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 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
But people with insane levels of wealth don't spend their money to the same extent as the poor. There's diminishing returns on each additional dollar earned. Wealth concentration thus does de facto lock out those where the wealth is not concentrated.

You're conflating arguments.
Both of the following statements can and are true:
The extreme wealth disparity currently existing in the USA is bad for the economy and the political system.
The success of one person does not require the diminishment of others.

While the super wealthy like Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates have the power to positively or negatively impact many lives through the exertion of the influence their billions provide them but the "regular rich" for lack of a better term, don't negatively impact anybody. Lebron James makes tens of millions of dollars a year being a professional basketball player (he's really underpaid when you examine his salary relative to his value to a franchise) plus tens of millions more through endorsements and none of that income that he earns prevents me or you or a waitress or small business owner or bus driver or accountant or anyone else in the US from maximizing their own income. Nobody needs to be financially diminished to allow others to be financially successful, we can all theoretically achieve maximum success simultaneously. Simply having other people be more wealthy than you and having people reaching different levels on the spectrum of success isn't bad for society, it's allowing the extreme end of the spectrum disrupt and twist the system in their favor. The most egalitarian and equitable society that humanity can devise won't have everyone earning the same income or possessing the same amount of wealth.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
But people with insane levels of wealth don't spend their money to the same extent as the poor. There's diminishing returns on each additional dollar earned. Wealth concentration thus does de facto lock out those where the wealth is not concentrated.

What? If anything rich people are spending more.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
But people with insane levels of wealth don't spend their money to the same extent as the poor. There's diminishing returns on each additional dollar earned. Wealth concentration thus does de facto lock out those where the wealth is not concentrated.

What? If anything rich people are spending more.

Not as a percentage of their income.

Prestor Jon wrote:

The success of one person does not require the diminishment of others.

It may not require it, but in practical terms it almost always does. Someone earlier said money is finite and got shot down, but it’s not entirely wrong, money isn’t finite but nor is spending infinite thus the success of one person affects another.

Your ability to make money opening a grocery store is absolutely affected by the Walmart already open in the town because the people of the town aren’t going to spend their money twice.

Your ability to make money as a basketballer is affected by the existence of Lebron James because teams aren’t going to spend endless amounts of money on players.

Your ability to make money selling power is influenced by existing power generation companies.

Your ability to sell lemonade on a street corner is influenced by little billy selling lemonade on the other street corner,

Everyone can make cookies but if Lebron James bought all the flour from the shops and you can’t afford an oven you’re gak out of luck.

 John Prins wrote:

Crispy78 wrote:

At any given moment there is a finite amount of money in the world. It *is* a zero-sum game.

But only at any given moment. Almost every economy on Earth has an expanding money supply, because almost every government treasury/bank can issue more money. This may or may not cause inflation, depending on circumstance.

Additionally, the flow of money through the economy allows for there to effectively be more money in the economy. If you make $50,000 and spend $50,000, you get $50,000 worth of goods and services while that money goes back into the economy to allow someone else to spend it on goods and services. So that $50,000 can be earned and spent by multiple people, making them all wealthier, at the cost of consuming resources.

So a finite money supply can cause economic growth, as long as that money circulates through the economy fast enough. Don't hoard cash under a mattress, it's bad for the economy. At least in a bank it's being used to provide loans (at a greater than 1:1 ratio, causing even more economic growth).

The trick being that hording cash is pretty much what the ultra-rich are DOING. They invest in Wall Street, buying stock from some other rich person (not the issuing company) and selling it to others so they can buy more stock. The money goes 'round and 'round in the stock market... and never leaves. Instead of being spent on useful things like payroll or buying services or goods, it's used as a scorecard to determine who has more than anyone else as they all try and one-up each other and the money goes from one to another in an endless circle.


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 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
But people with insane levels of wealth don't spend their money to the same extent as the poor. There's diminishing returns on each additional dollar earned. Wealth concentration thus does de facto lock out those where the wealth is not concentrated.

What? If anything rich people are spending more.

The average person earns around $60K in America. Someone who earns $60 million (1000 times as much) generally does not buy 1000 times as much food, go out to eat 1000 times as often, spend 1000 times as much on cars, watch 1000 times more movies in the theaters, buy 1000 times as many TVs, and so on.

Instead, they invest their money, mainly on Wall Street, and the circle continues....

 Vulcan wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
But people with insane levels of wealth don't spend their money to the same extent as the poor. There's diminishing returns on each additional dollar earned. Wealth concentration thus does de facto lock out those where the wealth is not concentrated.

What? If anything rich people are spending more.

The average person earns around $60K in America. Someone who earns $60 million (1000 times as much) generally does not buy 1000 times as much food, go out to eat 1000 times as often, spend 1000 times as much on cars, watch 1000 times more movies in the theaters, buy 1000 times as many TVs, and so on.

Instead, they invest their money, mainly on Wall Street, and the circle continues....

Nick Hanauer illustrates this pretty well. . . He points out that just because he *can* afford to buy 20,000 haircuts per day, doesn't mean he will. There is a finite utility in receiving a haircut. The same is true of trousers. He himself says that there are practical limits to trouser buying. . . Just because he's a billionaire does not mean he's going to just spend that money willy nilly and fill up a closet with useless trousers. Instead he, like so many other billionaires view these things in terms of utility: is this new suit going to present me in such a way that my next deal will go my way?

Although there are celebrities that many of us are familiar with who do spend 1000 times more than average joe on cars, they are more of an exception to these arguments, than a rule. . . the Jay Leno's and other serious car collectors are a tiny, tiny minority of the very wealthy.

The point was just to say that the rich have such a large percentage of the wealth there is only a small portion left for the rest. On average the non-rich have less wealth than they did, which makes them struggle more. Note the currency or any other quantification of what wealth is does not interrupt the basic truth at hand

Wealth is a red herring. What the ultimately powerful have is absolute hegemony. Finance is just a sure way to that kind of power.

 Vulcan wrote:
The trick being that hording cash is pretty much what the ultra-rich are DOING.

When a rich person buys or sells stock, he's not just buying it from another rich person. Hundreds of millions of people are invested in mutual funds that buy and sell billions of stocks every day. Those mutual funds pay dividends to most of the social strata (the poorest generally being excepted for obvious reasons). The stock/bond market isn't a closed system - anyone with even relatively small amounts can participate and benefit, in the aggregate they benefit quite a lot.

You're right in that the wealthy have the means to easily acquire large amounts of additional wealth with basically no effort, but that's another topic. The wealthy generally put their wealth to work and actually hoard very little actual money that's not participating in the economy in one way or another. Drug lords probably are a bigger problem in that regard, as they can't use their stacks of cash in a legal manner so they sit on pallets of money they can't really spend.

The real problem in most western economies is the undue influence the wealthy have on politics to tip the scales in their favor. You can't solve most problems until that's cleaned up.

Prestor Jon wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
But people with insane levels of wealth don't spend their money to the same extent as the poor. There's diminishing returns on each additional dollar earned. Wealth concentration thus does de facto lock out those where the wealth is not concentrated.

You're conflating arguments.
Both of the following statements can and are true:
The extreme wealth disparity currently existing in the USA is bad for the economy and the political system.
The success of one person does not require the diminishment of others.

While the super wealthy like Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates have the power to positively or negatively impact many lives through the exertion of the influence their billions provide them but the "regular rich" for lack of a better term, don't negatively impact anybody. Lebron James makes tens of millions of dollars a year being a professional basketball player (he's really underpaid when you examine his salary relative to his value to a franchise) plus tens of millions more through endorsements and none of that income that he earns prevents me or you or a waitress or small business owner or bus driver or accountant or anyone else in the US from maximizing their own income. Nobody needs to be financially diminished to allow others to be financially successful, we can all theoretically achieve maximum success simultaneously. Simply having other people be more wealthy than you and having people reaching different levels on the spectrum of success isn't bad for society, it's allowing the extreme end of the spectrum disrupt and twist the system in their favor. The most egalitarian and equitable society that humanity can devise won't have everyone earning the same income or possessing the same amount of wealth.

Higher levels of wealth leads to greater ability to be politically active and influential. Greater political influence makes the political context favour you more. One semi-wealthy (i.e. rich, but not Bill Gates rich) person may not be able to tip the scales alone, but taken as an aggregate they do. Sure, it's possible to become wealthier, in the absolute sense, despite this concentration of wealth, but only insofar as the political context allows it. This political context is disproportionately shaped by people with obscene amounts of money, ergo the concentration of wealth hampers the ability of the non-wealthy to generate more wealth. QED.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Crispy78 wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Well doing those things cost money. If you don't have money you need to get it from people who do. So when a few people are hoarding wealth and not spreading it yeah, they are preventing that. Saying the pie can grow means nothing because that growth is not evenly distributed to all areas. Put simply the rich have their slice growing while for the rest of us it is remaining static at best. On average it is shrinking because expenses have grown faster than wages.

Or put differently, name one instance when increased centralization of wealth has not led to a decline in quality of life for the majority. When that is and has always been the direct cause-and-effect it is silly to suggest it could be anything else without compelling evidence.

Not that it is a matter of the masses being blameless victims in all this. Objection to the trend has been plentiful but actions speak louder than words; actions have been dominated by apathy and what amounts to 'yes daddy hit me harder!'

No you don't have to take money from other people in order to get more. You can generate more money/wealth for yourself without having to subtract money/wealth from others. If you get a raise at work none of your coworkers have to suffer offsetting pay cuts, if you home appreciates in value nobody else's home has to depreciate in value, if your 401(k)/stock portfolio has a good year in the market nobody else has to suffer an offsetting bad year in the market, if you want to acquire more education or skills nobody else has to have less education or skills.

What? No, this is nonsense.

At any given moment there is a finite amount of money in the world. It *is* a zero-sum game.

If you get a raise at work, your company gives you more money. Your company then has less money for other stuff - even if ultimately that is 'just' less profit, resulting in less value / money to shareholders.

If your home (or any other asset) appreciates in value, that only actually comes into effect if you sell it - at which point you get the money from the buyer.

Your investments doing well is ultimately going to be as a result of the companies you have invested in managing to take more money from their customers.

Acquiring education isn't relevant..?

Not true. There isn't a finite amount of money in the world, or rather there isn't a finite amount of "wealth" in the world. The belief that wealth is finite is the core tenant of Mercantilism, and that was debunked long ago. Another wrong idea was that Money=Wealth, when really Wealth= Money, goods, and services. None of which are necessarily finite.

To illustrate this,

Say you have a $1 bill. Lets say it is the only paper currency in this particular economy, which contains you, Bob, Jim, and Steve.

You are hungry. So you take your $1 and buy a dozen eggs from Bob. Bob then needs some new shoes, so he purchases a pair of shoes from Jim for $1. Jim then takes that $1 and buys some rope from Steve. Steve then takes that $1 and pays you to fix his roof. You now have your $1 back.

How much "wealth" traded hands in this series of events? The answer is $4. Your $1 was worth a total of $4 for the entire economy. The economy is also worth much more depending on how many goods exist as well. How many dozen eggs, coils of rope, shoes, etc... exist also contribute their value to the economy.

Yes - but you are talking about the movement of finite resources. Money is not finite, but in practical terms for most of society (everyone outside of national level finance and the upper ends of banking) money is a token representing the potential mobilisation of resources - and those resources are finite. You can convert those resources into other resources, whether that's turning feed into eggs or hemp into rope, and many of the raw materials are renewable. However, you can control access to them. Consequently, though you can continually generate wealth, as a result of being able to control access to that generation (by owning the plantation or the factory or being able to lobby for your factory to receive tax breaks that Mr and Mrs Smith's rope factory doesn't), access to that wealth is finite. If Scrooge McDuck owns the hemp plantation, Mr and Mrs Smith can't.

In practical terms for the average person, finite wealth and finite access to wealth are synonymous.

Money is not finite

Yup. The only restriction to the amount of money in the world is really only the memory capacity available to store the number of existing monetary units.

That is true, and in fact national wealth has increased significantly since the 1970s. It doesn't explain why the major proportion of national wealth increases have gone to the richest few percent of the population, while the bottom 60% are now worse off than 10 years ago.

In such a context it is easy to see that the inifinitude of wealth is meaningless when the distribution of wealth is increasingly more and more skewed towards the already wealthy.

If this is what capitalism produces for the masses, it is no surprise that a 70% tax on incomes over $10 million a year is a popular proposition.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

If this is what capitalism produces for the masses, it is no surprise that a 70% tax on incomes over $10 million a year is a popular proposition.

And, funnily enough, the people whose money dominates western politics managed to get themselves into that position under 91%* tax in the US and 80% in the UK (or inherited the businesses of their parents who were subject to that). Sure they made far more after their money facilitated their lobbying, but they were already absurdly rich.

*Yes, the 91% only ever applied to a very small fraction even amongst the rich (applied to annual earnings above c.$2m in todays money, or thereabouts), and the generally wealthy didn't pay that much less than they do today in the US (clever tax strategies aside), but it's the extremely wealthy that we're talking about.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
That is true, and in fact national wealth has increased significantly since the 1970s. It doesn't explain why the major proportion of national wealth increases have gone to the richest few percent of the population, while the bottom 60% are now worse off than 10 years ago.

In such a context it is easy to see that the inifinitude of wealth is meaningless when the distribution of wealth is increasingly more and more skewed towards the already wealthy.

If this is what capitalism produces for the masses, it is no surprise that a 70% tax on incomes over $10 million a year is a popular proposition.

Capitalism is focused on creating opportunity for the masses, corporatism is focused on wealth concentration and industry/market sector domination by monolithic corporations which is what we have today. We deregulated capitalism, allowed it to distort itself into corporatism and then compounded the problem by allowing politicians to refuse to acknowledge the change due to political expedience of either championing or condemning our "capitalist" system as if it is working as intended (it's not).

Capitalism is like feudalism but with the economy rather than government. The theory has differences but the result is the same.

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
That is true, and in fact national wealth has increased significantly since the 1970s. It doesn't explain why the major proportion of national wealth increases have gone to the richest few percent of the population, while the bottom 60% are now worse off than 10 years ago.

In such a context it is easy to see that the inifinitude of wealth is meaningless when the distribution of wealth is increasingly more and more skewed towards the already wealthy.

If this is what capitalism produces for the masses, it is no surprise that a 70% tax on incomes over $10 million a year is a popular proposition.

Capitalism is focused on creating opportunity for the masses, corporatism is focused on wealth concentration and industry/market sector domination by monolithic corporations which is what we have today. We deregulated capitalism, allowed it to distort itself into corporatism and then compounded the problem by allowing politicians to refuse to acknowledge the change due to political expedience of either championing or condemning our "capitalist" system as if it is working as intended (it's not).

As intended by whom? There's no sacred text setting out what capitalism is or should be. Hell, people can't even define it tightly enough to decide whether it started in Middle Bronze Age Aššur or 16th century NW Europe!

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Capitalism is like feudalism but with the economy rather than government. The theory has differences but the result is the same.

Feudalism is reliant on strictly stratified classes and an hereditary right to rule. Capitalism is reliant on the open exchange of goods, services and labor.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nfe wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
That is true, and in fact national wealth has increased significantly since the 1970s. It doesn't explain why the major proportion of national wealth increases have gone to the richest few percent of the population, while the bottom 60% are now worse off than 10 years ago.

In such a context it is easy to see that the inifinitude of wealth is meaningless when the distribution of wealth is increasingly more and more skewed towards the already wealthy.

If this is what capitalism produces for the masses, it is no surprise that a 70% tax on incomes over $10 million a year is a popular proposition.

Capitalism is focused on creating opportunity for the masses, corporatism is focused on wealth concentration and industry/market sector domination by monolithic corporations which is what we have today. We deregulated capitalism, allowed it to distort itself into corporatism and then compounded the problem by allowing politicians to refuse to acknowledge the change due to political expedience of either championing or condemning our "capitalist" system as if it is working as intended (it's not).

As intended by whom? There's no sacred text setting out what capitalism is or should be. Hell, people can't even define it tightly enough to decide whether it started in Middle Bronze Age Aššur or 16th century NW Europe!

The foundations of the US economic system that was put in place when our national government was founded.

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
That is true, and in fact national wealth has increased significantly since the 1970s. It doesn't explain why the major proportion of national wealth increases have gone to the richest few percent of the population, while the bottom 60% are now worse off than 10 years ago.

In such a context it is easy to see that the inifinitude of wealth is meaningless when the distribution of wealth is increasingly more and more skewed towards the already wealthy.

If this is what capitalism produces for the masses, it is no surprise that a 70% tax on incomes over $10 million a year is a popular proposition.

Capitalism is focused on creating opportunity for the masses, corporatism is focused on wealth concentration and industry/market sector domination by monolithic corporations which is what we have today. We deregulated capitalism, allowed it to distort itself into corporatism and then compounded the problem by allowing politicians to refuse to acknowledge the change due to political expedience of either championing or condemning our "capitalist" system as if it is working as intended (it's not).

Wrong. Capitalism is focused on creating wealth for the wealthy. . . Again, I point to the Robber Barons of the earliest years of the 20th century. There are reasons why laws were created to force competition, and thats because, left on its own capitalism is about concentration of wealth, not "opportunity for the masses"

Prestor Jon wrote:

nfe wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
That is true, and in fact national wealth has increased significantly since the 1970s. It doesn't explain why the major proportion of national wealth increases have gone to the richest few percent of the population, while the bottom 60% are now worse off than 10 years ago.

In such a context it is easy to see that the inifinitude of wealth is meaningless when the distribution of wealth is increasingly more and more skewed towards the already wealthy.

If this is what capitalism produces for the masses, it is no surprise that a 70% tax on incomes over $10 million a year is a popular proposition.

Capitalism is focused on creating opportunity for the masses, corporatism is focused on wealth concentration and industry/market sector domination by monolithic corporations which is what we have today. We deregulated capitalism, allowed it to distort itself into corporatism and then compounded the problem by allowing politicians to refuse to acknowledge the change due to political expedience of either championing or condemning our "capitalist" system as if it is working as intended (it's not).

As intended by whom? There's no sacred text setting out what capitalism is or should be. Hell, people can't even define it tightly enough to decide whether it started in Middle Bronze Age Aššur or 16th century NW Europe!

The foundations of the US economic system that was put in place when our national government was founded.

Oh, you mean a nation-specific economic system ascribed by a particular institution. I'm not sure it's fair to describe that as how an economic philosophy 'is intended to work'.

That said, it's interesting that the US set out a specific economic system at its foundation. I didn't know any democracy had ever done that. Where was it legislated?

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
That is true, and in fact national wealth has increased significantly since the 1970s. It doesn't explain why the major proportion of national wealth increases have gone to the richest few percent of the population, while the bottom 60% are now worse off than 10 years ago.

In such a context it is easy to see that the inifinitude of wealth is meaningless when the distribution of wealth is increasingly more and more skewed towards the already wealthy.

If this is what capitalism produces for the masses, it is no surprise that a 70% tax on incomes over $10 million a year is a popular proposition.

Capitalism is focused on creating opportunity for the masses, corporatism is focused on wealth concentration and industry/market sector domination by monolithic corporations which is what we have today. We deregulated capitalism, allowed it to distort itself into corporatism and then compounded the problem by allowing politicians to refuse to acknowledge the change due to political expedience of either championing or condemning our "capitalist" system as if it is working as intended (it's not).

Wrong. Capitalism is focused on creating wealth for the wealthy. . . Again, I point to the Robber Barons of the earliest years of the 20th century. There are reasons why laws were created to force competition, and thats because, left on its own capitalism is about concentration of wealth, not "opportunity for the masses"

Yeah, the -theory- of what capitalism is is different, but the -result- is the disappointingly similar to feudalism; wealth concentrated in the hands of a tiny few who have control over the economic wellbeing of their workers.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Yeah, the -theory- of what capitalism is is different, but the -result- is the disappointingly similar to feudalism; wealth concentrated in the hands of a tiny few who have control over the economic wellbeing of their workers.

You could argue that this is true of any economic system that's ever been practically implemented. There has never been true equality and there are always elites; it's just the character of the elites that changes. You can have your choice of Aristocrats, Oligarchs, Plutocrats, Authoritarians etc.

Right now we have Plutocrats.

No one really engaged with the big post I made about the nature of the financial system, but the Federal Reserve just announced that they are not going to raise interest rates as expected. That's because they know we're in a bubble created by credit (debt) and that reducing access to credit is going to freeze liquidity and burst that bubble in a spectacular fashion. They can try to stave it off as long as they like, but it will happen sooner or later, and when it does it will destroy savings and investment for the many and allow the few to snap up even more real assets at a bargain price. That is where the theft of wealth happens.

Of course there will always be some who have more and some who have less, that isn't even an inherently bad thing. The degree to which it happens is what creates problems, and in that one economic system is not equal to another.

Prestor Jon wrote:
hereditary right to rule

Isn't that pretty much the same in capitalism? Looking at how many current millionaires+ inherited their fortune...

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
That is true, and in fact national wealth has increased significantly since the 1970s. It doesn't explain why the major proportion of national wealth increases have gone to the richest few percent of the population, while the bottom 60% are now worse off than 10 years ago.

In such a context it is easy to see that the inifinitude of wealth is meaningless when the distribution of wealth is increasingly more and more skewed towards the already wealthy.

If this is what capitalism produces for the masses, it is no surprise that a 70% tax on incomes over $10 million a year is a popular proposition.

Capitalism is focused on creating opportunity for the masses, corporatism is focused on wealth concentration and industry/market sector domination by monolithic corporations which is what we have today. We deregulated capitalism, allowed it to distort itself into corporatism and then compounded the problem by allowing politicians to refuse to acknowledge the change due to political expedience of either championing or condemning our "capitalist" system as if it is working as intended (it's not).

Wrong. Capitalism is focused on creating wealth for the wealthy. . . Again, I point to the Robber Barons of the earliest years of the 20th century. There are reasons why laws were created to force competition, and thats because, left on its own capitalism is about concentration of wealth, not "opportunity for the masses"

Incorrect. Capitalism requires that there be economic opportunity to bring goods and services to market and for people to be able to freely contract their labor. Capitalism needs to facilitate commerce and it's self evident that mutually beneficial transactions are conducive for long term commercial success. If the economic underpinnings of supply and demand are being thwarted because goods and services aren't being allowed to enter the market to meet real or perceived demand then capitalism isn't working.
Kickstarter is an example of a capitalist system, ideas for goods/services are presented to the market and they succeed or fail based on their own merits, chiefly being able to supply an unmet demand. The invisible hand of the market does this because the invisible hand of the market is the people viewing the KS campaign and determining based on the qualities of the project, the presentation/marketing, the content offered, the communication, the timing, etc. of the campaign if it is worth pledging or not and if enough people pledge the KS will fund and hopefully deliver. Failing to fund or deliver makes it harder for companies to create successful KS projects. Small companies can freely compete against large companies. Whether it's a small company or a big company like CMON, I will pledge for whatever project I want more so the demand dictates the success of the project. KS doesn't naturally create a concentration of wealth or success.

Robber Barons/wealth concentration is a byproduct of opportunity and innovation. The reason we had Robber Barons in the 1920s is because at that point in time the US had changed over from an agrarian country to an industrialized country and that industrialization allowed for a massive increase the amount of wealth generated which made it possible to amass an enormous concentration of wealth. Ma Bell could only exist after we invented the telephone so that's when it existed. The East India Trading Company was just as much of a robber baron as Ma Bell, US Steel or Comcast. You need railroads in order to be a railroad tycoon. Early entrants into innovative and emerging technologies have a huge advantage in claiming market domination. The telephone is invented which leads to Ma Bell becoming the telephone company monopoly which harms the economy and the people so the government passes regulation to break it up and make things better. Then we get television and we have the monopoly of the big three networks but then we get cable tv and satellite tv and the creation of cable networks like ESPN, HBO and CNN. Then we invent the internet and we digital "channels" like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and YouTube. Unfortunately we lost the political will to break up the cartels and monopolies that came with the digital age because to paraphrase the famous Wall Street speech we bought into the philosophy that growth is good. Economic expansion is good, concentrated expansion limited to monopolies is not good. In an ideal capitalist system every demand would be supplied with goods/services with the only limitation being what could be produced with current technology which would be constantly innovating to meet new demands. Monopolies and wealth concentration work against that capitalistic utopia. Comcast is a monopoly for cable/internet services in parts of the US and they have bad customer service. That creates a demand for cable/internet with good customer service but it can't be met because it's not possible for other companies to move into Comcast territories or start up within Comcast territory. Unmet demands for goods/services is the antithesis of capitalism.

Dynasties are good for sports but monopolies are terrible for markets. Tom Brady and the Patriots can have unprecedented success but eventually Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, etc. will retire and new people will have a chance to be the next Brady/Belichick. A giant corporation like Amazon never has to retire. It's possible that it can mismanage itself into the ground but it's certainly not probable. The longer it exists, the bigger it gets and the harder it is for new or existing companies to compete against it. It's been pointed out in the other OT thread about Fuller's, there's local microbreweries and multinational corporations like Anheuser-Busch InBev and a huge chasm in between them. That's not a healthy market.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

nfe wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

nfe wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
That is true, and in fact national wealth has increased significantly since the 1970s. It doesn't explain why the major proportion of national wealth increases have gone to the richest few percent of the population, while the bottom 60% are now worse off than 10 years ago.

In such a context it is easy to see that the inifinitude of wealth is meaningless when the distribution of wealth is increasingly more and more skewed towards the already wealthy.

If this is what capitalism produces for the masses, it is no surprise that a 70% tax on incomes over $10 million a year is a popular proposition.

Capitalism is focused on creating opportunity for the masses, corporatism is focused on wealth concentration and industry/market sector domination by monolithic corporations which is what we have today. We deregulated capitalism, allowed it to distort itself into corporatism and then compounded the problem by allowing politicians to refuse to acknowledge the change due to political expedience of either championing or condemning our "capitalist" system as if it is working as intended (it's not).

As intended by whom? There's no sacred text setting out what capitalism is or should be. Hell, people can't even define it tightly enough to decide whether it started in Middle Bronze Age Aššur or 16th century NW Europe!

The foundations of the US economic system that was put in place when our national government was founded.

Oh, you mean a nation-specific economic system ascribed by a particular institution. I'm not sure it's fair to describe that as how an economic philosophy 'is intended to work'.

That said, it's interesting that the US set out a specific economic system at its foundation. I didn't know any democracy had ever done that. Where was it legislated?

The first 4 Articles of the constitution lay out the regulatory bodies and oversight for intrastate, interstate and international commerce and taxation creating open markets regulated via the tiered federalism.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ashiraya wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
hereditary right to rule

Isn't that pretty much the same in capitalism? Looking at how many current millionaires+ inherited their fortune...

Capitalism is concerned the commerce. The degree to which wealthy people can influence national politics can vary wildly depending on the political system and the amount of wealth possessed which is an externality that isn't dictated by capitalism but by governance. Are there people in Sweden that are super rich thanks to Ikea, Volvo and Saab? How much influence do they have in Swedish politics? Is it comparable to how it is here in the US?

Sweden is not exactly a paradise, but the amount of lobbying, shady business and rich people generally cheating the system in the US is regarded with horror over here.

Sadly all too many here in America consider it 'just the way it is'. Or worse, 'the way it's supposed to be'.

Which allows it to get worse every year.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Sweden is not exactly a paradise, but the amount of lobbying, shady business and rich people generally cheating the system in the US is regarded with horror over here.

Stuff like that happens in Sweden too, it's just that the rich in Sweden are better at staying low-key the the US rich

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
hereditary right to rule

Isn't that pretty much the same in capitalism? Looking at how many current millionaires+ inherited their fortune...

Capitalism is concerned the commerce. The degree to which wealthy people can influence national politics can vary wildly depending on the political system and the amount of wealth possessed which is an externality that isn't dictated by capitalism but by governance. Are there people in Sweden that are super rich thanks to Ikea, Volvo and Saab? How much influence do they have in Swedish politics? Is it comparable to how it is here in the US?

Both are advanced capitalist economies,so there are a lot of similarities, but there are cultural differences that make it a lot more accepted to flaunt your wealth in the US, while the rich in Sweden tries to stay out of the limelight most of the time.

To my understanding the IKEA fortune is considerable but there's trouble in using those funds because the banking instructions are not clear, the forms they need aren't all there, and the access codes won't fit the account.

Sweden also has an 85%+ voter turnout; the influence of money on elections scales inversely with vote participation.