SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
"Although today high levels of inequality in the United States remain a pressing concern for a large swath of the population, monetary policy and credit expansion are rarely mentioned as a likely source of rising wealth and income inequality. [...]
The rise in income inequality over the past 30 years has to a significant extent been the product of monetary policies fueling a series of asset price bubbles. Whenever the market booms, the share of income going to those at the very top increases.[...]
[F]inancial institutions benefit disproportionately from money creation, since they can purchase more goods, services, and assets for still relatively low prices. This conclusion is backed by numerous empirical illustrations. For instance, the financial sector contributed massively to the growth of billionaire's wealth"
Source: https://mises.org/library/how-central-banking-increased-inequality
I'll leave my comments as comments, but note that The Mises Institute is proudly, one might say almost by definition, Austrian School. Both the Institute and the School have had their fair share of criticism. Which of course doesn't mean that individual author is wrong on this particular matter. -- Ed.(FP)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 23 2017, @01:33AM (2 children)
>What goes on in a billionaire's life by in large has zero bearing on your own.
Poop of all the farm animals.
The disproportionately wealthy buy and hold large swaths of coastal real-estate, restricting my access to the beaches and oceans.
Billionaire individuals and corporations are the primary customers of Gulfstream Aviation, employer of ~12,000 people near the booming town of Pooler, GA where I had lunch today. A relative of ours works 4:30am to 2:30pm 4 days a week for Gulfstream, good job if you like that sort of thing - but without the Billionaire crowd, there wouldn't be a private jet market at all.
Billionaires, and lesser wealthy individuals, feed angel investment funds - most of my career has been in and around startup companies that live off of these investment funds. A major part of the business involves courting investment, which basically means knowing (intentionally, or accidentally) how to appeal to these people and get them to choose to invest in your company instead of the hundreds of others clamoring for their attention. Logic, experience, a sound business plan, solid research, and ability to execute are only a small part of how you actually close those deals.
The highly wealthy keep places like the local beach-spas operating, employing hundreds of local people and training them in the art of hospitality, aka serving the rich.
Billionaires and their kin own your Congresscritters, just try to get something done "for the constituency" against the rich benefactors and find out how much.
If you don't deal with the ultra-wealthy directly, you're probably less than 3 degrees of separation away from someone whose life is utterly ruled by them.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:26PM (1 child)
Start up a fund and buy your own then.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 24 2017, @12:24AM
How many plebes does it take to out-bid the billionaires? Virtually all of them, at least all of them that you could mobilize to donate some of their disposable income - just ask Bernie.
There's a funny curve of economic position vs political influence. On an individual basis, you can get some political influence without money, but of course with money your influence is greatly magnified. In both instances, it takes both money and man-hours to get effective political influence - though with enough money you can buy man-hours, so infinite money always wins. But, given the (rough) formula of I = N * t * (k + di) where:
N is the number of people pushing in the same direction
t is the time invested (note that t = t of the individual + t purchased from representatives, so you can in effect substitute di / r for t where r is some hourly rate
k is a constant representing the respect given to individuals regardless of money (let's put this at about $50) and
di is disposable income devoted to influence
At the bottom end, the unemployed have nearly zero di, but high N and very high available t, so they can wield a significant amount of political influence
Moving "up" to the working poor, they have neither t nor di, so their effective political influence is approaching zero, regardless of their N
Then you get to the "middle class" (whatever that is) where you can kick around $50 now and then, and maybe attend a rally once a month or so without destroying your whole life to make it happen, some influence per individual, very high N, but t and di are still really small.
Once you progress to the independently wealthy, their t increases by a factor of 10 or more, simultaneously with a dramatic increase in di - their numbers are small (say ~2%), but if they should choose to become politically active, they have great lobbying power, even as individuals
Then you can climb into the stratosphere of the 0.1% - they command so much disposable income that it can translate directly into political influence simply by hiring lobbyists - effectively out-shouting all other classes combined without investing any more of their personal time than they want to.
This sort of bathtub curve seems to reflect the tax and spend patterns - "incentives" for the rich such that they have the lowest effective tax rate (as a % of income) even while their need for that extra income has nothing to do with survival and everything to do with power and influence - coming down the curve you come into the bulk of the taxpayers, paying the highest rates while receiving the least of the benefits, then at the bottom end the unemployed are actually qhite well taken care of - when I became unemployed my children started receiving the best insurance coverage I ever experienced, for free. We went to all our same doctors, had lower or non-existent co-pays, same choice of treatments as the private pay insurance, and no premiums - all I had to do to receive this $10K+/yr "benefit" from the government was be unemployed.
🌻🌻 [google.com]