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We Need a Wealth Tax


Hugo Stiglitz

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19 minutes ago, DonkeyCigars said:

No, I understand that part (using the year to reference them), but in no other way does it really make sense to use them the outliers here. You are referencing them but they do nothing to refute the point and data. Unless you are trying to disagree with the premise and author, but you haven't stated that so IDK?

the middle class is held up as something artificial and created by government by you at the end of post #443.  the blog you quoted liberally from keeps going back to 1892 as a reference point.*  turns out, those fuckers were just as artificial and created by government as the middle class that you think is artificial and unscalable.  what i'm trying to get you to see is that both of those outcomes - extreme wealth concentrated in the hands of a lucky few in the robber baron era, and a broad middle class in the post war era, are actually the result of intentional policy decisions by the government.  so, how might that inform the current era?

but you'll probably just go back to your obtuse act. 

 

 

 

*and let's go 50 years before that to 1842 and i bet most wealth is inherited.  so i don't know that nouveau riche is the new status quo, to paul graham's point.

Edited by elfenix
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Thanks for the attempt at an explanation. It helps.

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the question i'm trying to get you to ask yourself

 

 

 

You did an extremely poor job of leading the witness here. I would never have gotten there based on your posts and misguided analysis that you seem to think was as clear as the nose on our faces. Thank you for being explicit and asking, for the sake of the conversation here.

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[Are] both of those outcomes - extreme wealth concentrated in the hands of a lucky few in the robber baron era, and a broad middle class in the post war era, are actually the result of intentional policy decisions by the government?  and how that might inform the current era?

I don't think that the robber barons were intentional government welfare.

I think that calling the robber barons out as examples of organizations that were enabled because the government were favorable to them is mostly wrong in that it was never the intent and the extremely wealthy folks/businesses in that era were not planned, architected and funded to be what they were. They simply innovated to a point that the government needed to play ball and indirectly and tacitly enabled their power. In much the same way today, the innovators who are ahead of the government and so they get huge billion dollar contracts to build for or with the government do so because of their capabilities and product/place in the market (e.g. $10bn JEDI with MSFT beating out AMZN to help the Pentagon or whatever, announced last week Elon's $3bn SpaceX beating out Bezos' Blue Origin for the lunar landing deal to help NASA, etc. ad infinitum)

Oil, railroads, etc. all these robber baron industries would have to have been nationalized for your point to make sense that the government was intentionally creating these people. They just were smart and got lucky and dominated emerging industries that exploded. This is the way, and always has been since Grok the IV found fire.

The middle class is and always has been a product of post war and government policy. It's nanny/welfare state and more people wouldn't mind calling it that if they didn't live in that strata and/or strive to be and to promote the middle class as a DR Horton home owning aesthete. I've said some variation of this for the last six months on this site along with my position that the post-modern (1999- Today) innovation speed of technology (lightning fast) and the interconnectivity of people via technology (lightning fast) is the root cause for why our country is being destroyed from the inside out. The latter is not germane to this topic, though I think it could be argued is related to the former, and I only mention it as these are two points that make up my thesis for most of my posts.

Now that I've poured it on a bit thick in the rhetoric style I'm most comfortable with, let me be clearly humble with this last part so you know exactly my intent: That is my current understanding of the situation and regardless of where you might find your beliefs, I think it's an interesting and unanswered question that is worth discussing.

Edited by DonkeyCigars
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 nearly 19% of texas was given to railroads.  that's an intentional government policy.  that's not indirectly and tacitly enabling. 

 

(fun fact: texas tried to give nearly 21%, but faulty grants mucked it up)

Edited by elfenix
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22 hours ago, elfenix said:

 nearly 19% of texas was given to railroads.  that's an intentional government policy.  that's not indirectly and tacitly enabling. 

 

(fun fact: texas tried to give nearly 21%, but faulty grants mucked it up)

Okay, taking that at face value because I have no reason to doubt you, I can agree that this happened but you are still missing the point, I think. Or trying to make a divergent point that is missing the mark.

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