Filmmaker and entrepreneur Tyler Perry is a billionaire. His Atlanta studios receive massive tax write-offs, premised on the idea that his success will inspire others. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s a liberal version of trickle-down economics.
I’ve never claimed anything of the kind. Still, that more and more of the world’s income and wealth are concentrated with just a few rich people while the rest gets poorer and poorer is a fact so well-known that you’d have to be wilfully ignorant to not be aware of it.
No. Back when all wealth was physically represented like the caricature your strawman is claiming, wealth and income concentration and inequality was much less severe than it is now. That you can’t differentiate between the hoard of Smaug and the hoard of Musk isn’t my fault.
That you can’t differentiate between the hoard of Smaug and the hoard of Musk isn’t my fault.
This isn’t how wealth works, so I’m pretty good at differentiating between them.
Did you mean to say “if I can’t see the similarities between them?” You’d still be just as incorrect, factually, but the sentence would make more sense.
What I’m saying is that it doesn’t have to be physical hoarding to be hoarding and detrimental to the rest of society.
For example, wealth that stays with the bottom 90% wealth-wise circulate throughout society, benefiting everyone.
Conversely, once it reaches the 10% wealthiest people, the vast majority goes towards nothing but accumulation of more wealth for the top 10%, effectively removing it from the larger economy and thus making the 90% poorer.
I earn about 1,000 times the median American annually, but I don’t buy thousands of times more stuff. My family purchased three cars over the past few years, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. I bought two pairs of the fancy wool pants I am wearing as I write, what my partner Mike calls my “manager pants.” I guess I could have bought 1,000 pairs. But why would I? Instead, I sock my extra money away in savings, where it doesn’t do the country much good.
No. The top 10% aren’t giving money to help mom and pop businesses, they are buying stocks, the vast majority of which they own , removing that wealth from the larger economy, as I was saying.
This isn’t how wealth works. Rich people don’t have Scrooge McDuck vaults, because then they’d get poorer every day
I’ve never claimed anything of the kind. Still, that more and more of the world’s income and wealth are concentrated with just a few rich people while the rest gets poorer and poorer is a fact so well-known that you’d have to be wilfully ignorant to not be aware of it.
This is you making that claim.
No. Back when all wealth was physically represented like the caricature your strawman is claiming, wealth and income concentration and inequality was much less severe than it is now. That you can’t differentiate between the hoard of Smaug and the hoard of Musk isn’t my fault.
This isn’t how wealth works, so I’m pretty good at differentiating between them.
Did you mean to say “if I can’t see the similarities between them?” You’d still be just as incorrect, factually, but the sentence would make more sense.
What I’m saying is that it doesn’t have to be physical hoarding to be hoarding and detrimental to the rest of society.
For example, wealth that stays with the bottom 90% wealth-wise circulate throughout society, benefiting everyone.
Conversely, once it reaches the 10% wealthiest people, the vast majority goes towards nothing but accumulation of more wealth for the top 10%, effectively removing it from the larger economy and thus making the 90% poorer.
How?
Through investment. Meaning it is back circulating.
To quote a self-aware billionaire:
Well I guess not everyone is good with money, but this is hardly an exception that invalidates anything.
No. The top 10% aren’t giving money to help mom and pop businesses, they are buying stocks, the vast majority of which they own , removing that wealth from the larger economy, as I was saying.
That’s, by definition, not removing wealth from the economy.
What if I told you that you could support taxing wealthy people more and know how basic facts of the economy work.
Personally I’m for dramatic progressive tax increases on the top 3 quintiles. That doesn’t change basic facts.