Zombie The Coronavirus Financial Thread (Personal, Local, National)

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

 

trickle down bullsh*t fallacy

Just 59 Americans own more wealth than half the country, data shows
The poorest 50 percent of Americans, or roughly 165 million people, collectively owned about $2.08 trillion in wealth in the second quarter of 2020, according to Federal Reserve data released last week.

That’s less than the net worth of the nation’s 59 richest billionaires, who have a combined fortune of about $2.09 trillion, Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index shows — a number that’s grown this year despite the COVID-19 crisis kneecapping the global economy.
https://nypost.com/2020/10/08/just-59-americans-own-more-wealth-than-half-the-country-data/

 

Fuck yeah, the Reaganomics should kick in at ANY SECOND!

 

I'd really like to understand this issue better. I wonder where the bulk of the wealth that makes up the net worth of these people is held? I suspect that most of it is invested in businesses they own or control, stocks & bonds, and so on. I mean, it's not as if the majority of their wealth is in a form that we would typically consider our personal wealth: money in the bank, investments for retirement, house, cars, clothes, furniture, and so on. In other words, a huge portion of it is the underpinnings of the economy that provides jobs and "stuff" for the rest of us peons. If you took a good chunk of those assets out of the hands of the super rich folks at the top of the pyramid and transferred it to the government as a part of a shift to a socialist or communist model, would anything substantive change for the average person? It wouldn't immediately mean more "stuff" that's easily distributed to the masses, and it would likely result in less "stuff" being produced by the economy because governments typically suck at business. At least that's my general notion of reality.

 

Completely agree here.

'Trickle down economics' is a complete fallacy propagated by the government.

 

What's sad is when poor people defend the rich for it not trickling down, just as long as those OTHER poor people aren't getting anything also.

 

IMO, you're confusing a symptom with the disease

the disease is the massively tilted playing field that favors the rich and connected and is largely responsible for that wealth gap

the latest game-plan that further tilted the field was that corrupt tax-plan that trump and the R's rammed thru in 2017. Every fucking time Congress tinkers with the tax code (and this includes D's), the tax code slants more in favor of the rich. That's how trump has avoided paying taxes many years, and $750 a couple of years.

a classic example is the long term capital gain tax. If Jeff Bezos sells 1 billion of his stock, the federal tax rate is 15%. Meanwhile, if you're in the work-a-day world and you make 50K after the standard deduction, your tax rate is 22%. More than that though is you have a 7.65% payroll tax (SS and Medicare). Meaning your effective tax rate for your labor is almost 30%, practically twice that of capital gains

that's the fallacy of supply-side bullshit. There is no real logical justification, and it is so opposite of any moral justification that it is corrupt in both intent and impact. The idea that capital should be taxed at a much lesser rate than labor is bankrupt thinking.

 

I wasn't promoting supply-side economics. I'm simply saying that gee, the rich folks have a whole bunch of wealth, doesn't mean that there's also a whole bunch of usable "stuff" for the common person available in that wealth. Someone or something has to own the companies/structures that make up the economy. I can't eat or wear Amazon or GM. I have zero problem with taxing capital gains at a higher rate, unless it gets so high that there's a bigger incentive to move companies offshore.

 

i don't advocate socialism, but fairer tax burdens on the top of the food chain, including inheritance with the understanding that valuation of agricultural lands held by individuals and family be subject to a lower burden in the federal accounting. a flat tax and better/fairer burdens on accumulated wealth management would also be preferred IMHO. accumulating wealth. Distributism views both laissez-faire capitalism and state socialism as equally flawed and exploitative, favoring economic mechanisms such as cooperatives and member-owned mutual organizations as well as small businesses and large-scale competition law reform such as antitrust regulations. Some Christian democratic political parties such as the American Solidarity Party have advocated distributism in their economic policies.

 

new article from Axios pegs the true unemployment rate here in the US @ 26%. article describes methodology and where different demographic groups are at. @ Denny crane would love it as graphs lay out the damages. i suggest the first link for the best most graphs or as an addendum to the article. worlds greatest economy? for who?

https://www.lisep.org/
https://www.axios.com/americas-true-unemployment-rate-6e34decb-c274-4feb-a4af-ffac8cf5840d.html
A person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a living wage — but who can't find one — is unemployed. If you accept that definition, the true unemployment rate in the U.S. is a stunning 26.1%, according to an important new dataset shared exclusively with "Axios on HBO."

Why it matters: The official unemployment rate is artificially depressed by excluding people who might be earning only a few dollars a week. It also excludes anybody who has stopped looking for work or is discouraged by a lack of jobs or by the demands of child care during the coronavirus crisis.

• If you measure the unemployed as anybody over 16 years old who isn't earning a living wage, the rate rises even further, to 54.6%. For Black Americans, it's 59.2%.
  

By the numbers: In January, when the official rate of unemployment was 3.6%, the true rate was seven times greater — 23.4%. That's according to new calculations from the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, founded by Gene Ludwig, a former U.S. Comptroller of the Currency.

• "I was shocked," he tells Axios on HBO, "that a quarter of the population that want work can't earn a living wage."
• The recession made everything worse. Only 46.1% of white Americans over the age of 16 — and a mere 40.8% of Black Americans — now have a full-time job paying more than $20,000 per year.

 

Word on the street is that Vegas is super ghetto right now. Lots of shootings. Non handicapped people renting scooters and shit. Was thinking of hitting it up for Halloween but I'm thinking its gonna be ghetto, so no real desire to hit it up.

Cosmo is only letting hotel guests and people with restaurant reservations in on the weekends. Heard Bellagio doing the same. Metal detectors and security checkpoints at the Wynn.

 

It's normal. It's how Trump's making America great again!

 

It was like that when I was there in August. I was wondering if the scooter thing was normal

 

I dont believe so. Shit seems weird

 

Of course I’d take all he was silly enough to give me. But the point is that simply taking wealth from the richest people doesn’t immediately mean more of what the masses need or want is actually available. There are only a certain number of houses, cars, and other usable things in existence. Given time and money you can make more, but the problem is that depleting the wealth invested in basic capitalistic infrastructure necessarily reduces the ability to make more stuff. Socialism or communism attempts to get around that by having the government involved in owning and operating business, but that just transfers that infrastructure wealth to another entity that typically sucks at business.

 

While Trump was lying to us he was telling the truth to investors.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/us/politics/stock-market-coronavirus-trump.html


As Virus Spread, Reports of Trump Administration’s Private Briefings Fueled Sell-Off
A hedge fund consultant’s summary of private presentations by White House economic advisers fanned investor worries.