Wealth Inequality in America

For what it's worth, I agree, I think capitalism + some rule tweaks is fine. The culprit is really the beauty of capitalism: accelerating returns on investment. If you get to the head of the race you tend to start to accrue more and more wealth. The problem is that it's sucking the pond dry as there is a relatively stable money supply and much of it is circulating in the stratosphere (often as corporate stock buybacks). Hence the need for rule tweaks to enhance recirculation. This is a cool video I saw a while back that shows the current issue: ▶ this video I also agree that movement between countries is a modern problem that probably invalidates the old solution (unless multiple countries coordinate - unlikely). So, we have a problem that wealth will continue to concentrate absent controls on the distribution. The US has a lot of political problems right now, and the major commonality is that people at the bottom get the shaft every time. I think it's too much to try to solve every problem facing civilization in one conversation though, so I'll stick to distributions. ;) For what it's worth, believe me, I'm not a hippie. I want to start a company and get rich one day like all of you. I just think it's important to pay attention to the steady state of the system we are participating in.

in “College for the masses” · View on HN

+100 for corporations -1 for consumers According to the book "Diet for a Small Planet" the beef industry gets $50 billion a year of free water from the federal government. Doesn't sound like fair market capitalism to me. It does sound like our elected officials can be easily bribed. The super rich have won. Hopefully not too far of topic, but a friend just sent me this video link about income inequality - an eye opener! ▶ this video

in “Bills seek end to farm animal abuse videos” · View on HN

It's not a slight drift, it's a massive change since the 1950's. Looking at averages is completely irrelevant when talking about inequality. Here's a video from 12 years ago: Wealth Inequality in America ▶ this video

in “The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks” · View on HN

They should keep patting themselves on the back for crumbs of improvement. And yet America is one of most unequal societies, far exceeding the inequality of the Gilded Age. Infographics: Wealth Inequality in America (2012) ▶ this video (2023) 10 year update to Inequality for All (2013) - Robert Reich [link]

in “Low-wage workers' wages surged after decades of slow growth” · View on HN

> These programs are about control, and wealth redistribution lets stop pretending otherwise Shrug , if it's all BS but it does something to the mind-bogglingly skewed wealth distribution[1] we can still chalk it up as a win. [1] ▶ this video

in “Investigation: 78% of carbon offset projects globally are “likely junk“” · View on HN

The video "Wealth Inequality in America" < ▶ this video > at timestamp 0:35 shows a definition most respondents to the question agree on.

in “I wish GPT4 had never happened” · View on HN

This canard is worn and untrue. They bought the best, complicated tax system that benefits them to reap even more. [link] Reality: "Wealth Inequality in America" ▶ this video

in “Researchers estimate the richest 1% dodge taxes on over a fifth of their income” · View on HN

> Sure. You missed my point that they're not counted meaningfully. U-3 is what is typically reported, so the others are irrelevant. The "health" of the economy is a nebulous, academic abstraction when there are 100 homeless people camping under freeway underpasses outside my window, no federal livable minimum wage, workers gradually being paid less and less over decades while expected to work more and more, swelling ranks of billionaires cashing in on socialism they bought, and the burgeoning ranks of un- and underemployed who go neglected (maybe that explains part of Trump's base?) and undercounted. The MSM loves to parrot how "great" the economy always is because that's what advertisers want to hear, but it's tone-deaf when there was (and may still well be) more real unemployment than during the height of the Great Depression. Wealth equality and employment are all most people care about. No one cares about the "health" of the rich people's casino "economy." Wealth Inequality in America ▶ this video

in “US policymakers lose faith in official unemployment rate” · View on HN

We could also just raise taxes on the top 1% of people in the country and do neat things like provide universal healthcare and provide public university programs for free to those who can get accepted. It's a bit skewed at the moment if you weren't aware: ▶ this video

in “Crafting a high-performance TV user interface using React” · View on HN

Well if as a country you seriously suck at wealth equality and defending basic human and worker rights that 25% seems pretty low. Stupidity after all loves hard work. Of all this is just old news for researchers ▶ this video

in “Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds” · View on HN

While taking neuroscience it occurred to me that one could make an argument - depending on what one wants to show, the usefulness of a model is always limited by the intended use - to see a similarity between neurons and humans: The system outcome is not the sum of what each neuron "knows", and each neuron is really "ignorant" and "stupid". For example, why are people bothered that there are people who are into conspiracy theories? Or some who see dangers everywhere, while for others everything (everyone) is good? Maybe that's their role in the "humanity computer"! Some neurons' (humans') task is to be extra-paranoid so that the majority don't have to. and others are the opposite, nothing bothers them. What seems "crazy" is, when looked at from a higher plane, quite possibly a very reasonable organisation. Maybe "humanity" does not - should not - make sense on an individual level (i.e. ever single human be "sensible", "reasonable"), but on the level of "humanity". Why this obsession that everybody has to agree, and people who don't are vilified? If all neurons in the brain were to agree you'd have a very dysfunctional brain. What it needs are complex connections and (feedback) loops that enhance and suppress output depending on the overall input. "Overall" is important - not "what an individual (human or neuron) sees", but the sum of all inputs into the system. It does not have to make sense on an individual level. I like how Sherlock Holmes says it (short, 30 seconds): [LINK

in “Brian Eno: We've been living happily with AI for thousands of years” · View on HN

This is the primary problem with the discourse. People can agree pretty universally a tyrant, dictator, or emperor is a bad thing. You do not want heredity to determine power, and you do not want one individual to have violent dominance over anyone else, because you will often be the "anyone else" if you are not the aggressor. But that is about the only difference between how the modern gears of power operate versus how they did millennia ago. Rather than just kill your brothers and claim the throne and execute the dissidents and having your firstborn son inherit the crown from you, your children inherit ludicrous wealth that translates into the same power to buy the violent arm of the state for your own ends. Except now the peasantry cannot just storm the castle, behead the king, and replace him with another. There are kings from across the globe that control your society through its economy, and the present incumbents of radically concentrated power will argue everyone is king when they own wealth in the global capitalistic system. That, in practice, is pure deception[1], but you will have people by thousands at the bottom congregating to defend those off the chart, despite the ones at the top constantly using their power to harm all those below them. If we did have what the rich claim we do - democratized distributed power - we would need dramatically less wealth inequality, because that wealth, and the distribution of it, represents who has authority in the global capital

in “Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators” · View on HN

I think the original source is on a youtube channel: ▶ this video . The video aggregates data from multiple sources: [link] [link] [link] [link] How reliable these sources are, I'm not sure. If the information is wrong, I wouldn't blame it on Upworthy, it's a distribution channel after all.

in “Amazon Must Be Stopped” · View on HN

> This is billionaire propaganda[1] to get the middle class to fight thier class war In my opinion, anything that tries to simplify the interests of billions of actors is a form of populist propaganda. It allows bad actors to prove that they're on the "people's side" just because they virtue signal against the "evil side" in order to advance their own interests: for example, crypto-scammers complaining about banks or Hitler complaining about rich Jewish bankers. > The tax rate of the ultra-rich are at an all time low Right. The problem is that the taxing the ultra-rich is difficult to do because they have the resources to avoid these taxes, and they don't actually raise that much money. So what happens is that the left always ends up raising taxes on the professional class like California. I personally wouldn't have an issue with this, if were better spent, like in the Nordic countries, but they clearly aren't in the US. > ▶ this video This video just shows that most Americans are bad at math. Even if literally everyone made the exact same amount of income, the wealth distribution would look closest to the last one because older people would have more time to accumulate more wealth.

in “‘America does so much more to subsidise affluence than alleviate poverty’” · View on HN