6 ms·

The good news is that humanity has saved up a few trillion for emergencies. The bad news is that it's been saved up and hidden in tax havens. Pity

kortilla 4y ago
What a bad take. The US alone effectively created that much money out of thin air during the pandemic. All of the countries combined printed far more. Doing the same for an energy project that might actually pay back (unlike the covid losses) is far less disruptive. Finally, the amount of money hidden away in tax havens by the rich is nothing compared to this. Don’t drag down something as important as the climate crisis with some smooth brained class warfare.
- InvertedRhodium 4y ago
  What a one sided take - there's no reason that both can't be real problems.
- billiam 4y ago
  People that charge class warfare just don't want anything to change. Wealth accumulated by the rich mostly by burning dinosaurs is just as fictitious as any QE from the Fed.
  - pydry 4y ago
    It's only fictitious if Jeff Bezos is comparing his wealth to your wealth. Try to tax it away and use it for something that would benefit everyone and suddenly it becomes a lot less abstract to him.
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      It would become a lot less real too. The wealth of people who mostly get it from stock ownership is a complete fiction, driven by the scarcity of shares on the open market. If Jeff Bezos dumped his entire holding in AMZN shares, the whole company would be worth a lot less. Not due to any sort of magical effect of Jeff Bezos, but due to the market being flooded with supply.
      - pydry 4y ago
        I guess this means if a hypothetical Bill Gates sold off the vast majority of the 45% of Microsoft stock he owned then the company would then be worth a lot less? It really is weird how frequently I see the view you espouse and how nobody who repeats it seems to consider the clearest, most obvious counterexample that so completely disproves it.
        tsimionescu 4y ago
        So you think that Microsoft stock price wouldn't go down significantly if Bill Gates put 45% of the company up for sale?
        coob 4y ago
        He sold most of his MSFT in 2020 when stepping down from the board.
        pclmulqdq 4y ago
        By that time, he had sold almost all of MSFT. He was a ~2% owner. That sale was a lot more similar in scale to a hedge fund selling a large block of shares than to Jeff Bezos liquidating his holdings.
        pydry 4y ago
        IIRC put 44% of the company up for sale over a period of many years and the price of microsoft stock did indeed go up during that time. So yes, I think what would happen is what did happen.
        tsimionescu 4y ago
        The hypothetical was about selling them all at once, or a very short period of time.
        pydry 4y ago
- Aeolun 4y ago
  > The US alone effectively created that much money out of thin air during the pandemic. All of the countries combined printed far more. The difference being that most of that money ended up in rich people’s pockets, and are now causing a global economic crisis.
  - anu7df 4y ago
    I am not sure of that. If all that money ended up in rich people's pocket, never to see the light of day again we won't be having the inflation crisis. The money through various investments is now out in the open, driving up inflation. It is still unequally distributed and that is causing issues. If there was a magical way to distribute that money equally between everyone inflation won't be an issue. Unfortunately magic isn't real.
    - adrianN 4y ago
      Rich people don't keep their money under the mattress. It's invested in assets that make it available to the economy.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      I don't claim to know the full causes of the current inflation issues, but inflation can also be caused by a reduction in productivity, not just by an increase in money supply.
      - kortilla 4y ago
        There needs to be a reduction in productivity while everyone magically staying at the same income levels though to keep demand high. The rapid increase in just human labor prices seems to indicate that money is making it to people somehow because COVID didn’t kill enough of the labor force to have that kind of effect.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    If you used the money to build renewable infrastructure, most of the money would still end up in rich people's pockets, because typically it's rich people who own the means of producing infrastructure.
- 8note 4y ago
  Haven't the covid losses already paid back? We aren't in absolute catastrophe
  - kortilla 4y ago
    No. They won’t be paid back until the government gets an excess of at least that much in tax revenue. Something mitigating an ongoing can be expensive, have the intended positive effect immediately, but not be paid back for a long time (or sometimes ever). Federally subsidized flood insurance is a much smaller scale example. There are many places in Florida and the gulf in general where houses get destroyed by hurricanes and have to be rebuild for $X every 20 years when we only collect maybe 25% of $X in premiums.
pas 4y ago
the problem is the allocation of the resources in the real economy. the copper production goes somewhere currently. if half of that suddenly would go to making these super long distance cables that would cause brutal inflation for a lot of things that depend on copper. (sure, eventually it would increase supply too.)
- eternityforest 4y ago
  A lot of copper goes to nonelectrical uses that could probably go away. Whenever I see something mechanical made of bronze or something it always looks like a real waste. New finishes and coatings look pretty good and composites are strong and corrosion resistant, and steel is cheaper. Not everything can be replaced but some can.
  - dranudin 4y ago
    You should try a copper pan. They are great! Copper is also a very effective conductor of heat.
WalterBright 4y ago
High taxes always drive capital away into unproductive tax havens. Reagan's achievement was to eliminate tax shelters in exchange for lower tax rates. This pulled the investment out of those unproductive shelters into productive activities, leading to the prosperity of the 80s.
- andrepd 4y ago
  Prosperity of the 80s? You mean the era that signalled the end of the post-war golden age of capitalism and brought about hyper-financialisation (which led us to the 2008 catastrophe from which we still haven't recovered) and the decline of tax progressiveness and public services (which supercharged wealth inequality back to gilded age levels)? Many of our current problems can be traced back to changes which occurred in the 70s and 80s. Yes, prosperity on GDP numbers, blessed be Its name. Unfortunately not everything is reduced to making line go up.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Decline of public services? Government social spending has increased enormously since the 80s. I'm amused you're blaming 2008 on Reagan.
    - badpun 4y ago
      When you deregulate stuff, the catastrophic results usually don't come immediately. If they were to come immediately, it would be blatantly obvious to everyone that it's a bad idea, and hence deregulation wouldn't happen. So, in practice, most of deregulation happens in areas where it's good for short-term and bad/catastrophic for long-term.
- Hammershaft 4y ago
  Reagan created and governed on unprecedented peacetime deficits caused by his military spending and tax changes. If his policy had any meaningful influence over the economy of the 80s it's likely the massive deficit spending. That said, the link between presidential policy & short term economic changes is universally overstated. The government can cut down basic research funding and the effects won't be felt for a half century.
robocat 4y ago
Money is a river, not a lake.

kortilla 4y ago

What a bad take. The US alone effectively created that much money out of thin air during the pandemic. All of the countries combined printed far more. Doing the same for an energy project that might actually pay back (unlike the covid losses) is far less disruptive. Finally, the amount of money hidden away in tax havens by the rich is nothing compared to this. Don’t drag down something as important as the climate crisis with some smooth brained class warfare.

InvertedRhodium 4y ago
What a one sided take - there's no reason that both can't be real problems.
billiam 4y ago
People that charge class warfare just don't want anything to change. Wealth accumulated by the rich mostly by burning dinosaurs is just as fictitious as any QE from the Fed.
- pydry 4y ago
  It's only fictitious if Jeff Bezos is comparing his wealth to your wealth. Try to tax it away and use it for something that would benefit everyone and suddenly it becomes a lot less abstract to him.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    It would become a lot less real too. The wealth of people who mostly get it from stock ownership is a complete fiction, driven by the scarcity of shares on the open market. If Jeff Bezos dumped his entire holding in AMZN shares, the whole company would be worth a lot less. Not due to any sort of magical effect of Jeff Bezos, but due to the market being flooded with supply.
    - pydry 4y ago
      I guess this means if a hypothetical Bill Gates sold off the vast majority of the 45% of Microsoft stock he owned then the company would then be worth a lot less? It really is weird how frequently I see the view you espouse and how nobody who repeats it seems to consider the clearest, most obvious counterexample that so completely disproves it.
      - tsimionescu 4y ago
        So you think that Microsoft stock price wouldn't go down significantly if Bill Gates put 45% of the company up for sale?
        coob 4y ago
        He sold most of his MSFT in 2020 when stepping down from the board.
        pclmulqdq 4y ago
        By that time, he had sold almost all of MSFT. He was a ~2% owner. That sale was a lot more similar in scale to a hedge fund selling a large block of shares than to Jeff Bezos liquidating his holdings.
        pydry 4y ago
        IIRC put 44% of the company up for sale over a period of many years and the price of microsoft stock did indeed go up during that time. So yes, I think what would happen is what did happen.
        tsimionescu 4y ago
        The hypothetical was about selling them all at once, or a very short period of time.
        pydry 4y ago
Aeolun 4y ago
> The US alone effectively created that much money out of thin air during the pandemic. All of the countries combined printed far more. The difference being that most of that money ended up in rich people’s pockets, and are now causing a global economic crisis.
- anu7df 4y ago
  I am not sure of that. If all that money ended up in rich people's pocket, never to see the light of day again we won't be having the inflation crisis. The money through various investments is now out in the open, driving up inflation. It is still unequally distributed and that is causing issues. If there was a magical way to distribute that money equally between everyone inflation won't be an issue. Unfortunately magic isn't real.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    Rich people don't keep their money under the mattress. It's invested in assets that make it available to the economy.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    I don't claim to know the full causes of the current inflation issues, but inflation can also be caused by a reduction in productivity, not just by an increase in money supply.
    - kortilla 4y ago
      There needs to be a reduction in productivity while everyone magically staying at the same income levels though to keep demand high. The rapid increase in just human labor prices seems to indicate that money is making it to people somehow because COVID didn’t kill enough of the labor force to have that kind of effect.
- adrianN 4y ago
  If you used the money to build renewable infrastructure, most of the money would still end up in rich people's pockets, because typically it's rich people who own the means of producing infrastructure.
8note 4y ago
Haven't the covid losses already paid back? We aren't in absolute catastrophe
- kortilla 4y ago
  No. They won’t be paid back until the government gets an excess of at least that much in tax revenue. Something mitigating an ongoing can be expensive, have the intended positive effect immediately, but not be paid back for a long time (or sometimes ever). Federally subsidized flood insurance is a much smaller scale example. There are many places in Florida and the gulf in general where houses get destroyed by hurricanes and have to be rebuild for $X every 20 years when we only collect maybe 25% of $X in premiums.

pas 4y ago

the problem is the allocation of the resources in the real economy. the copper production goes somewhere currently. if half of that suddenly would go to making these super long distance cables that would cause brutal inflation for a lot of things that depend on copper. (sure, eventually it would increase supply too.)

eternityforest 4y ago
A lot of copper goes to nonelectrical uses that could probably go away. Whenever I see something mechanical made of bronze or something it always looks like a real waste. New finishes and coatings look pretty good and composites are strong and corrosion resistant, and steel is cheaper. Not everything can be replaced but some can.
- dranudin 4y ago
  You should try a copper pan. They are great! Copper is also a very effective conductor of heat.

WalterBright 4y ago

High taxes always drive capital away into unproductive tax havens. Reagan's achievement was to eliminate tax shelters in exchange for lower tax rates. This pulled the investment out of those unproductive shelters into productive activities, leading to the prosperity of the 80s.

andrepd 4y ago
Prosperity of the 80s? You mean the era that signalled the end of the post-war golden age of capitalism and brought about hyper-financialisation (which led us to the 2008 catastrophe from which we still haven't recovered) and the decline of tax progressiveness and public services (which supercharged wealth inequality back to gilded age levels)? Many of our current problems can be traced back to changes which occurred in the 70s and 80s. Yes, prosperity on GDP numbers, blessed be Its name. Unfortunately not everything is reduced to making line go up.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Decline of public services? Government social spending has increased enormously since the 80s. I'm amused you're blaming 2008 on Reagan.
  - badpun 4y ago
    When you deregulate stuff, the catastrophic results usually don't come immediately. If they were to come immediately, it would be blatantly obvious to everyone that it's a bad idea, and hence deregulation wouldn't happen. So, in practice, most of deregulation happens in areas where it's good for short-term and bad/catastrophic for long-term.
Hammershaft 4y ago
Reagan created and governed on unprecedented peacetime deficits caused by his military spending and tax changes. If his policy had any meaningful influence over the economy of the 80s it's likely the massive deficit spending. That said, the link between presidential policy & short term economic changes is universally overstated. The government can cut down basic research funding and the effects won't be felt for a half century.

robocat 4y ago

Money is a river, not a lake.