Davos 2015: Less Innovation, More Regulation, More Unrest. Run Away! 339
Freshly Exhumed writes: Growing income inequality was one of the top four issues at the 2015 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, ranking alongside European adoption of quantitative easing and geopolitical concerns. Felix Salmon, senior editor at Fusion, said there was a consensus that global inequality is getting worse, fueling overriding pessimism at the gathering. The result, he said, could be that the next big revolution will be in regulation rather than innovation. With growing inequality and the civil unrest from Ferguson and the Occupy protests fresh in people's mind, the world's super rich are already preparing for the consequences. At a packed session, former hedge fund director Robert Johnson revealed that worried hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes. "I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway," he said. Looking at studies like NASA's HANDY and by KPMG, the UK Government Office of Science, and others, Dr Nafeez Ahmed, executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, warns that the convergence of food, water and energy crises could create a "perfect storm" within about fifteen years.
Regulation? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now that they've got theirs, it's fine if regulations hold back everyone else.
Re:Regulation? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that they've got theirs, it's fine if regulations hold back everyone else.
I have nothing against people being rich, if they got there honestly and without coercion. Government lobbying, for example, is one form of coercion because it influences regulation of others via money.
But let's face it: most of them did not get there quite honestly or without resorting to coercion. And in fact, regulations helped to get them there. Not only is that obvious on its face, you can see it in the statistics: the more "statist" and regulatory governments have been, the less well economies have done and the more income inequality we've seen.
Now they're proposing to try to fix the problem they created, by doing more of what created it. Typical government idiocy.
And as for "unrest", they aren't going to be able to regulate that away. On the contrary: at least here in the U.S., if they don't start lightening up on Federal regulation, they're going to see far worse problems and more unrest than they have so far.
Re: Regulation? (Score:5, Insightful)
The greatest income inequality in the developed world can be found in probably the least statist country, the US.
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LOL that's because people with money leave the countries that try to redistribute.
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It is interesting that the super rich flee to the U.S. - the one country whose constitution acknowledge the need for future revolutions.
That's a funny way to spell Grand Cayman [wikipedia.org]!
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You seem to be forgetting WWII, the repercussions of which are still - to this day - haunting many countries, especially in Europe. The US sauntered through WWII with barely a scratch, owing to its geographical location, a history quite unlike most other developed countries at the time.
Ignoring that little fact kind of puts the rest of your post in doubt... Your anecdotal data set of 1 also doesn't exactly portray you in the most rational of lights...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You seem to be forgetting WWII, the repercussions of which are still - to this day - haunting many countries, especially in Europe.
Ok let's look at one of the countries that got hurt perhaps the worst by WWII: Japan. (Two nuclear bombs, starving population, totally decimated manufacturing infrastructure.) Meanwhile they're perhaps second only to the US as far as a high tech economy. They also rank very high on many income inequality lists.
While they might be statist in some respects, economically they are anything but, and in many respects they make the USA look like a command economy in comparison.
Also the US isn't the country with th
Re: Regulation? (Score:2)
http://www.therichest.com/rich... [therichest.com]
Which is the right one?
Re: Regulation? (Score:5, Insightful)
You fool.
That chart disproves your entire stance.
You may be technically correct that the US is "not #1".
But if you actually looked at, and understood that chart,
you'd have noticed that the only country with more inequality than the US is Chile.
The US is #2 on that chart.
The chart is sorted according to the pre-tax numbers, but its the after tax numbers that matter.
Inequality may start out higher in other countries thanks to old (seriously old) money, but thanks to their redistributionist policies, actual inequality is lower, and everyone lives more equality, with better healthcare, working conditions, benefits, standard/quality of living, and overall better access to and representation in the market.
So the point that the chart then makes is that redistribution works.
The chart you provided therefore undercuts your own argument and disproves your point.
Re: Regulation? (Score:5, Insightful)
and if you'd have bothered to read the article, the author even makes that point:
the U.S. had the second-highest level of inequality, behind only Chile.
Re: Regulation? (Score:2)
So it's nothing to do with statist governments then?
USA used to be a country you described (Score:5, Interesting)
This is what you said:
Those opportunities come from there not being a government telling you what you can't do, meaning there's no cap on your potential for economic growth ...
I am a first generation American, and since I have landed on the American soil several decades back, I have started or helped started (as sole proprietor or as partner or as investor) more than 70 companies
What you said was true, that the fact I have started over 70 companies because there wasn't anyone telling me what I can not do
I came from China, and the China during the time I left was a place where nobody had any right to start any business unless that individual had a death wish
Today's America, however, is no longer that America that I went to, some 4 decades ago
Today's America there are so many restrictions, either from the government (in terms of laws / regulation / rules) or from society ( 'gender diversity in the work place', for example )
Today I have businesses in both America and outside America, and yes, I have business in China as well --- and I can tell you this one thing ... it is much more free-ier to start and run a business in China than in America
Re: Regulation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh BS.
No, not all tech companies are from the US or originated here. Not even close.
Middle class incomes are higher in Canada.
Purchasing power parity is higher in Europe.
Standards of living are higher as well.
Health standards are higher.
And inequality is lower.
People are happier, work less, earn as much, and yet as just as productive as US workers.
And then you even make the "well the poor have microwaves, so therefore they aren't poor" argument.
Sheer idiocy.
Essentially, you don't know what F you're talking about.
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Then how do you afford the things you say you have ? Because a thousand bucks a month minus necessities like food and shelter, doesn't leave a lot left over to pay for iPads, big TVs and cars.
The rest of your post is just straw men and non-sequiturs.
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Re:Regulation? (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you possess these completely opposing thoughts at the same time?
I swear you are a textbook example of doublethink.
You start off good, then you say things like "the more "statist" and regulatory governments have been, the less well economies have done and the more income inequality we've seen" or " if they don't start lightening up on Federal regulation, they're going to see far worse problems and more unrest than they have so far".
The sheer idiocy and blindness required to actually believe this things while at the same time acknowledging that inequality is a problem and talk about holding the rich responsible for rigging the system is staggering.
You are seriously blaming the government and regulation for the inequality we see, and suggesting we do LESS of it?
You are a moron.
Re:Regulation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Regulation? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is insightful? I suppose, if you're a libertarian.
Reality check: in the US, Congress almost *never*, sitting around in the room, decides, "hey, let's make a new regulation, we ain't doin' anything else anyway, and we need to look like we're working." This seems to be what the poster I'm replying to thinks.
Let's see: St. Ronnie and the Republicans push through banking and s&l "reform", and cut the budget for the regulators. Several years later, the S&L disaster, of which, according to the papers at the time, 30% was internal, white collar crime.
Deregulate telecoms*, and several years later, the tech bubble bursts, wiping out many retirement investments, and causing a recession.
Bush & co cut regulation of banking and stocks; and we get the current Lesser Depression.
Anyone else notice a pattern here? Sort of like less regulation and regulators, and the majority of us get screwed, and loose money, while the top 1% keep going up?
And I *do* have something against "people being rich". How 'bout we just have a 100% tax on all wealth above $1G? Or maybe above $500M? What', a hundred million dollars isn't enough incentive, people will just fraudulently get themselves on welfare, and sit back and drink light beer and watch tv? Don't bother talking about job creators, either: they've been getting richer and richer... WHERE ARE THE JOBS? (Other than the ones in Pakistan, and China, and India, and ....).
*And as for "coercion", is that like, oh, in the mid-nineties, when I worked for Ameritech, and we were ORDERED by our division president to write our Congresscritter and Senators to tell them to support deregulation, *and* he wanted copies of our letters (nice job you got dere, be a shame if somet'in' were to happen' to it)?
mark
I feel sorry for rich people, (Score:2)
what with the rabble's concerns boiling over and impinging on the fringes of their attention.
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what with the rabble's concerns boiling over and impinging on the fringes of their attention.
The "rabble" just elected the most Republicans to Congress since 1952. I don't think the rich are too worried.
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If you think the Democrats would cause any significant problems for their super rich patrons, you are a fool.
Except the last time the Dems controlled congress, they passed a health care reform law that transferred billions of dollars from the rich to the poor. They also tried to raise capital gains taxes, which would hit the super rich hard.
Both parties are puppets that dance to the tune their pipers play, and we pay the price.
The parties have clearly different agendas. I know it is popular on Slashdot to say we are all just helpless sheep, controlled by the strings pulled by the "Super Rich" Illuminati or Elders of Zion, or whatever, but that is nonsense.
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My income is hardly among the rich.
The vast majority of rich people don't think they are rich. The median household income in America is $52K. If your salary, plus your spouse's salary, plus all your other income, is more than that, then you are at least in the top half. For a single person, the median is $31k. The income threshold for the top quintile, who many people consider "rich", is $102k. A family with two spouses earning $51k each would qualify.
On a world wide basis, assets of $800k or more puts you in the top 1%. Where I live
Escaping only helps you until a war. (Score:5, Insightful)
A bunch of rich people with no real military protecting them will be like ripe fruit for the picking (as they have been over and over and over for centuries).
They would really be much better served by being in a functioning healthy country. Give up 10% of their money to taxes and spread it around the population and they will be immeasurably safer.
But I think their greed just gets the better of them. As it has over and over and over for centuries.
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Ten percent? TEN PERCENT? Sounds like paradise:
http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0102_tax-rates
Re:Escaping only helps you until a war. (Score:4, Insightful)
I assume the GP was stating this in reference to a suggestion by Thomas Piketty as to what would be a more "just" (in his definition) tax approach to tackle inequality.
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The key here is not a ten percent tax rate but ten percent of wealth.
It's surprising how little wealth there actually is in the world. If most of us decided to take a year off and live off the savings, the world would collapse. It depends on us constantly creating new value.
So if we followed that suggesting, and took 10% of the wealth from everyone in America, including corporations, then spread it around to each person in the US evenly, it would be about $70k per person. Most people would spend it quickly and be back where they started.
If we took 10% of the global wealt
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The closest thing to a redistributive wealth tax is the estate tax, removed all together in 2001 and brought back in a lessor form in 2011. It's primarily politics which keeps us from having a proper weal
Re:Escaping only helps you until a war. (Score:4, Interesting)
Taxing wealth is practically difficult. It's relatively easy to catch money when it's changing hands. Counting the gold in someone's basement, so to speak, is an entirely different matter. Attempting to do is arbitrary - you don't really know the value of something until you sell it - and incentivizes the movement of large amounts of money out of open and transparent markets, which would be disastrous. Whenever you think of trying to tax something, you also need to think about what the broad consequences of avoiding that tax would be, because the motivation to avoid taxes is always high.
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By and large though, a poorer person has a larger portion of their wealth tied up in things like their home and
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The statement that I made and that you seem to be trying t
Escaping only helps you until a war. (Score:2, Funny)
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You do realise these are uber rich people.
They can just hire their own military [wikipedia.org]
You do realise a good portion of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq were not actually fought by the American military.
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The Army alone has about 500,000 soldiers. A lot of them are in support roles but a private military also needs support.
Where are the families of the people in the private military? Because if they have to go back to the USofA (the "enemy" in this scenario) to visit Mom and Dad then there's going to be a problem. So you'll need room on the uber rich estate for the families of your military. And your support personnel.
Which brings up the infrastructure to support those families. Schools, hospitals, etc. Wh
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They would really be much better served by being in a functioning healthy country.
Do you know much about Switzerland?
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A bunch of rich people with no real military protecting them will be like ripe fruit for the picking (as they have been over and over and over for centuries).
Not really no, for example during the French revolution which supposedly directly targeted the wealthy, the majority of those that went to visit Madame were not nobles.
I'm not entirely sure what the fixation is with income equality anyway, shouldn't people be thinking more about a continually improving standard of living? I mean surely that's what matters most to almost everyone. I know I don't wake up every morning bitterly jealous that someone else is richer them myself, or upset that I can't buy a Lear j
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I don't get why they'd think New Zealand would be safe from protests. If they really want to be safe they should be thinking places like, say, Heard Island [wikipedia.org], like a true billionaire supervillain would.
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Same here. This is the second time I've heard of NZ being used as the real-life Elysium, and the first time I thought it was a joke. NZ is going to be among the first of the first-world countries to revolt, they're not an economic powerhouse. 1%ers would land on their airstrips to find their compounds looted and burned, and walk right into an ambush ready to Gadhafi them, if they don't find an IED in the runway first.
Freedom Ship was actually a clever idea. Basically a floating Elysium station. If they're r
Try Antartica (Score:2)
One thing NZ has going for it is a low populatin density in a fairly isolated location (the US also has a low population density but is easily reachable by rampaging zombie looters). If things go hungry, you can always butcher, I mean cull the sheep, which outnumber people 10 to one. Better than NZ but more practicable than Elysium? Antarctica.
Education? (Score:2)
Is it the lack of education that keeps the poor taking from each other rather than taking from the rich? I'm sure mine is not the only city that has "Boardwalk" located close enough to "Baltic" that the poor without much effort could take what they want from the rich. Yet still, the poor continue to rob from the poor.
Time to squat... (Score:2)
On farmland in New Zealand, ready to pounce.
We don't all live in the USA. (Score:2)
And money is easily moved.
The Occupy movement was almost completely non existent here in Australia. Fergusen style riots don't happen here either. They also don't happen in NZ.
The USA has some terrible social issues to deal with, with some crazy rich living alongside some crazy poor. While that divide exists you will always have problems. But the US is quite unique in first world countries in that regard. Using the Gini coefficient (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient) the US is worse than m
Re:We don't all live in the USA. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the problem is you can't pack up a whole economy and move it.
If your wealth is dependent on the US domestic economy and it tanks because of civil unrest, a lot of wealthy people will be unwealthy before they can even reconsider relocating.
There's also the question of "what is money?" and are you really rich still if you have to convert your money to another currency with a different local buying power, especially if your native currency dives or is sinking when you try to convert it.
There's also the question of competition for safe overseas havens; if the availability is limited, you're now competing with just the rich, so unless you're elite rich, you may lose out altogether.
And what kind of haven are you expecting? A self-sustaining kind of pre-20th century British estate of farms and light industry? At the end of the day it sounds like a mash-up of a Ralph Lauren ad with survivalism.
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This threat is always made whenever new rules or regulations are talked about, but it's nonsense. People already try to keep their money out of the US to avoid paying any tax on it, and only bring it in when they have something to invest in. Since Silicon Valley is not going to move to another country any time soon, along with all the tech workers that make it what it is, the investment will still happen there. All new rules will do is prevent people hiding as much of their wealth off-shore.
Japan has strict
Inequality's Mossad? (Score:5, Interesting)
With growing inequality and the civil unrest from Ferguson and the Occupy protests fresh in people's mind, the world's super rich are already preparing for the consequences. At a packed session, former hedge fund director Robert Johnson revealed that worried hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes.
If I recall correctly, Mossad was formed by Israel with one of its primary missions being to go around the world hunting down and assassinating former Nazi officers who had gone into hiding.
If the world gets to the point where the underprivileged gather their pitchforks and torches, and the ultra-rich flee from mob justice, why wouldn't those who remain take over their nations' governments and form Inequality's Mossad? If the super wealthy really do check out, the people left behind will gain all the authoritarian powers that are being built up right now to suppress change for as long as possible. They'll also get all the resources and production of the biggest powerhouse nations on the planet, because that's where the rich will be fleeing from. And they will be very angry.
The 99.9% who would still be in their home nations, having just seen the banks get cleaned out, will have the muscle of the G20, the influence of the G20, and the rage of Ferguson. Yeah, super-rich guy, go hide in New Zealand. See how that works out for you.
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So, in your world all the money in the banks is owned by a few super rich people, and they can just take it with them and go to New Zealand.
Maybe Huey, Dewey, and Louie will save the day?
There's a whole industry based around Elite Panic (Score:5, Interesting)
A friend of mine got into reading investment books targeted at the extremely wealthy. They were pretty funny. These books had to trump up nearly impossible end of days events and then promote investment strategies that will keep the reader amongst the 1% when half the world's population dies from a space disease delivered by a comet impact or some other highly unlikely scenario. Elite Panic is big business.
Maybe the new path to the middle class will be in selling doomsday bunkers to paranoid trillionaires.
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Maybe the new path to the middle class will be in selling doomsday bunkers to paranoid trillionaires.
Too late, this business picked up in a big way not long after the Great Recession hit. Wired had an interesting article and photo gallery on "luxury doomsday shelters" but I can't find it now.
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I seem to remember reading something about the risks of the low profile merely wealthy, people who aren't famous or especially politically connected and whose wealth is never-work-again kinds of money but not Glided Age, family dynasty wealth and isn't tied to control of a specific corporation or revenue-generating entity.
Apparently they are targeted at many levels because they have limited options for their liquid assets. They're at risk from being ripped off by their investments, at risk from embezzlemen
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That is one of the risks of "keeping the money".
Other risks include but are not limited to:
1. People taking your family hostage and demanding random.
2. Attacks on your personally, either from family members or fraudsters who will act like such after your death to get your money.
3. Attacks by competition to reduce value of your holdings or take them over (i.e. large corporation owning farms around you).
And many others.
Many forget that legislation works as a set of consequences for one's actions, and when one
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Luckyo should have explained that he is from the Bizarro Planet where the rich don't the legislation they desire, and the entire legal system is not designed around protecting their property.
Regulation what a fucking joke (Score:2, Insightful)
Regulation IS the problem. Had we done the principled thing and let AIG and Goldman burn when the time came it would have taken lots of big finance with it. There would have been plenty of churn as far as just who the 1% are. I would even guess some of them would have been left with less than nothing.
Oh but they would still have all kinds of physical property and hard assets. Yes but assets sometimes have a funny way of turning into liabilities when you don't have the case flow to manage them properly.
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Ah, but the thing is...they're trying to protect THEIR inequality instead of being eaten by the stacked deck turning on them.
AND YET !!!! (Score:2)
Personal lifeboats vs. better ships for all (Score:2)
We could have both perhaps. But in general, this is sad, since with a few trillion invested in R&D, we could have fusion energy (or dirt cheap solar, coming anyway, but more slowly) and automated indoor agriculture and near 100% emissions-free recycling of all consumer goods, and so on. And many actions of the wealthy (especially those invested in oil) have essentially blocked these sorts of efforts politically. As Bucky Fuller says, whether it will be utopia or oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay rac
what a charade (Score:2)
Davos is a gathering of the ultra-rich and the ultra-powerful. When they talk about "fixing the planet", what they mean is policies that keep them in power and keep them wealthy.
Attending Davos is pretty much a sure sign that a politician, activist, or "philanthropist" can be trusted.
Re:Big Myth #2 (Score:4, Informative)
The "Wealthy" have Billions of dollars.
They own assets that could be converted into Billions, but not in any practical sense. Most of their wealth is in stocks and bonds. You have to sell those to get cash. If Gates sold all of his stocks so he could roll around in a Billion dollars cash with naked teenagers, M.S. stock would probably crash, reducing his wealth by orders of magnitude.
Sure, they have access to a shit ton of money, but it's almost all on paper.
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It doesn't matter. If he wants to have each meal in a different country every day for a year, people will fall over themselves to make it happen as soon as he whips out the black card. The fact that there aren't enough countries to make that happen doesn't mean he somehow isn't wealthy.
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How would a fall in value of something that you currently own zero of affect you?
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Yes, and yet somehow, Branson can have another 10 or 20 Virgin Galactics and still not have to get a 9 to 5 in order to eat.
The guys who create those things may not be rich, and often don't become rich as a result, but the big bucks those ideas end up making go to the rich.
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They TRY to run the world. World itself is a mean beast, and while it can be kept under control, it must be given enough to stay so.
When you starve it to overly gorge yourself, it starts to get unruly. Wild. And eventually it devours the wannabe rider.
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The rich and powerful run the world. They don't. They react to the world just like everyone else. These guys all have to react to the free market to keep their money. They aren't in the driver's seats and they never were.
Of course not. You are running the world, I presume.
You are talking about smartphones/youtube while discussing who rules the world.
Do you even understand the irony of that?
Jesus Christ...
Re:Big Myth #1 (Score:5, Insightful)
So when the richest 0.1% control fully half of the worlds entire wealth, you don't think have any power, let alone more power than the rest of us?
Heck, you even think its a free market.
Hint: it's not; not at their stage of the game.
You are a fool.
They crashed the WORLD'S economy.
Possibly intentionally, as they profited off of the entire ordeal.
They profited off the toxic loans that drove the housing bubble.
They profited off the crash.
They profited off the bailout.
And then they captured nearly the entire recovery, 95% worth.
That's why the economy still stinks for most people. It's like if you shove 100 people in a room, and take 100$ from each of them, then give one guy 9500$, and everyone else 5$. That's our crash and recovery in a nutshell.
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You need to do your research.
If you had said bill gates of the gates family, you'd be right. They were wealthy.
Jobs wasn't wealthy. Was adopted. Did not have a good relationship with his bio father when he finally turned up (tho it was a reasonable adoption case- young pregnant mother and father with no means). He also denied his daughter was his daughter for several years when he knew better.
Jobs started from the middle income layer- did not do the ivy league college bit- did not have a silver spoon in
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The iPhone was far from the first smartphone. It was the first dumbed-down smartphone-like toy. You could argue that it was the beginning of the end for real handheld computing rather than the shitty cable-TV-like experience that exists today.
The first smartphone was the Handspring Visorphone.
Re:"They" is us (Score:5, Insightful)
Time to put the cool-aid down. You are told that so you don't pick the pitchfork up.
You are NOT a temporarily embarrassed millionaire. You are working class and will always be working class.
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You do realise that there is nothing wrong with being a 'working class'? There is also nothing wrong with being a billionaire.
If your first reaction to somebody who is wealthier than you is a 'pitchfork', then maybe the problem is you.
Re:"They" is us (Score:5, Insightful)
The only problem is when working class delude themselves into thinking they are not working class and vote for people who piss on the working class from great height.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Time to put the cool-aid down. You are told that so you don't pick the pitchfork up.
Inequality is not a good reason to pick up a pitchfork. There are causes I will die for, but that is not one of them.
And not many other people are willing to die for that either, which is why people like you are safe at home behind your computer complaining about inequality, rather than out wielding a pitchfork somewhere.
Re:"They" is us (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a time and place for everything, but there is no case in history where the rich kept getting richer while the poor got poorer that didn't end in pitchforks.
Not one.
There are some cases where the rich wised up long enough to placate the masses. See the New Deal.
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There is a time and place for everything, but there is no case in history where the rich kept getting richer while the poor got poorer that didn't end in pitchforks.
That's not happening now. Right now everyone is getting richer.
If you find someone who says otherwise, dig into their numbers, because they have some mistake. Either they didn't take into account inflation, or they compare wealth and income inappropriately, or they don't consider total compensation, or they don't consider the payments we are making from the rich to the poor in the form of welfare.
Those people probably made the 'mistake' on purpose, because their goal is to manipulate you into pulling ou
Re:"They" is us (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, I have dug into the numbers. They say all but the rich are losing buying power. They say the 1% are doing OK but the 0.1% are making out like bandits.
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Actually, I have dug into the numbers. They say all but the rich are losing buying power.
Then you made one of the mistakes mentioned above.
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Or you did in the other direction. I find that more likely and that it better matches what everyone seems to be experiencing.
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Ahahaha you people. Seriously, which do you think is more important to the 99% or whatever, the fact that their standard of living is continually improving, or that someone is shopping for her third sports car, somewhere out there.
Moral panic mongers are finding this whole information age thing quite the botherance, aren't they.
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That is flat out BS.
Pure and simple, no excuses.
If you actually believe that nonsense you just said then you live in a fantasy world.
The amount we spend on "welfare" in this country is a joke.
No, everyone is most definitely NOT getting richer.
Yes, they have accounted for inflation (you are not smarter than the world's smartest economists and have not discovered the one thing they forgot).
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Sure. They wanted political power so they could make people stop pissing on them. And so they could re-level the playing field enough that they could quit getting poorer.
Don't forget how wealth and political power so often go hand in hand.
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His point is that the widespread class warfare against "the rich" is a useful tool for the left to generate rage (because who doesn't envy at least a little the people that are wealthier, and despise the grossly wealthy who flaunt their wealth through ostentatious consumption), but in fact the "rich" that are the target of POLICY - ie the top 10% or top 25% - reaches well down into what most of us would colloquially call the middle class.
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The part you are deluded in is that you are at all likely to get that other 9/10ths and become the target of those pitchforks.
Re:"They" is us (Score:5, Insightful)
Heh, that's right, throw in whone countries, that are poorer than an average US citizen to dilute the statistics. When people talk about 1% they talk about 1% in their country. That's where the inequality strikes, because governance is done within that country and ability to influence the outcomes of political struggles is dependent on the resources one has.
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It isn't interesting to compare your wealth with someone in Africa, because people in Africa are not a threat to you. They are incapable of competing with you in any meaningful sense. No, H1B does not introduce pitchfork level competition (taking off rich people's heads).
If you have 77k in assets in your 20s then you're doing well, but you are by no measure wealthy in our society (USA). You're solidly middle class. If you are 40 and are at 77k in assets, you are doing very poorly. I'm talking about wealth g
Invalid comaprison (Score:2)
No we are not them. Re:"They" is us (Score:5, Insightful)
A wealth manager for very wealthy [ucsc.edu] makes a distinction between top 1% and top 0.5% (8 million according to IRS and 15 million according to the Feds). The top 0.5% is reached only by people with inherited wealth, or very lucky people who get to top 5% by smartness and hardwork, and end up in 0.5% due to good fortune, or stock options. Professionals, doctors, lawyers, accountants are very unlikely to reach top 0.5%, and increasing not even likely to reach top 1%. He used to see very successful professionals retiring in top 1%. But no longer.
He calculates that a person starting at low end of 1% by income for that age group, and staying at the same band (99% dividing line by income) all his/her working life will NOT end up in top 1% by financial wealth. A persons starting in the low end of 1% by wealth, will stay there if he/she draws the same amount of money our 1% by income professional, and might go up in scale.
In USA money earned by blood, sweat, tears and brains (wages, earned income) is taxed at much higher rate than money earned by money (capital gains, carried interest, qualified dividends, etc). This is the root cause of the inequality. For 30 years, since Reagan, the US Govt has been coddling the super rich by funneling all tax relief to them. They turned their back to the USA, invested all the savings in low wage countries to maximize their profits.
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That's a tendentious and misleading way of putting it. In fact, inherited wealth is only a small fraction of the top 1% or top 0.5%. It may constitute a large part of his clients because those people don't know how to manage their money.
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That's not quite true. Look at the individual income tax stats for 2012 [irs.gov]. Scroll over to column T. That's the actual tax paid as percent of gross income. It neatly sums up the effect of graduated tax brackets, tax credits, and deductions.
4.1% - $15,000 under $20,000
5
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The problem with boiling down a complex report to a single factoid is that you end up missing the point entirely. The problem is inequality, and even if you are in the top 10% you are still being held down by it. Equality is massive and increasing at all levels, from global to within each country to within most corporations.
Decreasing inequality means you get richer, even if you are in the top 1% globally. As you point out, it isn't a particularly exclusive club, and people at the lower end tend not to be d
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I'd speak for yourself if I were you. I'm not aware of anyone I know with a net worth of $800K or more - or even half that. Maybe a few in the $200k range, that have a bit of equity in their house, but that's the limit.
Then you are probably young. As you approach retirement, more of your friends will be approaching that net worth, because they've been saving for a long time.
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When I look at the people that retired that I know and have done full payment on their house, then perhaps 500.000 EUR
In 2011 that was about $800,000USD lol. Now with the drop in value of the Euro, it's not so much. I guess Europeans don't save for their retirement like we do in the US.
Re:"They" is us (Score:4, Interesting)
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People in the US reach a median net worth of around $84000 around age 50. Around retirement, median net worth is $170000.
If you expect to have a large positive net worth 5 years out of school, well, you need to change your expectations.
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You meet "the one percent" quite frequently: your doctor, your accountant, your real estate agent, and maybe your plumber if he has a decent size business.
In fact, "the one percent" are probably 10-20% of the US population, because many people will have a "one percent" kind of income at some point in their careers.
Re:Where am I? (Score:4, Funny)
I keep reading it as Davros and that he will EX-TERM-IN-ATE the world in 2015.
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The sad part is that while fighting over wealth has been a necessity for survival when we had to breed a lot and resources were limited, we don't have to any more. We have means to control breeding speed and can easily sustain people we have on the planet today in very decent living conditions if we had a proper distribution system.
But we do not. Our wealth distribution system is derived directly from our resource-limited past where struggle for resources was a key to survival. Attempts to rebuild it result
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Attempts to rebuild it resulted in massive suppression from systems using the old distribution system who understood that all it takes is one such new system becoming functional to destroy them.
Ahahaha! I swear you marxists live in as much of a fairy tale world as any conspiracy nut.
The reason poor countries are poor is because of their shitty corrupt politicians. See for reference what happened to Zimbabwe, or the President of South Africa looting all of the UK foreign aid to build his palace, or the way that the government in the Philippines can't account for over 90% of the aid it received for Haiyan.
"Derived directly from our resource-limited past" my ass, the only thing that matches the zeal
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They've tried before, maybe they'll try again?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]