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Comment by Ginden | Hacker News Reader

Marxists predicted that capitalism will fall in few years in 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s,1960s,1970s.

For some unexplainable reason, predictions of dramatic changes in systems with billions of variables always fail.

I can see that you didn’t read the article.

The article was rubbish, the author himself is a counterargument to his point. He came from a poor family, worked hard studying economic history, became a successful trader and thus extremely wealthy, yet he still proports

>Now, no matter how hard you work, how smart you are, if you come from the ‘wrong’ family you’ll probably never own property. That is feudalism. We’re going back into a world of aristocracy. Capitalism’s over.

Seems more like he thinks so much of himself that no one else could possibly do what he did.

He says “probably” so the existence of himself is not a counterargument.

If he want's to declare 'capitalism' over then he should do more then say 'probably' as that is quite a range of possibility. How 'probable' is it and what alternative system does he propose that makes it much more 'probable'.

By the reading he suggest, I has fallen in with a school of economic thinking that is basically going back to 1960 socialist school of thought that in my opinion is so much theoretical nonsense with no practical reality.

“My grand, macro thesis is that real interest rates have to stay low, and that’s because the rich have all the wealth and like saving,” he reflected. “Now, no matter how hard you work, how smart you are, if you come from the ‘wrong’ family you’ll probably never own property. That is feudalism. We’re going back into a world of aristocracy. Capitalism’s over.”

> Now, no matter how hard you work, how smart you are, if you come from the ‘wrong’ family you’ll probably never own property. That is feudalism. We’re going back into a world of aristocracy. Capitalism’s over.

As of 2021, 47.9% millenials in US own homes. So "new feudalism" has ~50% aristocracy rate (compare: 2-3% in times of real feudalism). This is probably partially due to increasing urbanization and higher life expectancy (alive grandfathers = no inherence).

Gini index remained quite stable over last few years, at least in English-speaking countries: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?end=2018&lo...

"We should take legislative action to reduce inequalities" is legitimate political stance. "New feudalism" or "capitalism collapse" is bullshit.

Millennial home ownership lags sharply behind previous generatons. He's not saying that we have feudalism. He's arguing that is the direction the world is heading with increasing inequality. This video does a good job of explaining his views:

https://youtu.be/ZXP8gH0wddE?t=386

I particularly like his point about why homes have risen from 2-3x wages to 20-30x wages, this was a question I had always pondered about and could never find a good explanation for. The GINI data you posted is interesting but ends at 2018 and if I had to guess the pandemic has only worsened inequality. Asset prices such as homes have risen sharply putting them out of reach for many families.

Edit:

Looks like has worsened signficantly:

The United States’ Gini coefficient is .484, the highest it’s been in 50 years according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The U.S. has the highest Gini coefficient among the G7 nations. The top 1% of earners in the United States earn about 40 times more than the bottom 90% of earners.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/income-in...

Aside from everything I have already pointed out is wrong with this opinion is the core assumption that property is what fundamentally matters.

And clearly he has not actually studied history or understands what feudalism is either.

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