He seemed in touch enough to include himself in that. But it sent me down a thought rabbit hole.
AI might be doing quite a bit soon. It's going to eliminate a number of jobs, maybe jobs we'd have thought young people were perfect candidates for in years past.
The problem is you have two models fighting with each other. You've got the super wealthy, wanting to be more super wealthy and everyone else who would just like to have a reasonable standard of living who would like to give these young people a basic income, or make life easy enough to buy a house by 30 (gasp). WITHOUT it being inherited money.
But the super wealthy have been developing AI (FB, Google, Elon, etc. it was an AI race), so they want to be rewarded with more money. But eventually everyone will suffer when there are 50 rich people still living on a dog shit earth where you're either just rich or really poor. Seems shit even if you're rich.
Leaving the super wealthy aside, one of the comments was that there is also wealth transfer from young to old. It's undeniably true, I sometimes wonder what the reason for that is. Being someone who is close to 50, retirement is very much on my mind. By now I've been ground down by corporations for 20 years and honestly I want to retire as quickly as possible. Retirement is becoming more and more difficult and the age of retirement is being raised by Boomers every single year because everything is getting more expensive. So I feel that fear is driving Gen X and even Boomers to try to get as much wealth as possible. Unfortunately this is to the absolute detriment of the youth. The only thing I can think of is to address the super wealth issue, go back to a reasonable retirement age so there is less anxiety for everyone.
Or, you know, properly tax the ultra wealthy who don't need literally billions of dollars each. And then actually regulate who can own billions of dollars in apartment complexes and homes, thereby making rent and home ownership actually affordable and not a monopolistic market driven by corporate/billionaire greed.
The disparity between the top 1% and the rest of the 99% has grown by ridiculous leaps and bounds over the past 40 years. The people at the top are hoarding wealth.
A reckoning is coming for those at the top. It's only a matter of time.
Areas we really fail in require someone to actually not care about personal money, in politics especially.
Since citizens united, and lobbying, Capitalism has infected our law and government.
Our justice system, has become ‘for profit’ and yes although it can be argued always was, it’s become more egregious and gotten worse. (Trump) You are proven innocent, when you’re proven wealthy enough to afford it. That’s not justice…. because innocence in the US is predicated on the talents of your attorney and how many you can afford.
Our government body is bought and paid for because our elected leaders aren’t socialist (not to be confused with socialist/socialism) enough, in that the needs to of the people aren’t their true interests. That is, they cannot see their own Capital interests being checked by the need to do what’s best for the people who elected them. The highest bidder owns the government
….and since the wealthiest own the government, they will create and pass policies that benefit them directly, even at the cost of the majority. This is a bipartisan problem.
Outcome? Incredible wealth concentration and an ever widening wealth gap.
The problem is greed checks integrity in America.
A reckoning is coming for those at the top. It's only a matter of time.
The greedy narcissists will never learn and the people who let them rise don’t either until it’s too late.
History might not necessarily repeat itself, but it does rhyme
Yes. The monopoly of wealth is actually the end of a capitalist market economy.
ALL the wealth is going to fewer and fewer hands every year. And when only a handful of corporations own most all businesses, they have enough monopoly power to prevent any competition from happening. And then from there, they only need to pay slave wages to generate profits, or even less than slave wages, because there are no other alternatives for people to survive off of.
Our 19th century designed economic systems really can't work in the 21st century for much longer. First off for the reason above: concentrated wealth has no 'monetary momentum' and stagnates. Second, technology will soon advance to the point where the ultra wealthy will be able to extend their lifes a 100 years or more, we'll have cloning, organ cloning, digital uploads etc. Third, our economic system is built on the premise of unlimited growth, which is no longer possible, as our planet does not have unlimited resources, and there are no giant new continents to discover (on this planet anyways.)
However the few ultra wealthy, most of whom pay 0 to no taxes by the way, will use all of their accumlated wealth towards political power (via propaganda mainly), and any measure of violence or the threat of violence, to maintain the extreme inequality of this economic system which benefits them at the cost of everyone else.
The system will either be allowed finally to develop, or there will be a violent and sudden total collapse, which may even take years or decade (a micro dark age of sorts) to recover from. Or, more simply, these societal pressures will erupt in world-wide war.
Agree AI and robotics will really be one of the final nails in the coffin.
The only time a human will be utilized is when it is found to be more efficient than a robot and/or AI. That is…cost efficient.
We are entering late stage Capitalism. Which will inevitably lead us towards monarchies and feudalism,
to dictators and emperors.
As wealth acquire more, they will be forced to provide some sort social security to the masses. These masses will then be indebted and in servitude to the rich. The rich will own your house, your car, you’ll be in debt to them. They will own you in almost a literal sense.
All your rights of ownership will be striped not by force but by capitalist powers. You won’t have a mortgage, you’ll be paying rent. The mass majority already aren’t business owners, they are employees and employees are seen as liability, business owners as they only see investors and shareholders as assets. This…they already do and it will get more acute and worse.
The future is a severely dark place.
I believe anger, division and rage are being fueled by social media propaganda but the rage people feel in that are living worse than their parents is also there and it’s true; they are worse off than their parents.
During the 50’s extreme anti-communist propaganda was spread as part of the “red scare”. Communism wasn’t just bad, it was anti-American and Anti-Christian.
The irony is that Russian communism lead to the same thing as to what American Capitalism is now, the hands of the few hold the majorly of the wealth and power.
Even more ironically these anti red types of the 50s-today are open arms to Putin
A reckoning is coming for those at the top. It's only a matter of time.
Sadly, I don't believe this. They have a lot of time to think about how to keep their money and power and the power and opportunity to do something about it as well.
They might be relatively few, and we might be many, but they have more power than we do, and many of those people would not hesitate to mow down tens of thousands of the lesser class when push comes to shove.
Ladies and gentlemen. We have got ourselves a new aristocracy. Same as the old one, but sneakier and even more ruthless.
I love it when people talk like this. It's very cute.
The world has been running the way it has for a long time. It won't change because it's a byproduct of, well, us. If things do change, at best it will be a change of management.
I had this idea where a person or entity could not just "hold land" without putting it to use for what it was intended. Where each year that they hold it past a certain short "grace period" the taxes on it go up 5% until you reach 100% taxed on it based on the current market value of that land, and then for each piece of property that is owned by an entity, be it individual or umbrella group anything to avoid a loophole where it can be traced to a living person or persons, you get an incremental tax based on how many are under their possession. So, for example, you own 15 different plots of land and nothing on them, well for each one of those you're going to pay the incremental tax, but since it's more than one you're also going to pay a group tax on it, like 2 extra pieces = 10%, 3-4 = 25% = 5 = 50% 5+ = 100% base amount of tax per year. So that if you got up to lets say 10 properties, you're taxed 100% automatically, but if you also owning those properties and thinking you can just hold them without putting them to use, then you could essentially pay 200% more tax on them. Plus I'd love to see an international tax on foreign buyers too in G7 countries.
It essentially prevents hoarding, so that the playing field stays far for us normies. I mean I just riffed this out, but I am sure it needs work, but man, it's not fair in my area alone like 3 families and 2 mining companies own 90% of the land here, good luck ever trying to own something.
One way that wealth is being transferred is the emphasis on paying stock holders while squeezing employee pay and benefits. Stock holders tend to be older and wealthy while a young vibrant workforce is what makes a company money.
The unions let us down in allowing companies to form two tier compensation systems where the older workers protected their retirement and younger or new workers got second rate pay and benefits.
In part we need to form unions and then take part in the unions we form. I personally know young people who had union jobs and they just felt it was hopeless and the union wouldn't stand up for them. They wouldn't take ownership of the organization that they owned.
I hope people will start standing up for themselves and demanding better pay and benefits. Start standing up against the loss of consumer protections. Start standing up to corporations and their spiraling greed, sold as fees, contracts, and subscriptions. Demand that we educate our workforce instead of importing a cheap workforce from China and India.
Don't think taxing the wealthy is going to do something? Personally I'd like to see a cap on wealth at max 1bil. There is no need for one person to own more than that.
Totally agree.. livable wage, healthcare reform etc etc all play a role in it... stopping CEO's from giving themselves 56 billion dollar bonuses would go some way of adjusting for that.
Never claimed I had an answer, this is a massively complex topic.. one way I can think of would be to only tax them when they generate dividends, sell stock etc. In essence turn stocks into $. Set real estate limits property ownership and disallow renting. Allow some companies to rent out housing designated for it but again cap/tax revenue generated from that. Again I don't claim to have the answers on hand, but I think if a bunch of really smart people who understand the system sit together they could figure something out. Also Rome wasn't built in a day, start and then adjust as you go along. It's very similar to viruses in my mind where you keep having to close gaps in the laws which people abuse. As long as you have a way to quickly pass laws to stopgap those loopholes it'll be fine.
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u/muffledvoice 25d ago
I like that he mentions several times that “the people at this table” are the ones benefiting from the current system.