5 ms·

quality of life gap on the other hand has never been smaller. Some points off the top of my head 1) People live essentially as long as billionaires 2) You ca

by GDC7 5y ago

quality of life gap on the other hand has never been smaller. Some points off the top of my head 1) People live essentially as long as billionaires 2) You can hop on a 430M dollar plane which is the same as Biden's (actually there's good chance it's newer than Air Force One) for as low as 500$ with the only cavet that you have to share it with 400 other people 3) You can enter in a building costing 5-10 billions of dollars (think the big Vegas hotels) for free, again only cavet is that you have to share it with 2500-5000 people 4) You can drive cars costing a million dollars and it would only cost you a tiny fraction of that, hopping once a year in a Ferrari or a Lamborghini for the weekend is not far fetched 5) You have basically every means and financial product tailored to achieve your goals including all the above, ranging from lease to rent to financing purchases of electronics and vacations. Of course hedonic treadmill never stops so nothwistanding all the above the huge source of worry nowdays is the result of the following subtraction: Bill Gates' number - people's own number. It's an ego thing essentially I agree that people who are perceived as winners taking all such as Gates, Bezos and quack Musk should not say these things because it would exacerbate the above sentiments instead of disengaging it as it comes off as patronizing winners telling the population how they should feel. But regular people should go through the process on their own , when this process of self discovery happens you both start to ignore the billionaires and also those who hope to socially elevate themselves by promising to "eat the rich" such as Sanders , AOC and the like.

siquick 5y ago
None of those things you listed represent “quality of life” in any capacity. I highly doubt anyone who’s working two jobs/60h weeks is spending too much time thinking about driving a sports car for one weekend a year. They’re thinking that they just want a day off and that it would be great if their multi multi billionaire employer would give up some of his obscene and ultimately pointless wealth and pay them a decent wage.
- GDC7 5y ago
  > None of those things you listed represent “quality of life” in any capacity. I highly doubt anyone who’s working two jobs/60h weeks is spending too much time thinking about driving a sports car for one weekend a year. As much as people don't want to hear it money is meant to be spent, only the perverse hedonic treadmill effect brought us in this scenario where it's used to keep the score > They’re thinking that they just want a day off and that it would be great if their multi multi billionaire employer would give up some of his obscene and ultimately pointless wealth and pay them a decent wage. Again, the gap has never been smaller. People rage would be justified if the process were to be in reverse or even slowing down, but it's only accelerating, we have just witnessed it. A person in the same age cohort as Bill Gates, received the COVID vaccine at the same time as him or maybe a couple of days earlier or later than him. It's unheard of in the history of the human specie
  - imtringued 5y ago
    >As much as people don't want to hear it money is meant to be spent, only the perverse hedonic treadmill effect brought us in this scenario where it's used to keep the score Well, in theory it just means that owning money is a leisure activity for these people. People like spending money on leisure. According to Austrian economists interest rates simply represent people's time preferences. For some strange reason they believe that interest must be positive because time preference is always positive (people want things now instead of later). They clearly ignored that people might want money/capital (not things) now and things later. If that were the case, then their time preference would be negative and it would also mean interest rates must be negative. So even by the weird Austrian economics logic interest rates must become negative as more billionaires accumulate capital for the sake of accumulating it, rather than for the sake of production.
    - GDC7 5y ago
      It's not only billionaires, it's everybody. > Must become negative If everybody likes to accumulate money instead of spending and thus have the preference you mentioned then there is no way interest rates would become negative (and I mean really negative not the couple of tenth of a percent). Money is a human abstraction, and thus it's inherently political, the most unpopular thing out there is inflation and negative interest rates. You have 100% people against it. Inflation is possibly more unpoular than a recession because it raises alarm bells in the populace even in absence of a recession. At least with taxation it's something like 80-20 and the only thing which is a matter of discussion is how much taxation needs to be imposed and how to spend tax money (Republicans want to direct them towards the military and defense, whereas democrats want to direct them towards social spending and welafare) It's a cultural thing, but even old people with few years left are all about accumulation, you'd need some sort of common shock such as young people and adults in their 40s collectively have a close call that would force them to evaluate their mortality and prompt them to structure their finances to "die with zero or negative net worth)
  - Guessnotgauss 5y ago
    Yeah, but your comment comes off as "be happy with what you get." Having grattitude is a path to being content with the situation. But you are ignoring the horrible inequality, the deprevation and lack of resources at the bottom. You are ignoring the pay for play politics, the influence the ultra rich buy at the cost of ordinary tax payers. Your argument reflects the recursive idea that because one has more money they deserve for rights to representation. This ends with up with a poor quality of life for people who should have a fair shot at the American dream.
Alekhine 5y ago
What are you even talking about? Do you think the current discussion of class in the US comes from Wealth envy? Infrastructure is crumbling. Wages are not keeping up with inflation. Employers have treated employees as their property. A hell of a lot of people can barely afford medical care. And yet you're talking about how great it is we can rent a sports car for the weekend? And therefore we don't need to question the rich, who not only hoard resources but have a massive amount of influence over how our society is run? What?
- kiba 5y ago
  Infrastructure is crumbling. Wages are not keeping up with inflation. Employers have treated employees as their property. A hell of a lot of people can barely afford medical care. Infrastructure is crumbling partly because we think of nothing with starting new highway projects and sprawling suburbia. We have created a car dependent society in which we need to use cars to do anything useful around town. That required people to borrow money to buy cars as opposed to using quality and excellent public transit to get to work, or just walk. And yet you're talking about how great it is we can rent a sports car for the weekend? And therefore we don't need to question the rich, who not only hoard resources but have a massive amount of influence over how our society is run? What? Hoard what kind of resources? Share in productive capital? I would be more concerned about housing, which by the way is usually one of the greatest expense a household could have and it is one of the greatest driver of inequality in wealth. We need to have a serious and painful conversation about housing, and how exclusionary policies are driving inequality, and we need to push through reforms that will anger a lot of upper and middle class voters and create winners and losers on a large scale in order to create a more egalitarian and wealthier society.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  All infrastructure at all times in history is crumbling. The second Japan builds a new rail line it starts “crumbling”. China might look like it’s light years ahead on infrastructure, but infrastructure starts to be a pain in 50 years when suddenly you gotta spend on replacement and maintenance.
- newbie2020 5y ago
ethanbond 5y ago
“And of course you can rent a kid with no large financial commitment. It’s easy to raise them, house them, feed them, and educate them as long as you’re okay with spending 18hrs/day at your minimum wage job and your child never having a shot at more than a high school education. Of course this comes at the expense of retirement but as long as you’re fine with hanging out with the millions of other poor old folks, you’re welcome to do so under the same bridge as them!”
- narcraft 5y ago
  https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0114268/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0114268/
imtringued 5y ago
Self discovery = the level of wealth where you are no longer a net payer of capital returns and become a net recipient? I mean yeah, if I had $5 million and got 5% returns on that per year I wouldn't be mad at the billionaires because the yields that I pay them are below the yields I get from the rest of society. Meanwhile the rest of society knows in the back of their head that they are net payers of capital returns. If you have $10k of savings and get paid 5% interest you get like $500 back, while having to pay 5% interest on anything you buy, lets say from your $30k salary which is at least $1500 in interest (I'm too lazy to calculate the real number which is much higher). The only real problem is that the marxists and socialists only know how to criticize capitalism, not how to fix it. Fixing it would be surprisingly trivial. If one models cash as a 0% perpetual bond it shouldn't be very surprising that $1 at 0% interest is worth more than $1 at lets say -3% interest. It may make sense to consider cash a foreign currency. You are pegging your exchange rate to something with 0% interest which means interest rates must follow the peg. The obvious solution would be to have floating exchange rates between bank deposits and cash the same way we have floating exchange rates vs treasury bonds. Keep your stocks and real estate. However, that perpetual exclusive land ownership right you have? Clearly just as unsustainable as lifelong dictatorships. Either periodically rotate through land owners like democracy rotates through politicians or just let them pay a fee for the privilege of having a monopoly on that location. Why? Because steel rusts, power decays in democracy. Just let exclusive ownership on land and money decay as well.
coldtea 5y ago
>quality of life gap on the other hand has never been smaller. That's a concern for animals. Human cocerns about wealth have always been comparative and relative, not absolute.
- GDC7 5y ago
  The thing about wealth is that at the end of the day it's a number, it doesn't mean anything until it's converted into quality of life. no matter a person's wealth society won't allow them to convert into personal pet projects which don't benefit or at least have the potential to benefit others. You won't be seeing billionaires building pyramids
UncleMeat 5y ago
People absolutely die younger because of more limited access to healthcare they can afford.

by GDC7 5y ago

siquick 5y ago

None of those things you listed represent “quality of life” in any capacity. I highly doubt anyone who’s working two jobs/60h weeks is spending too much time thinking about driving a sports car for one weekend a year. They’re thinking that they just want a day off and that it would be great if their multi multi billionaire employer would give up some of his obscene and ultimately pointless wealth and pay them a decent wage.

GDC7 5y ago
> None of those things you listed represent “quality of life” in any capacity. I highly doubt anyone who’s working two jobs/60h weeks is spending too much time thinking about driving a sports car for one weekend a year. As much as people don't want to hear it money is meant to be spent, only the perverse hedonic treadmill effect brought us in this scenario where it's used to keep the score > They’re thinking that they just want a day off and that it would be great if their multi multi billionaire employer would give up some of his obscene and ultimately pointless wealth and pay them a decent wage. Again, the gap has never been smaller. People rage would be justified if the process were to be in reverse or even slowing down, but it's only accelerating, we have just witnessed it. A person in the same age cohort as Bill Gates, received the COVID vaccine at the same time as him or maybe a couple of days earlier or later than him. It's unheard of in the history of the human specie
- imtringued 5y ago
  >As much as people don't want to hear it money is meant to be spent, only the perverse hedonic treadmill effect brought us in this scenario where it's used to keep the score Well, in theory it just means that owning money is a leisure activity for these people. People like spending money on leisure. According to Austrian economists interest rates simply represent people's time preferences. For some strange reason they believe that interest must be positive because time preference is always positive (people want things now instead of later). They clearly ignored that people might want money/capital (not things) now and things later. If that were the case, then their time preference would be negative and it would also mean interest rates must be negative. So even by the weird Austrian economics logic interest rates must become negative as more billionaires accumulate capital for the sake of accumulating it, rather than for the sake of production.
  - GDC7 5y ago
    It's not only billionaires, it's everybody. > Must become negative If everybody likes to accumulate money instead of spending and thus have the preference you mentioned then there is no way interest rates would become negative (and I mean really negative not the couple of tenth of a percent). Money is a human abstraction, and thus it's inherently political, the most unpopular thing out there is inflation and negative interest rates. You have 100% people against it. Inflation is possibly more unpoular than a recession because it raises alarm bells in the populace even in absence of a recession. At least with taxation it's something like 80-20 and the only thing which is a matter of discussion is how much taxation needs to be imposed and how to spend tax money (Republicans want to direct them towards the military and defense, whereas democrats want to direct them towards social spending and welafare) It's a cultural thing, but even old people with few years left are all about accumulation, you'd need some sort of common shock such as young people and adults in their 40s collectively have a close call that would force them to evaluate their mortality and prompt them to structure their finances to "die with zero or negative net worth)
- Guessnotgauss 5y ago
  Yeah, but your comment comes off as "be happy with what you get." Having grattitude is a path to being content with the situation. But you are ignoring the horrible inequality, the deprevation and lack of resources at the bottom. You are ignoring the pay for play politics, the influence the ultra rich buy at the cost of ordinary tax payers. Your argument reflects the recursive idea that because one has more money they deserve for rights to representation. This ends with up with a poor quality of life for people who should have a fair shot at the American dream.

Alekhine 5y ago

What are you even talking about? Do you think the current discussion of class in the US comes from Wealth envy? Infrastructure is crumbling. Wages are not keeping up with inflation. Employers have treated employees as their property. A hell of a lot of people can barely afford medical care. And yet you're talking about how great it is we can rent a sports car for the weekend? And therefore we don't need to question the rich, who not only hoard resources but have a massive amount of influence over how our society is run? What?

kiba 5y ago
Infrastructure is crumbling. Wages are not keeping up with inflation. Employers have treated employees as their property. A hell of a lot of people can barely afford medical care. Infrastructure is crumbling partly because we think of nothing with starting new highway projects and sprawling suburbia. We have created a car dependent society in which we need to use cars to do anything useful around town. That required people to borrow money to buy cars as opposed to using quality and excellent public transit to get to work, or just walk. And yet you're talking about how great it is we can rent a sports car for the weekend? And therefore we don't need to question the rich, who not only hoard resources but have a massive amount of influence over how our society is run? What? Hoard what kind of resources? Share in productive capital? I would be more concerned about housing, which by the way is usually one of the greatest expense a household could have and it is one of the greatest driver of inequality in wealth. We need to have a serious and painful conversation about housing, and how exclusionary policies are driving inequality, and we need to push through reforms that will anger a lot of upper and middle class voters and create winners and losers on a large scale in order to create a more egalitarian and wealthier society.
thehappypm 5y ago
All infrastructure at all times in history is crumbling. The second Japan builds a new rail line it starts “crumbling”. China might look like it’s light years ahead on infrastructure, but infrastructure starts to be a pain in 50 years when suddenly you gotta spend on replacement and maintenance.
newbie2020 5y ago

ethanbond 5y ago

“And of course you can rent a kid with no large financial commitment. It’s easy to raise them, house them, feed them, and educate them as long as you’re okay with spending 18hrs/day at your minimum wage job and your child never having a shot at more than a high school education. Of course this comes at the expense of retirement but as long as you’re fine with hanging out with the millions of other poor old folks, you’re welcome to do so under the same bridge as them!”

narcraft 5y ago
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0114268/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0114268/

imtringued 5y ago

Self discovery = the level of wealth where you are no longer a net payer of capital returns and become a net recipient? I mean yeah, if I had $5 million and got 5% returns on that per year I wouldn't be mad at the billionaires because the yields that I pay them are below the yields I get from the rest of society. Meanwhile the rest of society knows in the back of their head that they are net payers of capital returns. If you have $10k of savings and get paid 5% interest you get like $500 back, while having to pay 5% interest on anything you buy, lets say from your $30k salary which is at least $1500 in interest (I'm too lazy to calculate the real number which is much higher). The only real problem is that the marxists and socialists only know how to criticize capitalism, not how to fix it. Fixing it would be surprisingly trivial. If one models cash as a 0% perpetual bond it shouldn't be very surprising that $1 at 0% interest is worth more than $1 at lets say -3% interest. It may make sense to consider cash a foreign currency. You are pegging your exchange rate to something with 0% interest which means interest rates must follow the peg. The obvious solution would be to have floating exchange rates between bank deposits and cash the same way we have floating exchange rates vs treasury bonds. Keep your stocks and real estate. However, that perpetual exclusive land ownership right you have? Clearly just as unsustainable as lifelong dictatorships. Either periodically rotate through land owners like democracy rotates through politicians or just let them pay a fee for the privilege of having a monopoly on that location. Why? Because steel rusts, power decays in democracy. Just let exclusive ownership on land and money decay as well.

coldtea 5y ago

>quality of life gap on the other hand has never been smaller. That's a concern for animals. Human cocerns about wealth have always been comparative and relative, not absolute.

GDC7 5y ago
The thing about wealth is that at the end of the day it's a number, it doesn't mean anything until it's converted into quality of life. no matter a person's wealth society won't allow them to convert into personal pet projects which don't benefit or at least have the potential to benefit others. You won't be seeing billionaires building pyramids

UncleMeat 5y ago

People absolutely die younger because of more limited access to healthcare they can afford.