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I was more addressing a common kind of a claim which analysis wealth without consider time/population differences. As if "college graduates" were a fixed group

I was more addressing a common kind of a claim which analysis wealth without consider time/population differences. As if "college graduates" were a fixed group of people whose "wages have stagnated". They havent; the average is stable because the population has quintupled. Whether eductional policy here makes any sense is a seperate issue. It clearly doesn't. This is a side effect of how extraordinarily effective capitalism is also. People looked at the top 10% in the 70/80s and saw "they had degrees" and imagined that they could be in the top 10% if they got them too. This turned out to be "true" only if you mean the actual wealth of a 10%-er in the 70s/80s. Today, the top 10% have much different characteristics. My point here is that there is also another force at work creating this apparent "inequality panic" which is status envy. People thought that by imitating a 1%-er of 1970s they'd be a 1%-er today. Alas, no. You were going to be a bottom 40%-er, now you're a top 20%-er, well done. But you ain't getting that 1% you think you're owed. All this agit-prop is intra-elite warfare. People who've risen to the top 20% with their BScs, wondering where their mansions are.

jjoonathan 6y ago
> how extraordinarily effective capitalism is At transferring wealth from hard working well-intentioned individuals (and those who must compete with them) to hustlers, yes. You repeated your narrow point about the group of college educated individuals growing, but as far as I can tell that doesn't actually address skohan's much broader claims about healthcare, housing, and education. Can you address those as well? "Look over there!" isn't an argument.
- mjburgess 6y ago
  Wealth isn't "transferred". Wealth is just a measure of "popularity * productivity". Besos is more wealthy than a nurse because amazon engages in billions of transactions which are each productive. A nurse engages in one. Your wealth, at a first approximation, is the rate at which you are productively transacting.
  - beckman466 6y ago
    > Besos is more wealthy than a nurse because amazon engages in billions of transactions which are each productive. Bezos is wealthy because he is a parasitic rentier capitalist. He's one of the major beneficiaries of the imperialist American intellectual property regime. That's it. That's the special sauce. "Place Silicon Valley in its proper historical context and you see that, despite its mythology, it’s far from unique. Rather, it fits into a pattern of rapid technological change which has shaped recent centuries. In this case, advances in information technology have unleashed a wave of new capabilities. Just as the internal combustion engine and the growth of the railroads created Rockefeller, and the telecommunications boom created AT&T, this breakthrough enabled a few well-placed corporations to reap the rewards. By capitalising on network effects, early mover advantage, and near-zero marginal costs of production, they have positioned themselves as gateways to information, giving them the power to extract rent from every transaction. Undergirding this state of affairs is a set of intellectual property rights explicitly designed to favour corporations. This system — the flip side of globalisation — is propagated by various trade agreements and global institutions at the behest of the nation states who benefit from it the most. It’s no accident that Silicon Valley is a uniquely American phenomenon; not only does it owe its success to the United States’ exceptionally high defence spending — the source of its research funding and foundational technological breakthroughs — that very military might is itself what implicitly secures the intellectual property regime." Source: https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley
  - skohan 6y ago
    Besos got wealthy because he built a successful business which provides a ton of value to customers. Besos is the wealthiest person on earth because the benefits from a financial system designed to grow the wealth of already wealthy people exponentially. You can make the argument that bezos and other "self made" entrepreneurs deserve their astronomical wealth, but many people in the top wealth tiers just had the privilege of being born wealthy, and of living in a system their class has the power to bias in their favour.

jjoonathan 6y ago

> how extraordinarily effective capitalism is At transferring wealth from hard working well-intentioned individuals (and those who must compete with them) to hustlers, yes. You repeated your narrow point about the group of college educated individuals growing, but as far as I can tell that doesn't actually address skohan's much broader claims about healthcare, housing, and education. Can you address those as well? "Look over there!" isn't an argument.

mjburgess 6y ago
Wealth isn't "transferred". Wealth is just a measure of "popularity * productivity". Besos is more wealthy than a nurse because amazon engages in billions of transactions which are each productive. A nurse engages in one. Your wealth, at a first approximation, is the rate at which you are productively transacting.
- beckman466 6y ago
  > Besos is more wealthy than a nurse because amazon engages in billions of transactions which are each productive. Bezos is wealthy because he is a parasitic rentier capitalist. He's one of the major beneficiaries of the imperialist American intellectual property regime. That's it. That's the special sauce. "Place Silicon Valley in its proper historical context and you see that, despite its mythology, it’s far from unique. Rather, it fits into a pattern of rapid technological change which has shaped recent centuries. In this case, advances in information technology have unleashed a wave of new capabilities. Just as the internal combustion engine and the growth of the railroads created Rockefeller, and the telecommunications boom created AT&T, this breakthrough enabled a few well-placed corporations to reap the rewards. By capitalising on network effects, early mover advantage, and near-zero marginal costs of production, they have positioned themselves as gateways to information, giving them the power to extract rent from every transaction. Undergirding this state of affairs is a set of intellectual property rights explicitly designed to favour corporations. This system — the flip side of globalisation — is propagated by various trade agreements and global institutions at the behest of the nation states who benefit from it the most. It’s no accident that Silicon Valley is a uniquely American phenomenon; not only does it owe its success to the United States’ exceptionally high defence spending — the source of its research funding and foundational technological breakthroughs — that very military might is itself what implicitly secures the intellectual property regime." Source: https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley
- skohan 6y ago
  Besos got wealthy because he built a successful business which provides a ton of value to customers. Besos is the wealthiest person on earth because the benefits from a financial system designed to grow the wealth of already wealthy people exponentially. You can make the argument that bezos and other "self made" entrepreneurs deserve their astronomical wealth, but many people in the top wealth tiers just had the privilege of being born wealthy, and of living in a system their class has the power to bias in their favour.