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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday October 29 2017, @08:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the goose-and-the-golden-egg dept.

Wealth inequality stands at its highest since the turn of the 20th century - the so-called 'Gilded Age' - as the proportion of capital held by the world's 1,542 dollar billionaires swells yet higher. The report, undertaken by Swiss banking giant UBS and UK accounting company PwC, discusses the roles technology and globalization play in the status quo, and appears two weeks after the IMF recommended that the rich should pay more tax to address the enormous disparity.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 29 2017, @07:20PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 29 2017, @07:20PM (#589175)

    There's little point in arguing with you, you are so fucking incompetent that you can't even comprehend that you're wrong. Not a single one of your points actually contains any truth to it.

    Those institutional investors are only slightly less bad than the individuals with personal holdings of large sums of money. They distort the market in more or less the same way. But, increasingly, the people with holdings with those investors are rich anyways, if things continue the way they are, that's just going to get worse.

    Business creation doesn't even remotely address the point about small cap stocks and other small businesses. Large holders of capital are restricted in how they can invest in small companies because they have such a huge effect on the share price.

    As for capitalism, what color sky do you see, because you're not inhabiting the reality that the rest of us are. We're seeing market failures going on all over the place because companies are only motivated by profits with no consideration about the consequences of how they're operating. Capitalism doesn't work when the regulators are owned by the same people that own all the companies.

    As for your last point, I've read enough posts by you to know that the lack of real world examples isn't the problem here. The problem here is that you fail miserably to understand how economics work and will grasp at any excuse to pretend like these realities aren't real. Providing examples for you to outright ignore wouldn't change that fact.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 29 2017, @08:19PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 29 2017, @08:19PM (#589193) Journal

    There's little point in arguing with you, you are so fucking incompetent that you can't even comprehend that you're wrong. Not a single one of your points actually contains any truth to it.

    You can only find truth if you look for it. Perhaps some day you'll be aware of just how full of shit you are in this post. One can hope.

    Those institutional investors are only slightly less bad than the individuals with personal holdings of large sums of money. They distort the market in more or less the same way. But, increasingly, the people with holdings with those investors are rich anyways, if things continue the way they are, that's just going to get worse.

    All these rich are so terrible with money... but how are they growing that money so fast then? As to the market distortion (buying or selling a lot of something causes the market to shift in a direction adverse to the large buyer or seller as they make their transaction) of the rich and institutional investors which always works against them, that's one of the ways wealth gets a little more equalized. No reason to complain here about something working as intended.

    Business creation doesn't even remotely address the point about small cap stocks and other small businesses. Large holders of capital are restricted in how they can invest in small companies because they have such a huge effect on the share price.

    I hope some day you realize how stupid that statement was. While most small businesses fail, and of those that succeed, most never grow larger, we still have a lot of large businesses today that started as small businesses a few decades ago. The "large holder of capital" can invest in those businesses. Further, if it truly were hard to find stuff to invest in, there wouldn't be such a high return on investment. Skilled investors can consistently find investments in the 7-10% to invest in, after adjusting for risk. For example, large investors have had over the past 70 years: HP, Xerox, Motorola, Intel, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Google, Uber, Facebook, and many other high tech and internet based companies that started life as a small company. The valuation of these companies collective is two or three trillion dollars.

    But this stuff is like a olive grove. You have to care for the field for many years in order to reap the rewards. In particular, rather than derp on about how there aren't enough businesses to invest in, we should wonder why that is supposedly a problem.

    As for capitalism, what color sky do you see, because you're not inhabiting the reality that the rest of us are. We're seeing market failures going on all over the place because companies are only motivated by profits with no consideration about the consequences of how they're operating. Capitalism doesn't work when the regulators are owned by the same people that own all the companies.

    Company failures != market failures. Typical market failures are externalities and being unable to find a good at any price. Some consider cartels and monopolies market failures as well. These do happen all the time in real world markets. But a business failing? It's normal operation of these markets. They don't exist to guarantee success.

    As to the regulation failure, it's no better when the regulators are owned by government either. For example, the Grenfell Tower fire [wikipedia.org] was so lethal because no one held the government-controlled towers to the regulated safety standard. Regulation won't work, no matter the system, when the regulators are controlled by the regulated. It doesn't matter the system - so no use singling out capitalism for special attention.

    As for your last point, I've read enough posts by you to know that the lack of real world examples isn't the problem here. The problem here is that you fail miserably to understand how economics work and will grasp at any excuse to pretend like these realities aren't real. Providing examples for you to outright ignore wouldn't change that fact.

    Notice, yet again, not a single real world example to back your mostly empty assertions. And a bad case of projection to top it off. You've gone through so much effort to make excuses. It wouldn't be much harder to reason.

    I suppose we'll have to go through yet another round of whining - claims of no truth in my posts and assertions completely divorced from reality about how rich people supposedly operate.