortable middle class status with all the money hoarded so Jeff Bezos can have over 20 different extravagant homes I think this is ultimately the crux of the issue. Without rapid economic growth, the only way to make society rapidly more "fair" is to focus on redistribution. I'm actually not completely against the idea either. I can think of a number of institutions, like education, healthcare, and childcare (pre-k) that make a whole bunch of sense to make more "equitable". But I do believe we need to have a level sense about what is reasonable to expect. It's not ever going to be close to the levels we had in the second half of the twentieth century. If we go at it too aggressively, we're risking a lot.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
> not ever going to be close to the levels we had in the second half of the twentieth century Why not? Lack of inequality wasn't down to Bretton Woods, but to taxation and regulation that were the result of trying imperfectly to learn from the The Great Depression and World War 2. It's disassembling all of that which has brought us to another gilded age. We're already seeing a rise in extremism and rejection of politics that are very analogous to the thirties. The cult of Neoliberalism from 1980 on, and its socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor is what is generating the risk.
kiba 7y ago
We have a lot of room of improving everyone's conditions, but we don't due to structural issues.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  The devil is in the details. The problem seems simpler than it is because it's common to view the economy as a static system, like a force of gravity. But the economy isn't like that. Ultimately, people loaning money want to get back more than they gave, and if they can't get that they'll stop loaning money, and everything goes downhill from there until the next thing you see is everyone being worse off than they would be 100 years ago. This is the risk any proposed structural changes need to mitigate.

lotsofpulp 7y ago

> with all the money hoarded so Jeff Bezos can have over 20 different extravagant homes? Not many. A significant portion of the value of AMZN comes from having Bezos owning and operating the company.

FussyZeus 7y ago
I'm not saying Bezos isn't entitled to the fruit of his labor, and he should certainly be wealthy. But what does he do at Amazon that is worth $45,000 a SECOND. Not per year, or per month or even per day, but per SECOND!? I put forth no single human being is capable of generating that much value for anything, at any time, ever, and certainly not the guy who made it so I can remotely order Tide with 2 day shipping. As a concept, I don't hate the rich. Some people will inevitably have more than others and I believe it's a solid carrot to dangle from a stick to get people to put in their best. But there comes a point where people are making so much money, to the detriment of the economy as a whole, and it's not doing anything. It's just running up a score for the person involved. What on Earth can you even DO with 112 billion dollars? There's nothing you can't buy. You could buy everything a few times over and still have enough money to never work again. And in and of itself, I wouldn't really care, except we have millions of people who can barely afford food, let alone the other necessities. We have diabetics dying because they can't afford insulin. We have combat veterans killing themselves because we broke their brains and don't take care of them afterwards. It should be a source of national embarrassment for us.
- rpiguy 7y ago
  He doesn't have 112 billion dollars, he owns shares in a company worth that much, which have to be sold to be converted into dollars. If the government seized 75% of it, the government would be left holding 80 billion dollars worth of stock, which they can't really do anything with. The problem with stocks is that when you sell it you have to have buyers on the other end. This is called liquidity. I doubt there are enough buyers of Amazon out there to sell 80 billion worth, so what is the government to do, just hold onto it? They could try to sell it all at once, causing the stock to crash. Or they could sell a little over time. I suppose you could create a sovereign wealth fund with the seized assets, sort of like what other countries do with oil reserves (Norway, etc.) But all that does is create a giant, government run investment fund, which will invest in businesses, etc. Not exactly redistribution...

Mountain_Skies 7y ago

Can't you easily calculate that? Bezo's wealth is openly estimated. The government collects statistics on population and income across all class groups. Seems like you could easily calculate a good ballpark figure for how many people could be elevated into the middle class with a few minutes on Google.

pawn 7y ago
When I Bing Jeff Bezo's net worth, it gives me $155 Billion. I don't know what number should be used to say "this amount will fundamentally change someone's life", but I'm going to arbitrarily pick $50,000. $155 Billion / 50,000 = 3.1 million. That's approximately the population of Arkansas.

Merrill 7y ago

> I wonder how many people could be elevated to comfortable middle class status with all the money hoarded so Jeff Bezos can have over 20 different extravagant homes? Jeff is worth $112 Billion. Amazons total assets are $162.6 B, and it has 645,000 employees. So if you create Amazon equivalent jobs, you could presumably create 645,000 * (112/162) = 446,000 jobs with Bezos fortune. However, Amazon jobs with $174,000 assets/job may not be what you consider middle class. If you are talking about manufacturing jobs Ford, for example has $256 B assets and 200,000 jobs or $1,280,000 in assets/job. So good manufacturing jobs would be more like $112 B/ 1.28 M = 87,500 jobs.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
You're double counting here. Almost all of Bezos's net worth is Amazon stock.
- Merrill 7y ago
  I'm assuming that Bezos sells his stock to some private equity firms, investment bankers, etc., for cash, and that he then uses the cash to build another company with the same ratio of assets to employees. Or, more improbably, that the government seizes control of his stock, sells it to the public, and then uses the $112 B to create new jobs with the same asset per job ratio as Amazon or Ford. Of course, in this case, the $112 B would be frittered away on administrative expense, graft, corruption, etc. and no actual long-term employment would be created.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    If private equity firms and investment bankers have some cash, and we think that cash would be put to better use building a company, what does that have to do with Bezos?