The net result of Reaganomics

[iceaura]

https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/06/14/top-1-up-21-trillion-bottom-50-down-900-billion/

Recently, the Federal Reserve released a new data series called the Distributive Financial Accounts, which combine the Financial Accounts and the SCF to provide quarterly estimates of the distribution of wealth in America that do sum to the aggregates in the Financial Accounts. The series goes back to 1989, the first year the modern SCF was administered and runs to the fourth quarter of 2018, the last quarter for which there is Financial Accounts data.

The insights of this new data series are many, but for this post here I want to highlight a single eye-popping statistic. Between 1989 and 2018, the top 1 percent increased its total net worth by $21 trillion. The bottom 50 percent actually saw its net worth decrease by $900 billion over the same period.

As a side effect, Most analysis finds that great inequality reduces total productivity and total wealth.
It also suppresses median height and reduces median healthy lifespan.

 

[Seattle]

Maybe we should do this?

https://www.peoplespolicyproject.or...ready-exists-it-is-just-unevenly-distributed/

Should we nationalize all industries and provide a $10k check to everyone? Could we do that without changing the incentives involved in those industries? Has this worked well anywhere?

 

[iceaura]

Should we nationalize all industries and provide a $10k check to everyone?

Nationalization is not involved.
Taxation works much better - a restoration of the US tax system that produced the time of greatest prosperity would about cover it.

To get most of the benefits of reduced inequality, no redistribution is strictly necessary. The US could simply destroy the damaging overhead, if that seemed more fair than handing it to the undeserving. Or use it to spiff up the infrastructure, care for the landscape, set the increasingly screwed up agriculture system in better order.

The incentives might, plausibly, if handled right, revert to what they were when the US was not afflicted with current inequality levels. That seemed to be working, at the time, and still looks good in retrospect.

 

[Seattle]

Nationalization is not involved.
Taxation works much better - a restoration of the US tax system that produced the time of greatest prosperity would about cover it.

To get most of the benefits of reduced inequality, no redistribution is strictly necessary. The US could simply destroy the damaging overhead, if that seemed more fair than handing it to the undeserving. Or use it to spiff up the infrastructure, care for the landscape, set the increasingly screwed up agriculture system in better order.

The incentives might, plausibly, if handled right, revert to what they were when the US was not afflicted with current inequality levels. That seemed to be working, at the time, and still looks good in retrospect.

In that article nationalization is effectively involved since it is talking about taking all capital gains. No one is going to provide capital under that scenario (and very little labor).

 

[iceaura]

In that article nationalization is effectively involved since it is talking about taking all capital gains.

In that article nationalization is not involved. A confiscation of 3.2 trillion from the 5 trillion currently available to be distributed as capital gains is visible in the arithmetic - which leads to the government owning nothing, nationalizing nothing, not even stock, while the capitalist investor has seen their gains (not their wealth) taxed at 64%.
That would not be the highest rate ever levied against capital gains by the US - shortly after WWI the US taxed very high capital gains at 67% - 73%.

 

[Seattle]

In that article nationalization is not involved. A confiscation of 3.2 trillion from the 5 trillion currently available to be distributed as capital gains is visible in the arithmetic - which leads to the government owning nothing, nationalizing nothing, not even stock, while the capitalist investor has seen their gains (not their wealth) taxed at 64%.
That would not be the highest rate ever levied against capital gains by the US - shortly after WWI the US taxed very high capital gains at 67% - 73%.

You don't do very well with concepts do you? It's effectively nationalized. It doesn't have to be actual. No one is going to give their capital gains away. Sure, I agree with higher tax rates past a sufficiently high level. Not something that dramatic though and certainly not just to buy solar panels. Get real.

 

[iceaura]

You don't do very well with concepts do you? It's effectively nationalized. It doesn't have to be actual.

The government does not own it, or run it. It's privately owned and privately run, by a capitalist who exchanged capital for the status and rights and privileges of ownership.

That means it's not nationalized. It's taxed, instead. If it were nationalized, it would not be taxed - all its earnings would be in the government's coffers already.

The concept involved here is "ownership". The question of who owns the means of production in an industrial economy is normally thought to be significant. In this case, we have a capitalist system and capital exchange determines ownership.

 

[Seattle]

The government does not own it, or run it. It's privately owned and privately run, by a capitalist who exchanged capital for the status and rights and privileges of ownership.

That means it's not nationalized. It's taxed, instead. If it were nationalized, it would not be taxed - all its earnings would be in the government's coffers already.

The concept involved here is "ownership". The question of who owns the means of production in an industrial economy is normally thought to be significant. In this case, we have a capitalist system and capital exchange determines ownership.

If you take all of the profit then no one is going to want to own anything.

 

[iceaura]

If you take all of the profit then no one is going to want to own anything.

1) except those who want to pay themselves big wages, live in luxurious company houses, etc.
2) And if you don't, some will.
So?
The invalid "if" is standard wingnut posting, but usually there's some point to it.

 

[Jeeves]

It doesn't have to be actual.

In order to be real, yes, it does need to be actual.
Taxation is taxation, not nationalization. How taxation might affect industry; how people might react to being fairly taxed - are matters of conjecture, not fact.

If you take all of the profit then no one is going to want to own anything.

Capital gains taxed at 64% would still leave quite a few billions up for the grabbing - they might just have to compete for it.

 

[Seattle]

1) except those who want to pay themselves big wages, live in luxurious company houses, etc.
2) And if you don't, some will.
So?
The invalid "if" is standard wingnut posting, but usually there's some point to it.

Name calling is standard wingnut posting as is the inability to earn a decent living from their own efforts. Posting doesn't pay well.

 

[Jeeves]

Which millionaires earn "a decent" living by their own efforts? (By decent, I suppose you mean a quantity of money sufficient for a median standard of living, rather than income gained by ethical and human methods methods.)

 

[Seattle]

Which millionaires earn "a decent" living by their own efforts? (By decent, I suppose you mean a quantity of money sufficient for a median standard of living, rather than income gained by ethical and human methods methods.)

Most of them. Money doesn't grow on trees after all. I suppose you want to quibble over the meaning of "own efforts"?

 

[Jeeves]

I suppose you want to quibble over the meaning of "own efforts"?

If you call the meaning of words a quibble, yes.

 

[iceaura]

Name calling is standard wingnut posting as is the inability to earn a decent living from their own efforts. Posting doesn't pay well.

1)Most of the wingnuts I know make a more than decent living, before their debts are subtracted anyway. It's kind of their thing - how they know they are ok, and not bad people.

2)So?
You were replying to a post that pointed out the fairly obvious fact that capital gains were not the only payoff from ownership - so taxing capital gains at 64% would not eliminate ownership from the society, especially not ownership of businesses, farms, productive machinery, etc. The idea that no one would want to own anything in such a system (the US adopted such high tax rates for capital gains around WWI - there is no indication that ownership became less desired in those years) is bizarre and ahistorical.

The invalid "if" - such as this one:

If you take all of the profit then no one is going to want to own anything.

in reference to a situation in which no one had suggested taking all the profits, and if they had and succeeded people would still want to own things for the many benefits accruing - characterizes the posts of a particular political faction in the US, normally referred to as "wingnut". (It resembles the "Fox Question" in its function, which is to attempt to frame the discussion without incurring the responsibility of argument, evidence, or accountability for the introduced viewpoint).

 

[Seattle]

1)Most of the wingnuts I know make a more than decent living, before their debts are subtracted anyway. It's kind of their thing - how they know they are ok, and not bad people.

2)So?
You were replying to a post that pointed out the fairly obvious fact that capital gains were not the only payoff from ownership - so taxing capital gains at 64% would not eliminate ownership from the society, especially not ownership of businesses, farms, productive machinery, etc. The idea that no one would want to own anything in such a system (the US adopted such high tax rates for capital gains around WWI - there is no indication that ownership became less desired in those years) is bizarre and ahistorical.

The invalid "if" - such as this one:

in reference to a situation in which no one had suggested taking all the profits, and if they had and succeeded people would still want to own things for the many benefits accruing - characterizes the posts of a particular political faction in the US, normally referred to as "wingnut". (It resembles the "Fox Question" in its function, which is to attempt to frame the discussion without incurring the responsibility of argument, evidence, or accountability for the introduced viewpoint).

I was referring to you as the wingnut in this particular case.

 

[iceaura]

I was referring to you as the wingnut in this particular case.

Of course you were.

For your next display of typical bubble-world political thought, you could refer to a kangaroo as a rabbit, Hillary Clinton as a leftwing politician, Obamacare as socialist, taxation as nationalization, and so forth.

You might as well - you have nothing to lose.

 

[Seattle]

Of course you were.

For your next display of typical bubble-world political thought, you could refer to a kangaroo as a rabbit, Hillary Clinton as a leftwing politician, Obamacare as socialist, and so forth.

You might as well - you have nothing to lose.

Would you prefer bandar-log because I could lead with that? I assume you don't live in a glass house (although it would be pretty cool if you did).

Keep up the good work though, for the cause I mean.

 

[iceaura]

Would you prefer bandar-log because I could lead with that?

You have nothing to lose.
Your pattern of misrepresentation used as a basis for immediate personal attack is the common one among your kind here, and you cannot escape it now - it's all you know.

Illustration, just from the stuff thrown my way: Not only will you never be able to shake off insisting that I was not American and had never taken an economics class and lived in a basement and so forth, but you will insist on making and defending yet more such idiocies for as long as you post replies to me. That kind of posting is your future as long as you reply to my posts. You literally cannot - as in are physically unable to - post otherwise, in reply.

And nothing to gain.
One problem with the bandarlog life is that there's nowhere to go and no way to get there, no way to build anything worth the time and trouble. Once you have cut free of physical fact, abandoned history, discarded reason and reality and joined the amnesiac Republican bubble, there's no way out - no door handle on the inside, no window with a view. Escaping delusion and error by one's own power is what all that liberal arts stuff was for.

Notice the assumption, the illusion, the smell of cheese that draws them in:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Spot it?
He's assuming he can act creatively in his empire world - build something, create a new reality - but he has no contact with the existing reality. He can't build anything except by unlikely accident, because he can never know what he's doing or dealing with. He abandoned all that knowledge. He can only destroy, flail and damage at random. And he doesn't know it. The trap has closed.

 

[Seattle]

You have nothing to lose.
Your pattern of misrepresentation used as a basis for immediate personal attack is the common one among your kind here, and you cannot escape it now - it's all you know.

Illustration, just from the stuff thrown my way: Not only will you never be able to shake off insisting that I was not American and had never taken an economics class and lived in a basement and so forth, but you will insist on making and defending yet more such idiocies for as long as you post replies to me. That kind of posting is your future as long as you reply to my posts. You literally cannot - as in are physically unable to - post otherwise, in reply.

And nothing to gain.
One problem with the bandarlog life is that there's nowhere to go and no way to get there, no way to build anything worth the time and trouble. Once you have cut free of physical fact, abandoned history, discarded reason and reality and joined the amnesiac Republican bubble, there's no way out - no door handle on the inside, no window with a view. Escaping delusion and error by one's own power is what all that liberal arts stuff was for.

Notice the assumption, the illusion, the smell of cheese that draws them in:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

Spot it?
He's assuming he can act creatively in his empire world - build something, create a new reality - but he has no contact with the existing reality. He can't build anything except by unlikely accident, because he can never know what he's doing or dealing with. He abandoned all that knowledge. He can only destroy, flail and damage at random. And he doesn't know it. The trap has closed.

I have a liberal arts degree so I guess I have the keys to the escape hatch. Whew, that was close.

You do seem like you are in your own little world however rather than me, but what do I know, eh?

You do work from home though, don't you?

 

[Seattle]

You have nothing to lose.
Your pattern of misrepresentation used as a basis for immediate personal attack is the common one among your kind here, and you cannot escape it now - it's all you know.

Illustration, just from the stuff thrown my way: Not only will you never be able to shake off insisting that I was not American and had never taken an economics class and lived in a basement and so forth, but you will insist on making and defending yet more such idiocies for as long as you post replies to me. That kind of posting is your future as long as you reply to my posts. You literally cannot - as in are physically unable to - post otherwise, in reply.

And nothing to gain.
One problem with the bandarlog life is that there's nowhere to go and no way to get there, no way to build anything worth the time and trouble. Once you have cut free of physical fact, abandoned history, discarded reason and reality and joined the amnesiac Republican bubble, there's no way out - no door handle on the inside, no window with a view. Escaping delusion and error by one's own power is what all that liberal arts stuff was for.

Notice the assumption, the illusion, the smell of cheese that draws them in:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

Spot it?
He's assuming he can act creatively in his empire world - build something, create a new reality - but he has no contact with the existing reality. He can't build anything except by unlikely accident, because he can never know what he's doing or dealing with. He abandoned all that knowledge. He can only destroy, flail and damage at random. And he doesn't know it. The trap has closed.

I have a liberal arts degree so I guess I have the keys to the escape hatch. Whew, that was close.

You do seem like you are in your own little world however rather than me, but what do I know, eh?

You do work from home though, don't you?