6 ms·

The most jarring effect is to look at incomes in ounces of gold before and after 1971. Explains a lot of things.

toomuchtodo 1mo ago
Workers have become ~90% more productive over the last forty years, and received very little of that value, while the US throws off ~$5T in profits per year to shareholders. There is a reason socialism has become palatable politically recently to the electorate, and will continue to be until the labor situation changes.
- MattDamonSpace 1mo ago
  Most Americans are shareholders, I’m all for spreading the wealth but don’t ignore why there’s so much to spread. Americans reinvest for profit
  - toomuchtodo 1mo ago
    Factually inaccurate as it relates to equity exposure (“shareholders”). There is no evidence of “wealth spreading” beyond a token gesture. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/a-visual-breakdown-of-who-owns-americas-wealth/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/a-visual-breakdown-of-who-o... https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2025/june/the-state-of-us-household-wealth https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2025/june/the-state-of... > The top 10% of households by wealth had $8.1 million on average. As a group, they held 67.2% of total household wealth. The bottom 50% of households by wealth had $60,000 on average. As a group, they held 2.5% of total household wealth. > The top 20% of households by income had $4.3 million in wealth on average. As a group, they held 71.1% of total household wealth. The bottom 20% of households by income had $180,000 in wealth on average. As a group, they held 3% of total household wealth. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-10-americans-own-93-033623827.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-10-americans-own-9... Top 10% owns 93% of equities. Middle class wealth is primary residence real estate, representing roughly 60% to 80% of total household wealth. > In any event, stock market booms have traditionally produced the largest rewards for those who are already wealthy. That's because the wealthiest US households have most of their assets tied up in equities, while most middle-class families have their assets tied up in housing, researchers said in a 2020 study. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of Americans held just 1% of all stocks in the third quarter of 2023. https://eig.org/whos-left-out-of-americas-retirement-savings-system/ https://eig.org/whos-left-out-of-americas-retirement-savings... > The latest data show that 42.0 percent of full-time working Americans do not have access to retirement plans, 44.1 percent do not participate, and 50.5 percent do not receive an employer match. (Note that these figures are for employed workers between the ages of 18 and 65, excluding government and self-employed workers.) https://www.gao.gov/financial-security-older-americans https://www.gao.gov/financial-security-older-americans > Even for those who do have access, traditional defined benefit pensions have become much less common as defined contribution plans, such as 401(k)s, have become the primary type of retirement plan. This shift has increased the risks and responsibilities for individuals in planning and managing their retirement. Yet research shows that many households are ill-equipped for this task and have little or no retirement savings. As of 2022, about half of households with a worker age 55 and older had no retirement savings, and 32% had no retirement savings or a defined benefit plan.
    - torginus 1mo ago
      I guess the corollary to this is that the more money you have, the less efficient you can convert money to tangible wealth (there's an actual studied conversion 'factor' for different kinds of wealth).
      - deleted 1mo ago
        [deleted]
      - toomuchtodo 1mo ago
        Wealth, in financial theory, is the present value of all expected future cash flows an individual or asset can generate over time, discounted back to today's value using a specific rate of return. It measures accumulated economic potential rather than just cash in hand. Are there limits to future economic potential? I argue yes, it is a function of demographics, which are in structural decline. Therefore, I would agree it only becomes harder over time to chase after the current amount of total potential wealth, which will decline into the future. Terra Incognita: The Economics of a Shrinking World [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49352811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49352811 - August 2026 > "As of 2026, humanity is likely below replacement fertility. That has never happened before, not in wars or pandemics. But the real surprise is that the fall has been concentrated in low- and middle-income countries and among poorer and less educated women. We fit a single-factor model to 236 countries since 1950: the common component peaked in 1978, and what drives fertility down today are country-specific trends, 219 of them negative and not one leveling off. None of the commonly cited mechanisms can account for this pattern, so we offer a conjecture: modernity itself, which makes a third child expensive and childlessness cheap. Children come in integers, so it takes very little to move a cohort’s fertility rate from 1.8 to 1.3. And nothing in an economy pushes fertility back to 2.1. We close with the main economic consequences, in particular slow growth." The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 - August 2025 (400 comments) (start at slide 31 of the pdf)
torginus 1mo ago
Why would universal economic growth imply everyone owning more of a resource with a limited supply? There's only so much gold in the world (which is kind of the point) - if people in $INSERT_COUNTRY owned more of it per capita, that would mean global inequality has increased, and thankfully we've seen the opposite of that.

Workers have become ~90% more productive over the last forty years, and received very little of that value, while the US throws off ~$5T in profits per year to shareholders. There is a reason socialism has become palatable politically recently to the electorate, and will continue to be until the labor situation changes.

MattDamonSpace 1mo ago
Most Americans are shareholders, I’m all for spreading the wealth but don’t ignore why there’s so much to spread. Americans reinvest for profit
- toomuchtodo 1mo ago
  Factually inaccurate as it relates to equity exposure (“shareholders”). There is no evidence of “wealth spreading” beyond a token gesture. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/a-visual-breakdown-of-who-owns-americas-wealth/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/a-visual-breakdown-of-who-o... https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2025/june/the-state-of-us-household-wealth https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2025/june/the-state-of... > The top 10% of households by wealth had $8.1 million on average. As a group, they held 67.2% of total household wealth. The bottom 50% of households by wealth had $60,000 on average. As a group, they held 2.5% of total household wealth. > The top 20% of households by income had $4.3 million in wealth on average. As a group, they held 71.1% of total household wealth. The bottom 20% of households by income had $180,000 in wealth on average. As a group, they held 3% of total household wealth. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-10-americans-own-93-033623827.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-10-americans-own-9... Top 10% owns 93% of equities. Middle class wealth is primary residence real estate, representing roughly 60% to 80% of total household wealth. > In any event, stock market booms have traditionally produced the largest rewards for those who are already wealthy. That's because the wealthiest US households have most of their assets tied up in equities, while most middle-class families have their assets tied up in housing, researchers said in a 2020 study. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of Americans held just 1% of all stocks in the third quarter of 2023. https://eig.org/whos-left-out-of-americas-retirement-savings-system/ https://eig.org/whos-left-out-of-americas-retirement-savings... > The latest data show that 42.0 percent of full-time working Americans do not have access to retirement plans, 44.1 percent do not participate, and 50.5 percent do not receive an employer match. (Note that these figures are for employed workers between the ages of 18 and 65, excluding government and self-employed workers.) https://www.gao.gov/financial-security-older-americans https://www.gao.gov/financial-security-older-americans > Even for those who do have access, traditional defined benefit pensions have become much less common as defined contribution plans, such as 401(k)s, have become the primary type of retirement plan. This shift has increased the risks and responsibilities for individuals in planning and managing their retirement. Yet research shows that many households are ill-equipped for this task and have little or no retirement savings. As of 2022, about half of households with a worker age 55 and older had no retirement savings, and 32% had no retirement savings or a defined benefit plan.
  - torginus 1mo ago
    I guess the corollary to this is that the more money you have, the less efficient you can convert money to tangible wealth (there's an actual studied conversion 'factor' for different kinds of wealth).
    - deleted 1mo ago
      [deleted]
    - toomuchtodo 1mo ago
      Wealth, in financial theory, is the present value of all expected future cash flows an individual or asset can generate over time, discounted back to today's value using a specific rate of return. It measures accumulated economic potential rather than just cash in hand. Are there limits to future economic potential? I argue yes, it is a function of demographics, which are in structural decline. Therefore, I would agree it only becomes harder over time to chase after the current amount of total potential wealth, which will decline into the future. Terra Incognita: The Economics of a Shrinking World [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49352811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49352811 - August 2026 > "As of 2026, humanity is likely below replacement fertility. That has never happened before, not in wars or pandemics. But the real surprise is that the fall has been concentrated in low- and middle-income countries and among poorer and less educated women. We fit a single-factor model to 236 countries since 1950: the common component peaked in 1978, and what drives fertility down today are country-specific trends, 219 of them negative and not one leveling off. None of the commonly cited mechanisms can account for this pattern, so we offer a conjecture: modernity itself, which makes a third child expensive and childlessness cheap. Children come in integers, so it takes very little to move a cohort’s fertility rate from 1.8 to 1.3. And nothing in an economy pushes fertility back to 2.1. We close with the main economic consequences, in particular slow growth." The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 - August 2025 (400 comments) (start at slide 31 of the pdf)

torginus 1mo ago

Why would universal economic growth imply everyone owning more of a resource with a limited supply? There's only so much gold in the world (which is kind of the point) - if people in $INSERT_COUNTRY owned more of it per capita, that would mean global inequality has increased, and thankfully we've seen the opposite of that.