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Do you provably own quarter of trillion USD of equities? This is exactly what the very stupid people never seem to understand about wealth - net worth is not ca

Do you provably own quarter of trillion USD of equities? This is exactly what the very stupid people never seem to understand about wealth - net worth is not cash under the mattress (nor on a "Savings" account). Musk (as well as Bezos, Dorsey, etc for that matter) probably has less than a hundredth of a promile of his wealth in cash. One of the main reasons is that today's cash is in essence a rave-club bracelet - you need it for every day transacitons but as a store of value it is useless to harmful. The whole idea of today's currencies is for the financially illiterate people to get robbed of their savings. You don't become that wealthy by being that stupid. Edit: I used billion instead of trillion, apologies

nightski 4y ago
Being uninformed does not make one "very stupid".
- luciusdomitius 4y ago
  Not being aware of it and not admitting being uninformed does make you 'very stupid' though.
edgyquant 4y ago
> The whole idea of today's currencies is for the financially illiterate people to get robbed of their savings. No it isn’t, the financially illiterate don’t tend to have much savings anyway. The point of controlled inflation is to prevent the financially literate from hoarding cash as an appreciating asset and provide tooling to alleviate economic crisis. Considering your quote I’d question just how financially literate you yourself is.
- luciusdomitius 4y ago
  Yes. I know very well that this is the justification (and a justification can be invented for anything). Now it is your turn to explain to me how does this fact contradict my statement that the drawback of such paradigm is that it makes it useless as a store of value? Hint: It doesn't - you just stated a completely separate fact as if it is logically incompatible with the original argument.
  - zajio1am 4y ago
    > Now it is your turn to explain to me how does this fact contradict my statement that the drawback of such paradigm is that it makes it useless as a store of value? Well, nobody contradicted that statement, as that is generally accepted. The contradicted statement is "The whole idea of today's currencies is for the financially illiterate people to get robbed of their savings.", which as (i parse it) is a statement about purpose of such properties of today currencies, so it is contradicted by a different statement about purpose of these properties: "The point of controlled inflation is to prevent the financially literate from hoarding cash as ..."
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    That's not a drawback, it's basically the whole point. Cash is designed to be a bad store of value in the long run because the government wants you to spend it or invest it. Cash is a good store of value in the short and medium run so that people accept it in return for goods and services but a bad one in the long run so that it doesn't make sense to hoard it.
  - rswail 4y ago
    Cash is not a store of value, it's a mechanism of exchange. It never has been a store of value. It's supposed to be safe but if it has zero risk, then it has zero return. Inflation is a bit like maintaining the pressure in the pipe of the flow of money. Inflation also has the effect of discounting debt, which means it is good for borrowers, not lenders. Most people are borrowers, in terms of things like house mortgages and other debts. That's a good thing, but you also don't want wages to have to grow too fast with prices.
    - edgyquant 4y ago
      Also inflation isn’t linear. It is very possible for controlled inflation to be high one year and then low for the next two to make up for it. This idea that once we’ve inflated the dollar by a percent there’s no going back is false.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    I rebutted against the idea that our economic policy is designed to rob the poor or financially illiterate. The exact opposite is true, inflation forces the rich to put their capital to work. Financially illiterate people don’t tend to have enough savings to lose out to inflation, so that point seems moot. The working class, however, overwhelmingly stores it’s capital in retirement accounts (56% of US workers own stocks or bonds[1]) so they aren’t losing their savings to inflation. Your rhetoric is using lies to pull at peoples emotions, it’s the same thing all right-leaning libertarians spout. It has and will continue to be bullshit. 1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-owns-stock.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-own...
JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
Watch how fast his numbers fall if he tried to sell a fraction of it. Watch how fast it falls when people realize how absurd it is for Tesla to be the sixth largest company in the world by market cap, with a trillion dollar valuation. The meme voting era of stocks is coming to a close. The weighing portion of the cycle is coming and it will not be kind.

nightski 4y ago

Being uninformed does not make one "very stupid".

luciusdomitius 4y ago
Not being aware of it and not admitting being uninformed does make you 'very stupid' though.

edgyquant 4y ago

> The whole idea of today's currencies is for the financially illiterate people to get robbed of their savings. No it isn’t, the financially illiterate don’t tend to have much savings anyway. The point of controlled inflation is to prevent the financially literate from hoarding cash as an appreciating asset and provide tooling to alleviate economic crisis. Considering your quote I’d question just how financially literate you yourself is.

luciusdomitius 4y ago
Yes. I know very well that this is the justification (and a justification can be invented for anything). Now it is your turn to explain to me how does this fact contradict my statement that the drawback of such paradigm is that it makes it useless as a store of value? Hint: It doesn't - you just stated a completely separate fact as if it is logically incompatible with the original argument.
- zajio1am 4y ago
  > Now it is your turn to explain to me how does this fact contradict my statement that the drawback of such paradigm is that it makes it useless as a store of value? Well, nobody contradicted that statement, as that is generally accepted. The contradicted statement is "The whole idea of today's currencies is for the financially illiterate people to get robbed of their savings.", which as (i parse it) is a statement about purpose of such properties of today currencies, so it is contradicted by a different statement about purpose of these properties: "The point of controlled inflation is to prevent the financially literate from hoarding cash as ..."
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  That's not a drawback, it's basically the whole point. Cash is designed to be a bad store of value in the long run because the government wants you to spend it or invest it. Cash is a good store of value in the short and medium run so that people accept it in return for goods and services but a bad one in the long run so that it doesn't make sense to hoard it.
- rswail 4y ago
  Cash is not a store of value, it's a mechanism of exchange. It never has been a store of value. It's supposed to be safe but if it has zero risk, then it has zero return. Inflation is a bit like maintaining the pressure in the pipe of the flow of money. Inflation also has the effect of discounting debt, which means it is good for borrowers, not lenders. Most people are borrowers, in terms of things like house mortgages and other debts. That's a good thing, but you also don't want wages to have to grow too fast with prices.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    Also inflation isn’t linear. It is very possible for controlled inflation to be high one year and then low for the next two to make up for it. This idea that once we’ve inflated the dollar by a percent there’s no going back is false.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  I rebutted against the idea that our economic policy is designed to rob the poor or financially illiterate. The exact opposite is true, inflation forces the rich to put their capital to work. Financially illiterate people don’t tend to have enough savings to lose out to inflation, so that point seems moot. The working class, however, overwhelmingly stores it’s capital in retirement accounts (56% of US workers own stocks or bonds[1]) so they aren’t losing their savings to inflation. Your rhetoric is using lies to pull at peoples emotions, it’s the same thing all right-leaning libertarians spout. It has and will continue to be bullshit. 1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-owns-stock.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-own...

JohnJamesRambo 4y ago

Watch how fast his numbers fall if he tried to sell a fraction of it. Watch how fast it falls when people realize how absurd it is for Tesla to be the sixth largest company in the world by market cap, with a trillion dollar valuation. The meme voting era of stocks is coming to a close. The weighing portion of the cycle is coming and it will not be kind.