American Wealth, Sliced Up
kottke.org
kottke.org
Can you really not imagine that what happens to their wealth after they die, wealth they were presumably accumulating at least in part for their children, would have zero effect on how much they work before they die? Honestly, your argument here comes across as utterly unserious.
It seems to imply the top 2 people own 30% of the wealth, which is not what the data states.
rest of america == bottom 50%
hedge funders, fascist VCs, etc == 50-90%
walton children == 90-99%
elon bezos == 99.9%
If you're an American and not among those specific groups, your share of the remaining 2.5% is split with the rest of the US population in that slice (i.e., the overwhelming majority of the population). It's an illustration of our extreme wealth inequality. (Whether it's an effective or good one is a matter of opinion, but I do think it broadly conveys what it intends to.)
Yeah, the uber-wealthy need a reckoning.
Just wild how much the media has become a system for self-congratulations for the global elite barbarian class.
I can do far better for myself than that if I'm simply allowed to work overtime, and especially if I'm not criminalized for savings that I invest.
Suddenly musk, bezos and friends do not decide what people work on - people do.
The current oligarch structure lets very few people decide what people use their time on.
In more equal societies, the decision of use of time is a democratic process.
Adopting redistributive policy is the only way in which the US can return to an even remotely representative "democracy." We'll only see progress if we can disarm the campaign finance firehose currently wielded by private interests. Only then, with a subsequent government consisting of politicians more beholden to constituents than financiers, will we be able to return to enacting policies to close tax loopholes, tax more progressively, and improve consumer/labor protections; those would do the majority of the heavy lifting in terms of improving QoL of the lower income classes. This isn't a new idea, it was well understood by trust-buster Teddy Roosevelt.
I think removing billions from those individuals is the more salient point. Put the money toward high speed rail—who cares.
Does this mean there is no problem when such a large fraction of a country's wealth is concentrated in so few hands? Nope, it certainly can be a problem and has been shown to be so when these few hands use their influence to further their own interests to the detriment of those of the country. The same is true for places where the narrative pushed by the armchair revolutionaries is enacted, the difference is that instead of a few monied interests pulling the strings there tend to be a few politically well-placed individuals doing so. Trying to solve the problems related to extreme wealth concentration with the dissolution of private property - which is what the narrative comes down to - is just as silly as trying to solve the problem with an ulcerated toe by chopping off your foot. That 'highly educated' 'intelligent' people keep on falling for this narrative time and time again notwithstanding all the evidence showing its corrupt nature is flabbergasting.
The pie gets bigger in more equal societies.
That is the real acid test.
1. The economy is not a zero-sum game.
2. The new gilded age concentrates wealth in a way that is harmful to free enterprise, detrimental to the economy, and bad for the world.
This is almost exactly the situation that resulted during the first gilded age with standard oil. Antitrust legislation works wonders if it has teeth. Currently it does not.
What part of this seeks rent?
It is exceptionally easy for Americans to fund and start businesses at this point
"Those who disagree with me are big dumb."
The US has a very progressive taxation system: https://taxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/FedData...
For working and middle class households, the US tax burden is usually lower than in most European states, especially once payroll/social-insurance taxes and VAT are included. The US federal tax system is also very progressive by OECD standards, so upper-income households carry a larger share of federal taxes while the lower/middle bear less of the explicit tax load
Of course, wealth is not exactly income, etc
Europe has tried to limit to wealth of the wealthiest, and in the process seems to have utterly kneecapped their own economies and development. The poorest US states are wealthier (even when adjusting for PPP) than all but the wealthiest European nations.
Looking at income per person really misses some important factors of a societies real riches.
A Mississippian is free to eat themselves to death (enabled by Americans' wealth) in a way that Europeans simply can't.
White people in Mississipi had a infant mortality rate close to the national average at 5.8. Which still means it's 50% more likely that a birth result in the infants death the the USA than in Europe. The fact that black people in Mississipi has a infant mortality rate of 16 should really shock you, and indicates that something is seriously wrong somewhere.
https://img.ifunny.co/images/d542d2d7e1830ef76a29483dd498245...
I live in the countryside. In 2018 our small neighboring town of about 13k residents had their first murder since 1965, and none since. That works out to about 0.12 homicides per 100,000 residents annually. By comparison, Baltimore has 22 per 100,000 annually.
The murder thing is also an error of faulty generalization. As a counter example, Opelousas, Louisiana, a nothing town with barely more people than yours, has a murder rate of 39/100k, higher than your example of Baltimore, and much higher than New York (3.92/100k).
When I run the calculations and take vacation, health, education for the median person they are close to similar.
But these calculations does not take into consideration: less noisy cities, walkable neighborhoods, longer life expectancy, higher quality food, better workers protections, education, etc.
An honest study would need to include the value of the commons.
> roughly 20-40% richer
This is likely wrong. Americans have better purchasing power, but are not necessarily richer.
I grew up in the South. You'll have to kill these people to take away their sweet tea and fried chicken. And that's just one dimension.
Money is not like mana, it does not conjure things into existence, it moves (through the invisible hand) the economy to produce what the owner desires.
Now, this does absolutely not mean that the economy is zero sum (over time). There are of course something the economy can do which will be productive and produce more goods, and there can be bad decisions. Wealth can absolutely be created by actually value creation, but also by a lot of parasitic processes(and inheritance). And the owner of money gets to controll what the economy does, you don't (barely).
A large concentration of wealth will mean that the economy at large will to a larger degree be used to produce what really rich people wants, instead of producing things the middle class wants.
I would like 20$ million. It would let me live the life I want (with extra), and take care of the people I love. I would be able to spend my time doing only things I like. I am envious of people having this kind of wealth. I don't really want more, and I am not more envious of someone having 100 of millions of dollars. This you must just belive me on, but I truly don't see what I would do with more than 20$ million.
But they, the ones with hundreds of millions, are the ones I want to tax. Because I am afraid of them, afraid of the power that comes with the wealth. And if it was envy I would have wanted to tax everyone I envied, also the ones with 10-20$ million. But I am fine with them having their wealth, cause they don't scare me.
I find the comment on the role of the government not being ensuring equality of outcomes especially laughable, because it is precisely that government that's been subverted to make the distribution more skewed. I guess the ruling class disagrees with you?