20 ms·

I'm surprised the average Americans (the 90%) don't get that they are providing insurance to the 86% wealth of the top 10%, but get almost none of the gains.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sharemywin 6y ago
again it comes down to options. name something that: 1. the government eats the loses. 2. liquid 3. better returns.
jl2718 6y ago
This is not at all the situation. Reality is the 1% (wealth) making the 10% (income) pay for the 90% (both) to support their investments with consumption and debt.
- telaelit 6y ago
  Trickle down economics doesn’t work. If it did then wages would have increased in the past 40 years, but they’ve remained stagnant while the rich get richer and cost of living skyrockets. But if you prefer to lick the boots of our plutocratic overlords, feel free
  - tryptophan 6y ago
    But...wages have increased over the past 40 years...and at a greater rate than in Europe/Aus/other developed.
    - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
      Well it seems like “real wages” have not increased in decades? https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Comparing US wages to countries that have far greater social safety nets and healthcare is impossible. And volatility of wages and the insecurity of not knowing if you will have stable work (and hence healthcare) or not is a more important metric, although also impossible to measure. But not impossible to feel and see the results of.
      - blaser-waffle 6y ago
        > Comparing US wages to countries that have far greater social safety nets and healthcare is impossible. No, it's not impossible. I'm from the US and live in Canada and it's essentially comparing the lower US tax rate + health care premiums and expected unemployment benefits. For the record, the US is clearly cheaper for a slim 30 something with no kids and no medical issues -- like ~27,000 bucks or so per year, when I compared WA to AB. When you start adding kids and getting 60+ that changes, and long term it may be a better deal up north, but in the short term I'd rather do STEM in a state with no income tax.
        lotsofpulp 6y ago
        Yes, for high earners in STEM in high demand of their labor it’s a no brainer. But for others, the volatility of income is much higher and muddies the calculation. Losing your job is much less stressful when you don’t have to worry about your healthcare also.
    - Barrin92 6y ago
      real wages for the bottom 80% have not budged much[1], and are pretty much non-existent for the bottom 40-60% of the distribution. The US has higher wages but mostly as a function of some sort of Baumol's cost disease. Increases in healthcare and education spending drive wages but they also drive costs. It doesn't really reflect a net gain in standards of living as hard stats like life expectancy show. the US has a life expectancy comparable to Cuba. Not to mention that averages obfuscate the huge degree of inequality. Life expectancy differences between the richest and poorest in the US are larger (almost ~20 years) than between the American average and Yemen. [1] https://imgur.com/vsUt8rF https://imgur.com/vsUt8rF
      - shuckles 6y ago
        Most of these charts ignore non-wage income such as employer paid healthcare. https://medium.com/@russroberts/do-the-rich-capture-all-the-gains-from-economic-growth-c96d93101f9c https://medium.com/@russroberts/do-the-rich-capture-all-the-...
        Barrin92 6y ago
        It seems like Russ is trying to make a fundamentally different point in that piece than people generally try to make. His main point seems to be that, if you track people over the last 30 years, they have made economic progress individually. That to me seems extremely obvious though. Someone who is 50 or 60 is almost certainly going to be in a better financial position than the same person at 30, as many people tend to develop more skills or advance their career, it would be straight-up crazy if that wasn't the case. However, it does not address the actual issue of the poorest as a demographic. What people are saying that if the nation as a whole gets richer, you would expect that 40 years later the floor has risen as well, not that the poor are simply different people.
        shuckles 6y ago
        No it also looks at income across generations within quartiles, e.g. "But [incomes of] 93% of the children in the poorest households — those in the bottom 20% — surpassed their parents...Julia Isaacs’s study for the Pew Charitable Trusts looking at the late 1960’s up to 2002 finds that children raised in the poorest families made the largest gains as adults relative to children born into richer families."
  - shawnz 6y ago
    Do you think a typical middle class American would rather be living in the world as it was 40 years ago though? Or today's world, full of technology and infrastructure that was funded by the rich?
    - newshorts 6y ago
      Id much rather live in a the world 40 years ago. It was possible for a family of four to survive on a single income and own a home...
    - celticninja 6y ago
      what technology and infrastructure was funded by the rich? I think you mean funded by the tax payer, rich and poor alike, but the poor pay a higher percentage of income in tax.
      - shawnz 6y ago
        > the poor pay a higher percentage of income in tax They certainly don't pay a higher absolute dollar value of the total taxes received by the government though.
        celticninja 6y ago
        and your point is what? paying a higher percentage of their income makes life harder for them, than it does for the rich paying a higher dollar value but lower percentage of total income.
        shawnz 6y ago
        The point is that infrastructure was mainly paid by the rich, not that life is easier for the poor.
        celticninja 6y ago
        the infrastructure was paid for by tax, the rich didn't altruistically pay for it, they paid tax, tax was used to fund it..very different kettle of fish to the rich paying for infrastructure directly.
  - dang 6y ago
    Can you please not post like this here? We're looking for curious conversation, not denunciatory rhetoric. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
chrispeel 6y ago
> I'm surprised the average Americans (the 90%) don't get that they are providing insurance to the 86% wealth of the top 10%, but get almost none of the gains. Are you so sure that they don't get this? I guess that many do understand it and either would like a much more inequality-reducing tax structure, or envision themselves as (somehow!) becoming part of the top 10%.
- vadym909 6y ago
  Ofcourse a small portion will always be ambitious, enterprising and expect to join the 10%. But we are all convinced (and I assumed this too) that the stock gains are good because it helps average Americans increase their 401k, but the stock ownership ratio is so skewed to affect the majority. If the stock market crashed, it wouldn't really afffect most American's net worth which is so interesting? I'm sure companies will shut down and there's be trickle down job losses but that can happen in stock boom times too (like now). A quick Google search showed where this number comes from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/business/economy/stocks-economy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/business/economy/stocks-e...
- folkhack 6y ago
  > or envision themselves as (somehow!) becoming part of the top 10% I don't disagree with you but want to add some insight to this... My entire life I've been told the lie that if I "just work harder" I can be rich etc. Most of America thinks about themselves in this same way, and it's taken me years of traditional employment + risky startup opportunities to realize that no, success is not guaranteed if you "just work hard"... Honestly you just get nailed with the majority of work as an IC who's trying to crank it out vs. your peers who are off having "dev beers" at the trendy bar down the road. The peers that I see that are "well off" often had huge monetary injections from their parents in either fully-paid education, first houses, vehicles, incestuous "investments" in their business, etc. Now, those same people that had everything handed to them on a silver platter are invested, some own rental properties, etc. to the point that they can choose not to work for long periods of time to just collect dividends/rent. Funny part - they still define themselves as people who have pulled themselves up by the bootstraps! So yea - in the US we have a really unhealthy view/mentality around success and ignore the fact that the IT'S THE EXCEPTION for someone to truly "pull themselves up by the bootstraps" into any sort of significant wealth. Truth is most "rich" people had an incredible amount of external financial support and stability to get themselves there and maintain it. Bring the downvotes, because you're darn tootin' I'm bitter about all of this.
bitcoinmoney 6y ago
Can you send me explain where the figures are coming from?
chad_strategic 6y ago
Scream this from the rooftops.
- chad_strategic 6y ago
  https://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve-ebook/dp/B00ARFNQ54/ https://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserv... To all the economists that like to pontificate on the market structure / monetary policy and what not on this site, feel free to read a book about the history of the federal reserve. It also covers the theory of money thru out the ages. No mater what side you are on this will provide a detailed history of Congress, Federal Reserve, politics and the politics of monetary policy. "Knowing is half the battle" G.I. Joe
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    The other half of the battle is lasers (25% blue lasers, 25% red lasers)
    - chad_strategic 6y ago
      Nice!
closeparen 6y ago
>average Americans (the 90%) In what sense is 90% average?
- wodenokoto 6y ago
  You have 100 items, 5 are zero, 5 are 100 and the rest are 50. Your average is 50, and 90% of your items are average. These are your average items (the 90%) In this case, though, average is meant in its colloquial form of another way of saying "normal".
  - closeparen 6y ago
    For 2017, the average household income was $89k, which corresponds to 65th percentile [0]. There are many "us vs. them" thresholds to choose from; curious what was special about this one. [0] https://dqydj.com/2018-average-median-top-household-income-percentiles/ https://dqydj.com/2018-average-median-top-household-income-p...
bradleyjg 6y ago
The hypocrisy is astounding. I could understand someone that thought no one should be bailed out by the government, but the ‘only bail out the rich’ position is beyond my ability to understand.
malandrew 6y ago
Where are you pulling 90% from? The top 50% pay 97% of taxes. That means 97% of the insurance is being paid by 50%. The top 10% paid 70% of taxes.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

sharemywin 6y ago

again it comes down to options. name something that: 1. the government eats the loses. 2. liquid 3. better returns.

jl2718 6y ago

This is not at all the situation. Reality is the 1% (wealth) making the 10% (income) pay for the 90% (both) to support their investments with consumption and debt.

telaelit 6y ago
Trickle down economics doesn’t work. If it did then wages would have increased in the past 40 years, but they’ve remained stagnant while the rich get richer and cost of living skyrockets. But if you prefer to lick the boots of our plutocratic overlords, feel free
- tryptophan 6y ago
  But...wages have increased over the past 40 years...and at a greater rate than in Europe/Aus/other developed.
  - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
    Well it seems like “real wages” have not increased in decades? https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Comparing US wages to countries that have far greater social safety nets and healthcare is impossible. And volatility of wages and the insecurity of not knowing if you will have stable work (and hence healthcare) or not is a more important metric, although also impossible to measure. But not impossible to feel and see the results of.
    - blaser-waffle 6y ago
      > Comparing US wages to countries that have far greater social safety nets and healthcare is impossible. No, it's not impossible. I'm from the US and live in Canada and it's essentially comparing the lower US tax rate + health care premiums and expected unemployment benefits. For the record, the US is clearly cheaper for a slim 30 something with no kids and no medical issues -- like ~27,000 bucks or so per year, when I compared WA to AB. When you start adding kids and getting 60+ that changes, and long term it may be a better deal up north, but in the short term I'd rather do STEM in a state with no income tax.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        Yes, for high earners in STEM in high demand of their labor it’s a no brainer. But for others, the volatility of income is much higher and muddies the calculation. Losing your job is much less stressful when you don’t have to worry about your healthcare also.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    real wages for the bottom 80% have not budged much[1], and are pretty much non-existent for the bottom 40-60% of the distribution. The US has higher wages but mostly as a function of some sort of Baumol's cost disease. Increases in healthcare and education spending drive wages but they also drive costs. It doesn't really reflect a net gain in standards of living as hard stats like life expectancy show. the US has a life expectancy comparable to Cuba. Not to mention that averages obfuscate the huge degree of inequality. Life expectancy differences between the richest and poorest in the US are larger (almost ~20 years) than between the American average and Yemen. [1] https://imgur.com/vsUt8rF https://imgur.com/vsUt8rF
    - shuckles 6y ago
      Most of these charts ignore non-wage income such as employer paid healthcare. https://medium.com/@russroberts/do-the-rich-capture-all-the-gains-from-economic-growth-c96d93101f9c https://medium.com/@russroberts/do-the-rich-capture-all-the-...
      - Barrin92 6y ago
        It seems like Russ is trying to make a fundamentally different point in that piece than people generally try to make. His main point seems to be that, if you track people over the last 30 years, they have made economic progress individually. That to me seems extremely obvious though. Someone who is 50 or 60 is almost certainly going to be in a better financial position than the same person at 30, as many people tend to develop more skills or advance their career, it would be straight-up crazy if that wasn't the case. However, it does not address the actual issue of the poorest as a demographic. What people are saying that if the nation as a whole gets richer, you would expect that 40 years later the floor has risen as well, not that the poor are simply different people.
        shuckles 6y ago
        No it also looks at income across generations within quartiles, e.g. "But [incomes of] 93% of the children in the poorest households — those in the bottom 20% — surpassed their parents...Julia Isaacs’s study for the Pew Charitable Trusts looking at the late 1960’s up to 2002 finds that children raised in the poorest families made the largest gains as adults relative to children born into richer families."
- shawnz 6y ago
  Do you think a typical middle class American would rather be living in the world as it was 40 years ago though? Or today's world, full of technology and infrastructure that was funded by the rich?
  - newshorts 6y ago
    Id much rather live in a the world 40 years ago. It was possible for a family of four to survive on a single income and own a home...
  - celticninja 6y ago
    what technology and infrastructure was funded by the rich? I think you mean funded by the tax payer, rich and poor alike, but the poor pay a higher percentage of income in tax.
    - shawnz 6y ago
      > the poor pay a higher percentage of income in tax They certainly don't pay a higher absolute dollar value of the total taxes received by the government though.
      - celticninja 6y ago
        and your point is what? paying a higher percentage of their income makes life harder for them, than it does for the rich paying a higher dollar value but lower percentage of total income.
        shawnz 6y ago
        The point is that infrastructure was mainly paid by the rich, not that life is easier for the poor.
        celticninja 6y ago
        the infrastructure was paid for by tax, the rich didn't altruistically pay for it, they paid tax, tax was used to fund it..very different kettle of fish to the rich paying for infrastructure directly.
- dang 6y ago
  Can you please not post like this here? We're looking for curious conversation, not denunciatory rhetoric. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

chrispeel 6y ago

> I'm surprised the average Americans (the 90%) don't get that they are providing insurance to the 86% wealth of the top 10%, but get almost none of the gains. Are you so sure that they don't get this? I guess that many do understand it and either would like a much more inequality-reducing tax structure, or envision themselves as (somehow!) becoming part of the top 10%.

vadym909 6y ago
Ofcourse a small portion will always be ambitious, enterprising and expect to join the 10%. But we are all convinced (and I assumed this too) that the stock gains are good because it helps average Americans increase their 401k, but the stock ownership ratio is so skewed to affect the majority. If the stock market crashed, it wouldn't really afffect most American's net worth which is so interesting? I'm sure companies will shut down and there's be trickle down job losses but that can happen in stock boom times too (like now). A quick Google search showed where this number comes from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/business/economy/stocks-economy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/business/economy/stocks-e...
folkhack 6y ago
> or envision themselves as (somehow!) becoming part of the top 10% I don't disagree with you but want to add some insight to this... My entire life I've been told the lie that if I "just work harder" I can be rich etc. Most of America thinks about themselves in this same way, and it's taken me years of traditional employment + risky startup opportunities to realize that no, success is not guaranteed if you "just work hard"... Honestly you just get nailed with the majority of work as an IC who's trying to crank it out vs. your peers who are off having "dev beers" at the trendy bar down the road. The peers that I see that are "well off" often had huge monetary injections from their parents in either fully-paid education, first houses, vehicles, incestuous "investments" in their business, etc. Now, those same people that had everything handed to them on a silver platter are invested, some own rental properties, etc. to the point that they can choose not to work for long periods of time to just collect dividends/rent. Funny part - they still define themselves as people who have pulled themselves up by the bootstraps! So yea - in the US we have a really unhealthy view/mentality around success and ignore the fact that the IT'S THE EXCEPTION for someone to truly "pull themselves up by the bootstraps" into any sort of significant wealth. Truth is most "rich" people had an incredible amount of external financial support and stability to get themselves there and maintain it. Bring the downvotes, because you're darn tootin' I'm bitter about all of this.

bitcoinmoney 6y ago

Can you send me explain where the figures are coming from?

chad_strategic 6y ago

Scream this from the rooftops.

chad_strategic 6y ago
https://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve-ebook/dp/B00ARFNQ54/ https://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserv... To all the economists that like to pontificate on the market structure / monetary policy and what not on this site, feel free to read a book about the history of the federal reserve. It also covers the theory of money thru out the ages. No mater what side you are on this will provide a detailed history of Congress, Federal Reserve, politics and the politics of monetary policy. "Knowing is half the battle" G.I. Joe
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  The other half of the battle is lasers (25% blue lasers, 25% red lasers)
  - chad_strategic 6y ago
    Nice!

closeparen 6y ago

>average Americans (the 90%) In what sense is 90% average?

wodenokoto 6y ago
You have 100 items, 5 are zero, 5 are 100 and the rest are 50. Your average is 50, and 90% of your items are average. These are your average items (the 90%) In this case, though, average is meant in its colloquial form of another way of saying "normal".
- closeparen 6y ago
  For 2017, the average household income was $89k, which corresponds to 65th percentile [0]. There are many "us vs. them" thresholds to choose from; curious what was special about this one. [0] https://dqydj.com/2018-average-median-top-household-income-percentiles/ https://dqydj.com/2018-average-median-top-household-income-p...

bradleyjg 6y ago

The hypocrisy is astounding. I could understand someone that thought no one should be bailed out by the government, but the ‘only bail out the rich’ position is beyond my ability to understand.

malandrew 6y ago

Where are you pulling 90% from? The top 50% pay 97% of taxes. That means 97% of the insurance is being paid by 50%. The top 10% paid 70% of taxes.