5 ms·

Economy is closer to a zero-sum game, after all theres limited resources in a period of time. We cannot be all rich because we cannot all own the capital, if we

by o_p 5y ago

Economy is closer to a zero-sum game, after all theres limited resources in a period of time. We cannot be all rich because we cannot all own the capital, if we did, who does the work? To invest you need workers, to produce you need consumers, to rent you need renter, etc. Then the rich class exist because theres a poor class, a zero-sum game.

seibelj 5y ago
You can be rich, invest, and still work. You don’t magically putter around all day once you make money. Or at least all the self-made wealthy I know are still actively productive.
- o_p 5y ago
  That completly misses the point, first, rich people earnings come mostly from their investments, not their work. Second, the money earned through investment necesarily comes from the work produced by other people and thats completly independent if the rich person works or not. The person who "earns by investing and working in both nearly equal proportion" doesnt really exist beyond outliers, this is empirical, the 1% owns as much wealth as the entire middle class, this is where their yearly income comes from,they get money because they own stuff, not by being superworkers, otherwise the inequality wouldnt be growing.
  - tjs8rj 5y ago
    I get the sense that you’ve read a lot of theory without any observational facts. The vast majority of the 1% and 0.1% get most of their income from labor nowadays. This is a phenomenon called “The Rise of the Working Rich”. This looks like CEO compensation, top athletes, too musicians, business owners, and so on. On average, the 0.1% gets about 20% of their income from investments and 60%+ from their actual labor. 70% of the Forbes 400 are self-made, the vast majority of millionaires receive $10k or less in total inheritance, 11% of Americans will be in the 1% for at least 1 year in their lifetime, and the majority of Americans will be in the top 20% for at least 1 year in their lifetime. If you chop off the top 1% in developed countries, their Gini coefficients are very similar, implying that the US doesn’t have exceptional levels of suffering from inequality, it just produces a lot of rich people.
adwn 5y ago
> Economy is closer to a zero-sum game, after all theres limited resources in a period of time. The "economy" is so much more than just the extraction of natural resources, and it's not a zero-sum game in general. Maybe you're conflating "money" with "wealth"?
janeroe 5y ago
Will the communism page be finally closed when it's implemented in the USA and the country fails, eventually falling apart? Or will it be "not a real communism" once again? I mean we're trying this experiment again and again expecting to get a new outcome. But so far it only lead to poverty, famines, mass killings, slavery camps.
- Joker_vD 5y ago
  The pro-communist argument really is founded on two points: a) it's impossible for everyone to be a (successful) businessman: somebody has to be an employee and do the actual work, y'know? b) to be "actually rich" -- which is not just "being on the level of personally comfortable standard of living", it's more of "having certain level of personal influence" -- you have to own a share in a commercial enterprise and get the dividends from it; rare exceptions like a prominent lawyer or a genius surgeon notwithstanding. These two are mostly empirical observations, and you can frame it very differently depending on your liking; the "exploitation of the worker class" is only one such frame, there are many other.
  - nec4b 5y ago
    Also not everyone can be good looking, a great singer or a professional basketball player. But you are right communism solves all equality problems by making everybody (except a few select and their families) miserly poor, prevents people (again except a select few) with talent to stand out and kills everyone else who is too unhappy with how things are.
    - Joker_vD 5y ago
      The most hilarious thing about "a few select and their families" being rich is that it's not even true. Having a roomish (1 room per person + a living ropm) flat, a car with the personal driver, a small villa, and access to "closed for others" food and clothing stores was pretty much the most one could achieve -- and non of those things could be bought by money. Heck, that car and the villa? State-owned and attached to the position, you lose your place -- your successor gets them. Money simply could not buy one a lot: there was either nothing to buy, or the thing you wanted wasn't being sold. And yeah, the common populace did object to the higher-ranking party members and bureaucrats having those privileges. One of the slogans of perestroika was "away with privileges", I kid you not -- people would rather elites be as poor as them. Well, the irony is palpable: thirty years later, the common populace is not much richer than it used to be (teachers used to be able to easily travel by plane on their wage, not anymore), but the top-level government officials are way, way better off than they used to be.

by o_p 5y ago

seibelj 5y ago

You can be rich, invest, and still work. You don’t magically putter around all day once you make money. Or at least all the self-made wealthy I know are still actively productive.

o_p 5y ago
That completly misses the point, first, rich people earnings come mostly from their investments, not their work. Second, the money earned through investment necesarily comes from the work produced by other people and thats completly independent if the rich person works or not. The person who "earns by investing and working in both nearly equal proportion" doesnt really exist beyond outliers, this is empirical, the 1% owns as much wealth as the entire middle class, this is where their yearly income comes from,they get money because they own stuff, not by being superworkers, otherwise the inequality wouldnt be growing.
- tjs8rj 5y ago
  I get the sense that you’ve read a lot of theory without any observational facts. The vast majority of the 1% and 0.1% get most of their income from labor nowadays. This is a phenomenon called “The Rise of the Working Rich”. This looks like CEO compensation, top athletes, too musicians, business owners, and so on. On average, the 0.1% gets about 20% of their income from investments and 60%+ from their actual labor. 70% of the Forbes 400 are self-made, the vast majority of millionaires receive $10k or less in total inheritance, 11% of Americans will be in the 1% for at least 1 year in their lifetime, and the majority of Americans will be in the top 20% for at least 1 year in their lifetime. If you chop off the top 1% in developed countries, their Gini coefficients are very similar, implying that the US doesn’t have exceptional levels of suffering from inequality, it just produces a lot of rich people.

adwn 5y ago

> Economy is closer to a zero-sum game, after all theres limited resources in a period of time. The "economy" is so much more than just the extraction of natural resources, and it's not a zero-sum game in general. Maybe you're conflating "money" with "wealth"?

janeroe 5y ago

Will the communism page be finally closed when it's implemented in the USA and the country fails, eventually falling apart? Or will it be "not a real communism" once again? I mean we're trying this experiment again and again expecting to get a new outcome. But so far it only lead to poverty, famines, mass killings, slavery camps.

Joker_vD 5y ago
The pro-communist argument really is founded on two points: a) it's impossible for everyone to be a (successful) businessman: somebody has to be an employee and do the actual work, y'know? b) to be "actually rich" -- which is not just "being on the level of personally comfortable standard of living", it's more of "having certain level of personal influence" -- you have to own a share in a commercial enterprise and get the dividends from it; rare exceptions like a prominent lawyer or a genius surgeon notwithstanding. These two are mostly empirical observations, and you can frame it very differently depending on your liking; the "exploitation of the worker class" is only one such frame, there are many other.
- nec4b 5y ago
  Also not everyone can be good looking, a great singer or a professional basketball player. But you are right communism solves all equality problems by making everybody (except a few select and their families) miserly poor, prevents people (again except a select few) with talent to stand out and kills everyone else who is too unhappy with how things are.
  - Joker_vD 5y ago
    The most hilarious thing about "a few select and their families" being rich is that it's not even true. Having a roomish (1 room per person + a living ropm) flat, a car with the personal driver, a small villa, and access to "closed for others" food and clothing stores was pretty much the most one could achieve -- and non of those things could be bought by money. Heck, that car and the villa? State-owned and attached to the position, you lose your place -- your successor gets them. Money simply could not buy one a lot: there was either nothing to buy, or the thing you wanted wasn't being sold. And yeah, the common populace did object to the higher-ranking party members and bureaucrats having those privileges. One of the slogans of perestroika was "away with privileges", I kid you not -- people would rather elites be as poor as them. Well, the irony is palpable: thirty years later, the common populace is not much richer than it used to be (teachers used to be able to easily travel by plane on their wage, not anymore), but the top-level government officials are way, way better off than they used to be.