Something is wrong and broken with "modern capitalism" if a mere 90,000 people have more wealth than 90% of the planet. All the arguments about investment and job creators falls flat; we have gobs and gobs of excess capital desperately seeing some productive investment. Capitalists don't need any more capital at the moment.
(Reminds me of the hedge fund carried interest exemption, which primarily benefits less than 100 people in the USA, with the vast majority of the benefit to the tune of > 1 billion dollars going to about ~5 people. So much so that they spent millions lobbying Congress to stop any attempt at closing the loophole and succeeded.)
I wish the old Soviet Union was still around. The communist revolution scare put the fucking Fear of God into the capitalist class.
Complaints about the carried interest issue bug me. (It's not an exception -- it's just how partnerships work.)
IMO the problem has nothing to do with carried interest or hedge funds in particular. I think the real issue is our bizarre idea that certain types of income (long-term capital gains) are special and should be taxed less. Hedge funds (and only the kind that generate long-term gains) are just easy things to pick on.
Have you noticed that pretty much every large corporation carefully avoids corporate taxes and arranges for its principals' income to be mostly long-term capital gains or qualified dividends? It's the same failure mode, minus the hedge fund.
So yes, I think Congress should fix the problem, but I don't think that carried interest is the problem.
Also, how can we expect companies to be not evil, when this is a winner-takes-all economy, where a move in favor of environment or society can result in the downfall of the company?
Capitalism is said to promote competition, but in reality, eventually only one or two big companies survive in a certain market (see Google, Facebook, Amazon, &c). In my view, antitrust laws should be extended so that we can have more competition.
I hold a similar, not exact, position as you. Namely, the trickle down is bullshit part.
But reading your comment made me think and question. The mega-elite's capital is growing due to their investments and it's showing no clear signs of slowing down [1]. How are they continuously extracting income of the middle and lower classes (and upper too)? How are they feeding their wealth at a mostly positive rate? Insider trading isn't enough to answer this question. Nor is stagnant wages because some sectors are paying well.
I think if economists can state how the wealthy are getting wealthier, in a granular way, then maybe the masses can find a better way to fight back. I.e. there is excessive profits to reap and only the wealthy are finding it, let's expose it and use it to the masses advantage.
[1] The great recession is a clear sign where the mega-elites came out with MORE wealth than before the bubble.
> I wish the old Soviet Union was still around. The communist revolution scare put the fucking Fear of God into the capitalist class.
This is to an odd degree very right, it also forced leaders in nearby countries to take their social responsibilities seriously which lead to the Scandinavian brand of Social Democracy (which is now eroding away due to the lack of any perceived 'real' solution on the left).
Most that wealth only exists on paper sadly. If they were to actually withdraw it all at once and spend it, the value of the money itself would rapidly decrease.
Likewise if you tried to tax all the wealth they are actually consuming, e.g. all their income or all their consumption, the amount doesn't come out so big either. IIRC it's between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars per person in the US.
> Something is wrong and broken with "modern capitalism" if a mere 90,000 people have more wealth than 90% of the planet.
Honestly, I don't think so. I believe we are merely returning to a state of the world that we've always been in - with the exception of the last 70 years or so. The existence of a large middle class is a distinct phenomenon of the 20th century, and specifically of the western countries. If I'm not mistaken then such a thing as a large middle class did never exist before anywhere else. It was always this heavily skewed distribution where 99% of the people own next to nothing compared to the 1%. I dont wan't to advocate for either of these two distributions here, just stating the historical context.
Could you clarify how the investment and job creation arguments fall flat?
My view is that invested money does not magically compound: While invested cash may be directly applied to financial instruments, the amount invested changes hands many times, and generates extra liquidity in the market, and will eventually, indirectly be spent on the Real Economy endeavours, where it will generate productive jobs.
If these endeavours are successful, they will generate dividends for those participating in the endeavour's risk. Ultimately, those guys who have no idea of the effects their "purely financial" investments had on the market, are indirectly paid by the real economy.
All of this of course considers a fair playing market, which does not happen in practise: Manipulators are parasitic and should be combatted.
Not being sarcastic: Please tell me where I'm wrong.
Personally my issue is lack of freedom in choosing currency. What if I don't want to use CAD in my store, but something else, something more local. It says a lot when as a Canadian I'm not free to choose what kind of money to trade in. What if I don't trust those who manage the currency? Additionally, a TON of cash is being siphoned into redistribution programs aka grants, social, etc plus their supreme administration costs. This money is making the bureaucrats rich and the people at the bottom doing the labor with less wealth to invest. I still believe there are the political capitalists and the market capitalists, we need more of the latter and more transparency as to who exactly is the latter in order to understand who is really contributing.
> Something is wrong and broken with "modern capitalism" if a mere 90,000 people have more wealth than 90% of the planet.
Nothing is wrong or broken.
Have that other 90% start and run their own businesses or go to school and get a degree in business that allows them to become a C level exec or invent a product and launch a startup.
90% of the people on this planet don't do SHIT. Because doing shit is HARD. Most are content working for someone who's willing to take risks, often with consequences to their own personal lives.
And that's OK. There's nothing wrong with that. Not everyone can be an entrepreneur or C level exec. Most people prefer simpler life.
For nearly a decade I lived across the street from a retired fireman. He put twenty years or so on the job and retired with a very generous pension and full benefits, for life. I watched as he amassed RV's, boats, jet ski's, Harley's, cars, etc. Living the life, as they say.
At the same time, almost everyone on the same block got up at five or six in the morning to go to work every day. Office workers, customer service folks, a couple of engineers, a couple of doctors, I know them all. And, in my case, well, it was 18 hours a day 7 days a week in the garage working on developing a product. For two years the external view was that I didn't have a job or didn't go to work, when, in reality, I was doing the equivalent of five jobs and was working every waking hour.
So, a couple of years later the product launches and it does very well. Seven figures per quarter very well. I decided it was time to replace our two cars, which had nearly 200K miles and were in bad shape. When the two mid-range (nothing fancy) cars appeared on my driveway the comments I got were, well, incredible. "Wow! You must have won the lottery!". "Dude! Did you rob a bank!". "You don't work, how did you buy these cars!". "Are you a drug dealer?".
Nobody EVER made a comment about the fireman being set for life when he did not contribute a dime to his pension plan that paid him six figures a year and his gold-plated health plan. No, the entrepreneur was the "drug dealer" on the block.
I created dozens of jobs through an incredible personal effort and sacrifice and somehow didn't deserve what I had. I was compared to the 99% purely based on my wealth.
Funny how everyone sees people who make money as undeserving purely based on how much they make yet have no clue what it may have taken to get there and can't be bothered to ask.
Please stop this nonsense of comparing the N percent to the M percent based on how much money they make or have. If you are going to do that, include HOW they got that money and, in particular, WHY the M percent couldn't be bothered to even try to do better, educationally or in business.
Hint: You are not going to become wealthy working at McDonalds or, in general, working as a employee at 99.99% of companies. The only corner case being joining a startup that goes public and your stock options make you wealthy. Like I said, corner case.
It's funny how people who often make the argument for this unfairness have their brains short-circuited when you ask them if it was unfair for Steve Jobs to become incredibly wealthy or, to use someone who's around today, Elon Musk.
I suppose you were either there and knew what it entailed or are clear on your facts? The Soviet Union at one late stage couldn't even supply sanitary towels for half its population and thus women had to tear up old clothes to take care of menstruation. But who cares as long as it put "the fucking Fear of God into the capitalist class". It didn't of course and thank goodness because the last 20 years of capitalism has seen the greatest decline in world poverty ever in the history of humanity. That's the result of letting individual humans make decisions about how they want to trade goods and services with other human beings.
By the way, the Gini index ranks Bosnia, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Egypt and Vietnam as more equal than the UK. But in which of these countries is it better to be poor?
Something is wrong and broken with "modern capitalism" if a mere 90,000 people have more wealth than 90% of the planet. All the arguments about investment and job creators falls flat; we have gobs and gobs of excess capital desperately seeing some productive investment. Capitalists don't need any more capital at the moment.
The wealth they have isn't doing nothing. It's in investments.
Secondly, if it was in nothing, that would only reduce the velocity of money, effectively making your money worth more. You could spread that money around, but the likely result of that is less investment and more consumption.
It's kind of absurd to blame capitalism, when the vast majority of countries implicated are nothing close. Calling Russia or China capitalist is laughable, they are oligarchies greasing the wheels at every turn with extreme levels of corruption.
The US and others aren't immune, but your entire post is ridiculous. These are nations where the government officials pull all the strings, there's nothing free market about that at all.
Basic income doesn't solve this problem. I've worked with several executives who get to decide how much they want to "appear" to make in the United States -- all the rest is hidden offshore in stocks. The stocks they own have a very low "face value" -- since their value is set by transfers from other offshore stocks set up in a maze through different countries (so the Panama revelations won't catch them.) I have literally worked with executives hiding billions. Basic income does absolutely nothing to solve the problem of opaque financial instruments (derivatives, trusts, non-profits, and charities are also used to make money disappear. But mazes of offshores seems to be preferred by the rich people I have worked with - they are legal and well understood by all the big accounting firms.)
It would be very easy to make holding such stock illegal. And, considering the cost to our society and our world, any downsides would be outweighed by the incredible gain.
Doesn't solve what problem? It doesn't solve the "problem" of some people being very rich, but it does solve the problem of some people being too poor to meet minimal daily needs.
> It would be very easy to make holding such stock illegal.
Really? I think the USA already has many laws in place to make offshore tax evasion harder. These laws also have the effect of making it very hard for Americans to do (honest) financial stuff in other countries. For example, you want to buy a second home in another country, and maybe open a bank account there to take care of related bills? Or maybe you see some great investment opportunities in another country and want to open a brokerage account there, to buy some ordinary shares? Well, because of the laws already in place, many foreign banks don't want to deal with you, because complying with these laws is such a hassle. Well, I guess maybe it would be worthwhile for them if you were a billionaire. Also, you might end up with a tax bill of more than 100% of your gains back in the USA, if you're not careful.
Since it appears you have first-hand experience, could you please explain what long term purpose of this hiding assets is? Do they just enjoy keeping it all to themselves, or they plan to pass on wealth to their kins, or something else?
Because as I see it right now, all that money sheltered effectively removed from US economy and as a result makes everyone a bit richer via deflation... Unless I am missing something.
This will keep going as long as people agree that survival of the fittest is a sound and fair argument to make the rules in society. Everyone is fending for themselves, and less and less people consider it to be a fair deal to contribute to society. So less join with it, and the one who do want to shield themselves from it. The result is rent seeking and an epidemic of tax dodging.
That's how the social net is slowing being deconstructed. I actually have a lot of sympathy for politicians who legitimately try to make people work together (not necessarily taking sides here). Seen how politicians are being systemically hated, I'm sure politics is actually a very tough job right now.
We're lucky that those evil businessmen line up to fill the pockets of the various nice politicians with tens of millions of dollars of, ahem, speaking fees and what-not - the politicians surely deserve it, with their "tough job" and all. As to favors given to businessmen in return for the money at taxpayers' expense - we can't really blame politicians for that, since being the nice people that they are, they just act on their nature of doing good!
This is one of those re-occurring strawmen that just won't die and it's hurting the debate.
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course wealth does not trickle down. That's why it's defined as wealth. The real discussion to be had is the difference between lazy wealth (ex. real estate) and active wealth (investing in your own company)
The claim has never been that people like the Koch brothers somehow spend their wealth to the benefit of people "below" them and since it's their wealth then of course it's not trickling down.
The claim is that a lot of the wealth that is created from the millions of businesses which then result in jobs, a couple here, a couple there benefits people.
It's obvious that if you think about the ultra wealthy then the trickle down effect is minimal there is a limit to how many Bentleys you can own.
But if you take the large majority of small businesses and entrepreneurs who create a little but in quantity then wealth does trickle down. Working wealth that is.
Today's unbuilt factories do not stay unbuilt because nobody has the capital to build them, they stay unbuilt because they would not be profitable to operate. In that sense, the old standard defense of why we need capitalists has become much weaker than it used to be.
Do most people work for large, medium, or small businesses?
I seem to recall reading somewhere that they work mostly for large businesses. If so, then "job creation" effect of small businesses is not that great.
There doesn't seem to much in the article to suggest it doesn't trickle down, so the headline is rather sensationalist. They are saying that lots of it goes off-shore, but unspent wealth will not "trickle down" anyway (granted, there is perhaps more incentive to spend if the alternative is getting taxed, but the extent is unclear). These people are likely still spending quite a substantial amount back into the economy (and tax, although obviously nowhere near what they "should" be).
I do think there is general agreement that trickle down is not as effective as "advertised" but that doesn't mean zero effect.
It's also worth noting that the headline figures are total amount saved offshore across all countries, not the tax on that amount (or its returns) for a given country and its alternative internal tax structures.
Agreed. If they ever spend it, it'll trickle down. If they don't spend it, it'll be increasing the value of all the dollars that everybody else has - they've basically lending money to the rest of the world until such time as they decide to spend what they have, then it'll cause some inflation and the poor people will effectively be paying back that loan.
If they never spend it, then everyone else wins. Setting fire to money or burying it in a hole is like donating it to everyone else who also has money.
I don't understand what the problem is with a small number of people having a lot of money. What harm are they doing? Or is it simply plain old-fashioned jealousy?
If I was incredibly wealthy I would attempt to have a not insignificant portion if it offshore as a hedge against my local or national government instituting an out-sized tax on wealth or nationalizing my business.
Rich people do not need money. Give them more, they will invest it or hoard it. Give poor people money, they will spend it right away. Which helps an economy more?
Is offshore money a good investment? Sounds to me it would just be sitting there passively, by the uncle scrooge mentality it would therefore be a gift to society. Money is an obligation of society to return something to the individual who owns it. If that obligation is never claimed, great...
The article has nothing to do with trickle down or taxes: it just underscores that many people are not too excited about keeping their property in places where rule of law is rather peculiar. E.g. if you look at the title graphic, 2nd largest capital flight figure is for Russia -- I highly doubt its 13% (iirc) flat income tax is to blame for that.
Great article - "...new study suggests a staggering $21tn in assets has been lost to global tax havens. If taxed, that could have been enough to put parts of Africa back on its feet – and even solve the euro crisis"
some time ago, the definition of "trickle down" on wikipedia used to contain, in the first sentence, the statement that the goal is to achieve wealth distribution. the contradiction was too glaring, i presume ;) because, if so, then why not just give the money to the people? their spending will then inevitably reward and enrich those market actors that deserve it, leading to a much healthier market then one created by governments transferring money to arbitrary, politically connected capitalists.
Well, this is what you believe it does, but is it proven or at least fairly convincingly demonstrated by at least some model or more thoughtful argumentation?
I have not researched this topic or given any longer thought about this, so at this point I am honestly curious.
For example how would the market react to this? Mostly what would happen with prices of essential goods and housing?
More importantly, how would people react sexually? Would they start having more babies just because they now can? What group of people would pick up this behaviour?
For example in my opinion most of the possible wealth accumulation in the third world countries is destroyed by very high population growth (in most countries above 4 times in 50 last years; fortunately this decreasing in many places).
Is this mostly a solved problem for developed world?
[+] [-] xenadu02|10 years ago|reply
(Reminds me of the hedge fund carried interest exemption, which primarily benefits less than 100 people in the USA, with the vast majority of the benefit to the tune of > 1 billion dollars going to about ~5 people. So much so that they spent millions lobbying Congress to stop any attempt at closing the loophole and succeeded.)
I wish the old Soviet Union was still around. The communist revolution scare put the fucking Fear of God into the capitalist class.
[+] [-] amluto|10 years ago|reply
IMO the problem has nothing to do with carried interest or hedge funds in particular. I think the real issue is our bizarre idea that certain types of income (long-term capital gains) are special and should be taxed less. Hedge funds (and only the kind that generate long-term gains) are just easy things to pick on.
Have you noticed that pretty much every large corporation carefully avoids corporate taxes and arranges for its principals' income to be mostly long-term capital gains or qualified dividends? It's the same failure mode, minus the hedge fund.
So yes, I think Congress should fix the problem, but I don't think that carried interest is the problem.
[+] [-] amelius|10 years ago|reply
Capitalism is said to promote competition, but in reality, eventually only one or two big companies survive in a certain market (see Google, Facebook, Amazon, &c). In my view, antitrust laws should be extended so that we can have more competition.
[+] [-] heimatau|10 years ago|reply
But reading your comment made me think and question. The mega-elite's capital is growing due to their investments and it's showing no clear signs of slowing down [1]. How are they continuously extracting income of the middle and lower classes (and upper too)? How are they feeding their wealth at a mostly positive rate? Insider trading isn't enough to answer this question. Nor is stagnant wages because some sectors are paying well.
I think if economists can state how the wealthy are getting wealthier, in a granular way, then maybe the masses can find a better way to fight back. I.e. there is excessive profits to reap and only the wealthy are finding it, let's expose it and use it to the masses advantage.
[1] The great recession is a clear sign where the mega-elites came out with MORE wealth than before the bubble.
[+] [-] dingdingdang|10 years ago|reply
This is to an odd degree very right, it also forced leaders in nearby countries to take their social responsibilities seriously which lead to the Scandinavian brand of Social Democracy (which is now eroding away due to the lack of any perceived 'real' solution on the left).
[+] [-] Houshalter|10 years ago|reply
Likewise if you tried to tax all the wealth they are actually consuming, e.g. all their income or all their consumption, the amount doesn't come out so big either. IIRC it's between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars per person in the US.
[+] [-] paulddraper|10 years ago|reply
Capitalism trends towards greatest total utility (in the economics sense).
Capitalism would prefer 10 people with $50 and one person with $1000 over 11 people with $10.
We can't be surprised when that happens.
[+] [-] jcfrei|10 years ago|reply
Honestly, I don't think so. I believe we are merely returning to a state of the world that we've always been in - with the exception of the last 70 years or so. The existence of a large middle class is a distinct phenomenon of the 20th century, and specifically of the western countries. If I'm not mistaken then such a thing as a large middle class did never exist before anywhere else. It was always this heavily skewed distribution where 99% of the people own next to nothing compared to the 1%. I dont wan't to advocate for either of these two distributions here, just stating the historical context.
[+] [-] rmellow|10 years ago|reply
My view is that invested money does not magically compound: While invested cash may be directly applied to financial instruments, the amount invested changes hands many times, and generates extra liquidity in the market, and will eventually, indirectly be spent on the Real Economy endeavours, where it will generate productive jobs.
If these endeavours are successful, they will generate dividends for those participating in the endeavour's risk. Ultimately, those guys who have no idea of the effects their "purely financial" investments had on the market, are indirectly paid by the real economy.
All of this of course considers a fair playing market, which does not happen in practise: Manipulators are parasitic and should be combatted.
Not being sarcastic: Please tell me where I'm wrong.
[+] [-] apineda|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shorel|10 years ago|reply
I'm a lot more afraid of our current endless population growth and the extinction of many marine species.
When this happens, most mouths will starve instead of a few, and there's no one else to blame, it's everyone of us.
[+] [-] koolba|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rebootthesystem|10 years ago|reply
Nothing is wrong or broken.
Have that other 90% start and run their own businesses or go to school and get a degree in business that allows them to become a C level exec or invent a product and launch a startup.
90% of the people on this planet don't do SHIT. Because doing shit is HARD. Most are content working for someone who's willing to take risks, often with consequences to their own personal lives.
And that's OK. There's nothing wrong with that. Not everyone can be an entrepreneur or C level exec. Most people prefer simpler life.
For nearly a decade I lived across the street from a retired fireman. He put twenty years or so on the job and retired with a very generous pension and full benefits, for life. I watched as he amassed RV's, boats, jet ski's, Harley's, cars, etc. Living the life, as they say.
At the same time, almost everyone on the same block got up at five or six in the morning to go to work every day. Office workers, customer service folks, a couple of engineers, a couple of doctors, I know them all. And, in my case, well, it was 18 hours a day 7 days a week in the garage working on developing a product. For two years the external view was that I didn't have a job or didn't go to work, when, in reality, I was doing the equivalent of five jobs and was working every waking hour.
So, a couple of years later the product launches and it does very well. Seven figures per quarter very well. I decided it was time to replace our two cars, which had nearly 200K miles and were in bad shape. When the two mid-range (nothing fancy) cars appeared on my driveway the comments I got were, well, incredible. "Wow! You must have won the lottery!". "Dude! Did you rob a bank!". "You don't work, how did you buy these cars!". "Are you a drug dealer?".
Nobody EVER made a comment about the fireman being set for life when he did not contribute a dime to his pension plan that paid him six figures a year and his gold-plated health plan. No, the entrepreneur was the "drug dealer" on the block.
I created dozens of jobs through an incredible personal effort and sacrifice and somehow didn't deserve what I had. I was compared to the 99% purely based on my wealth.
Funny how everyone sees people who make money as undeserving purely based on how much they make yet have no clue what it may have taken to get there and can't be bothered to ask.
Please stop this nonsense of comparing the N percent to the M percent based on how much money they make or have. If you are going to do that, include HOW they got that money and, in particular, WHY the M percent couldn't be bothered to even try to do better, educationally or in business.
Hint: You are not going to become wealthy working at McDonalds or, in general, working as a employee at 99.99% of companies. The only corner case being joining a startup that goes public and your stock options make you wealthy. Like I said, corner case.
It's funny how people who often make the argument for this unfairness have their brains short-circuited when you ask them if it was unfair for Steve Jobs to become incredibly wealthy or, to use someone who's around today, Elon Musk.
[+] [-] vixen99|10 years ago|reply
By the way, the Gini index ranks Bosnia, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Egypt and Vietnam as more equal than the UK. But in which of these countries is it better to be poor?
[+] [-] skylan_q|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffbax|10 years ago|reply
The US and others aren't immune, but your entire post is ridiculous. These are nations where the government officials pull all the strings, there's nothing free market about that at all.
[+] [-] MrTonyD|10 years ago|reply
It would be very easy to make holding such stock illegal. And, considering the cost to our society and our world, any downsides would be outweighed by the incredible gain.
[+] [-] ageek123|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jensen123|10 years ago|reply
Really? I think the USA already has many laws in place to make offshore tax evasion harder. These laws also have the effect of making it very hard for Americans to do (honest) financial stuff in other countries. For example, you want to buy a second home in another country, and maybe open a bank account there to take care of related bills? Or maybe you see some great investment opportunities in another country and want to open a brokerage account there, to buy some ordinary shares? Well, because of the laws already in place, many foreign banks don't want to deal with you, because complying with these laws is such a hassle. Well, I guess maybe it would be worthwhile for them if you were a billionaire. Also, you might end up with a tax bill of more than 100% of your gains back in the USA, if you're not careful.
[+] [-] hippich|10 years ago|reply
Because as I see it right now, all that money sheltered effectively removed from US economy and as a result makes everyone a bit richer via deflation... Unless I am missing something.
[+] [-] jokoon|10 years ago|reply
That's how the social net is slowing being deconstructed. I actually have a lot of sympathy for politicians who legitimately try to make people work together (not necessarily taking sides here). Seen how politicians are being systemically hated, I'm sure politics is actually a very tough job right now.
[+] [-] _yosefk|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdg|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThomPete|10 years ago|reply
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course wealth does not trickle down. That's why it's defined as wealth. The real discussion to be had is the difference between lazy wealth (ex. real estate) and active wealth (investing in your own company)
The claim has never been that people like the Koch brothers somehow spend their wealth to the benefit of people "below" them and since it's their wealth then of course it's not trickling down.
The claim is that a lot of the wealth that is created from the millions of businesses which then result in jobs, a couple here, a couple there benefits people.
It's obvious that if you think about the ultra wealthy then the trickle down effect is minimal there is a limit to how many Bentleys you can own.
But if you take the large majority of small businesses and entrepreneurs who create a little but in quantity then wealth does trickle down. Working wealth that is.
[+] [-] usrusr|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmoriarty|10 years ago|reply
I seem to recall reading somewhere that they work mostly for large businesses. If so, then "job creation" effect of small businesses is not that great.
[+] [-] sambe|10 years ago|reply
I do think there is general agreement that trickle down is not as effective as "advertised" but that doesn't mean zero effect.
It's also worth noting that the headline figures are total amount saved offshore across all countries, not the tax on that amount (or its returns) for a given country and its alternative internal tax structures.
[+] [-] Nutmog|10 years ago|reply
If they never spend it, then everyone else wins. Setting fire to money or burying it in a hole is like donating it to everyone else who also has money.
I don't understand what the problem is with a small number of people having a lot of money. What harm are they doing? Or is it simply plain old-fashioned jealousy?
[+] [-] wj|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dplgk|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SixSigma|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] facepalm|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SCAQTony|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] narrator|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xixi77|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dingdingdang|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bakhy|10 years ago|reply
ceterum censeo, basic income is the future!
[+] [-] ajuc|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexc05|10 years ago|reply
Of course it is. Land is above "sea level" and all that.
(Except when it's not, but in the whole macro sense land must be above sea level)
[+] [-] SixSigma|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swehner|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anon4|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] known|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eveningcoffee|10 years ago|reply
I have not researched this topic or given any longer thought about this, so at this point I am honestly curious.
For example how would the market react to this? Mostly what would happen with prices of essential goods and housing?
More importantly, how would people react sexually? Would they start having more babies just because they now can? What group of people would pick up this behaviour?
For example in my opinion most of the possible wealth accumulation in the third world countries is destroyed by very high population growth (in most countries above 4 times in 50 last years; fortunately this decreasing in many places).
Is this mostly a solved problem for developed world?