I’ve already posted this elsewhere, but this thread seems like an appropriate spot for it as well:
Following on from this:
&
…which created an entertaining Twitterstorm culminating in this:
We now have this:
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Seize the means of production… with lawyers.
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“I was a little surprised that Queen Elizabeth would take the risk of using offshore structures. I would have thought that patriotism and duty to country would have precluded that, but it does reinforce my observation since the Panama Papers that above a certain level of wealth, everybody does this.”
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/11/paradise-papers-wealth-managers-brooke-harrington-interview
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Seems to fit best here:
Read both the article and John Rogers’ thread.
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Does wealth and power require magic to make it legitimate?
https://www.tor.com/2017/12/13/power-is-money-in-sandersons-cosmere/
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I sent that to a friend saying that the location was deeply ironic - an out of touch royal buying the worlds most expensive house near Versailles.
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I can’t believe I missed this thread.
Anyways, I’m a capitalist but on the left-most fringe of what could be considered capitalist still which is why I normally say I’m a true centrist. I believe in centralized and heavily regulated needs in tune with a country’s development blah blah blah. Here are the things I have said that seem to cause physical pain to other “normal” people in the US:
- The free market is a fundamentally flawed concept
- The US is not #1 in most things
- Federal spending isn’t out of control it’s unbalanced
- Tax law means nothing of it isn’t lowering the financial burden of necessities to a household
- The military is the best socialist system our country has had, and we should stop pirating personnel for the profit of contractors
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To be fair the actual middle class does cap out over $250K a year in income.
The size of the middle class income span is terrifying, but the actual extremity of the rich (top 15% wealth, top 1% income) is like a mind-melting eldritch thing peering from the abyss.
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I’ve been reading Oathbringer, and I thought about this theme. Dun spheres are worth much less than infused spheres now, but will regain value in the next highstorm. So exchanging them is somewhat like loaning or borrowing money, but the borrower isn’t the one paying interest. And interest rates fluctuate with the seasons. Still, someone in the business of exchanging charged spheres for dun at a favorable rate could certainly act as a rentier and accumulate quite a lot of wealth.
And now a word from the Brookings Institute…
It’s unintentionally hilarious, one bubble from one side of the pond telling a bubble on the other side of the pond how to bubble properly.
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I’m not really sure what their point even is… the top 20% of income earners is $100K or more in a three person household, which is basically any professional (bachelor’s out of college median $50K) with a partner that works at a similar level. Top 20% of wealth is where you hit those same people, but older with their retirement savings. That’s not actually who they are chastising, they are targeting those with six figure incomes in inexpensive markets with a single family income - but the reason we don’t talk about “the rich” in he top 20% is because it covers a huge number of people that are not rich.
Besides, we normally criticize them for being the core GOP voting base.
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My household almost squeaks into the top 20%, based on my 25+ years in software development and my spouse’s part-time library assistant job. We are what I like to think of as “temporarily comfortable.” E.g. we can afford things for the most part – though this month was a little rough due to shelling out for some necessary house maintenance among other things.
But we don’t have anything to invest, other than what goes into my IRA. We have a $14K car and a $19K car and a $90K house in a working-class, somewhat run down but not poor neighborhood. Vacations are week-long road trips to visit our family once a year or so, with less common 1-2 night motel stays elsewhere. We have serious doubt about our prospects for retirement, or even surviving for long without medical insurance. If we had a child, we would also be freaking out about future college expenses. We both went through ramen-eating phases in our 20s to early 30s. I delayed a lot of dental work for a decade because I couldn’t afford it and then still had to stretch it out over about 6 years.
I still recognize I’m better off financially than a lot of people and that kind of horrifies me. And this is why I’m a socialist.
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I’m in a similar position, although renting instead of owning. Having finally achieved my lifetime goal of a six figure salary, we’re still juggling due to cost-of-living and medical bills, etc. Hypothetically, we could save up enough to put a down payment on a house over the next quarter century, but only if we can pay off the car and it doesn’t immediately break down and also only if there are no unexpected medical bills. We’ve had to raid our 401ks and savings to pay bills due to medical issues in the past, and although it’s slowly rebuilding, there’s not much there. The idea of retirement is kind of like a fairy tale.
That said, we’re not starving and we can keep our home warm enough that water doesn’t freeze inside. Still, when I was younger, envisioning the goal of a six-figure income, I expected more from it than that. Like, at least what my parents could achieve with a five-figure income.
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Meritocracy.
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