Pretty impressive long-term charts, and dramatic surge in the last years. Of course there are lot of other relevant details (e.g. more people own capital, and this is pre-tax numbers). But overall this seems pretty consistent with the story Piketty tells in Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
Automation can’t be taxed. Servers consuming electricity in data centers to generate what the next ad someone will click isn’t the same as paying employee salary. It’s not taxed.
So Trump cuts tax on the rich, and the rich cut out human workers or depress their pay.
The debt will have to be reckoned with if the govt ain’t getting their share to build infrastructure.
On the other hand US has the highest participation of people who own stock.
Unlike China, where the median Chinese doesn’t benefit from growth of state run companies.
Shares aren't a real thing. They are paper invented out of thin air with intent to pull the money out of capital market. There are already many rules about what you have to do be allowed to sell them to the public.
Adding a rule that 10% of whatever you print must be put under national democratic control is not inconceivable.
Connection between shares and ownership is tenuous at best and rarely exercised.
> What you are proposing is literally what China does to ensure CCP control of all businesses.
10% is not control. China is not democratic. Given that, Chinese companies seem to be doing quite well under those conditions. Better than Western ones.
> Do you really want whoever is in power at the moment to have (even more direct) control over every business in the country?
Do you really want all economic power to be controlled in undemocratic manner rather than democratic?
Because that is literally what we have now and society and governments are getting impoverished and companies are getting outcompeted too.
Hardly, it's quite a clear relationship and exercised constantly - if you do the math re: share classes and look at what a corporation actually does.
In most large corporations, 10% is often the largest single shareholder and/or bloc.
In democratic countries, we pass laws and let that do the talking. If the gov't owns direct shares, whoever is in charge of the gov't is de-facto the 'controller' of them, eh?
So no congress, no laws, no vote of the people after they pick whoever is 'in charge'. Doesn't sound very democratic to me?
> Hardly, it's quite a clear relationship and exercised constantly - if you do the math re: share classes and look at what a corporation actually does.
Look at the stock market. Out of billion trades maybe one is related to actual ownership of actual company. Shares are mostly casino tokens bound to success of a company (or rather the perception there of).
> In democratic countries, we pass laws and let that do the talking. If the gov't owns direct shares, whoever is in charge of the gov't is de-facto the 'controller' of them, eh?
Chump who got a 10% of trillions of dollars for free? Any day. You are a chump only if you paid for it. And government never should. The idea of government borrowing money is insane. In theory it was supposed to punish government for overspending, but it doesn't because the punishment is just included in future overspending. Government gets poorer and since they represent us, we get poorer. And more and more money lands in the hands of petty tyrants.
And Zuck owns meta. He has 57% of voice so he can single handedly make any decisions forever. Not very democratic.
He has 13% of shares, which as I mentioned are basically casino tokens he was allowed to create out of thin air (at barely any cost) and sell to capital holders to get their actual money into meta.
Great example. The charter for Meta basically guarantees Zuck has a majority of votes no matter who owns the shares. That is how shares are disconnected from ownership and control.
Cool, so we should change everything and hand more power to the government which is already enabling all this with no plausible reason why it would even make it better?
Yes. The power to not borrow money from the rich is something that government direly needs. As $39 trillion dollars of debt, that we all need to pay interest on, clearly shows.
Not at all. Before the widespread availability of currency, taxes were always paid in property. Farmers paid with bushels of wheat or turnips or whatever.
Corporate taxes can tax corporate revenue or profits. Stock buybacks and dividends can be regulated or outlawed. If we don't want to force corporations to pay with more equality across ranks, we can take larger portions of revenue or profit and then fund social safety nets and welfare that are targeted at those that corporations choose not to give raises to.
There are plenty of systems answers, power just doesn't care, and neither do voter bases.
It can change if we create another currency that you have to do labor to get, but that necessitates restrictions on currency trade, which is communism, so it won't happen (and that's good because if communism did happen it would kill 100 million)
Are corporate profits actually at a peak, or just their percentage share of national profit (per the article)? Not in denial about the wealth gap, just wondering where profit growth is coming from.
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[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 61.0 ms ] threadPretty impressive long-term charts, and dramatic surge in the last years. Of course there are lot of other relevant details (e.g. more people own capital, and this is pre-tax numbers). But overall this seems pretty consistent with the story Piketty tells in Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce...
https://lobste.rs/s/z0mdor/archive_today_is_directing_ddos_a...
So Trump cuts tax on the rich, and the rich cut out human workers or depress their pay.
The debt will have to be reckoned with if the govt ain’t getting their share to build infrastructure.
On the other hand US has the highest participation of people who own stock.
Unlike China, where the median Chinese doesn’t benefit from growth of state run companies.
Sure it can. Take shares in companies. Put them into a sovereign wealth fund.
Adding a rule that 10% of whatever you print must be put under national democratic control is not inconceivable.
What you are proposing is literally what China does to ensure CCP control of all businesses.
Do you really want whoever is in power at the moment to have (even more direct) control over every business in the country?
Because that is literally how you do that.
Connection between shares and ownership is tenuous at best and rarely exercised.
> What you are proposing is literally what China does to ensure CCP control of all businesses.
10% is not control. China is not democratic. Given that, Chinese companies seem to be doing quite well under those conditions. Better than Western ones.
> Do you really want whoever is in power at the moment to have (even more direct) control over every business in the country?
Do you really want all economic power to be controlled in undemocratic manner rather than democratic?
Because that is literally what we have now and society and governments are getting impoverished and companies are getting outcompeted too.
In most large corporations, 10% is often the largest single shareholder and/or bloc.
In democratic countries, we pass laws and let that do the talking. If the gov't owns direct shares, whoever is in charge of the gov't is de-facto the 'controller' of them, eh?
So no congress, no laws, no vote of the people after they pick whoever is 'in charge'. Doesn't sound very democratic to me?
Look at the stock market. Out of billion trades maybe one is related to actual ownership of actual company. Shares are mostly casino tokens bound to success of a company (or rather the perception there of).
> In democratic countries, we pass laws and let that do the talking. If the gov't owns direct shares, whoever is in charge of the gov't is de-facto the 'controller' of them, eh?
It could be shares without any control rights.
That everyone retail seems okay buying shitty share classes doesn’t change what I’m saying, just that most retail investors are chumps.
So you want the gov’t to be an even bigger chump?
And Zuck owns meta. He has 57% of voice so he can single handedly make any decisions forever. Not very democratic.
He has 13% of shares, which as I mentioned are basically casino tokens he was allowed to create out of thin air (at barely any cost) and sell to capital holders to get their actual money into meta.
But they don't have to be. There could be a law that shares paid as tax are non-voting. The government gets capital gains and dividends but no votes.
I'll expand on a theme I've written about many times before.
We want businesses to become more efficient and productive. We want them to produce more with less labor. This is highly desirable.
But we tax that ever-shrinking pile of labor more and more to make government finances pencil out.
That makes no GD sense.
Potato property. A property is whatever you own. Do you or do you not own the contents of your fridge?
> Shares are also not property, in the real sense.
I assume by "real" you mean "land". Who cares?
> They are fractional ownership.
So you acknowledge that shares are property then.
There are plenty of systems answers, power just doesn't care, and neither do voter bases.
Of course it can. Like, for AI, put a surtax on wattage consumed and use it to extend and expand unemployment insurance.
https://everywheremillionaire.substack.com/p/why-the-labor-s...
https://everywheremillionaire.substack.com/p/another-reason-...
https://www.hussmanfunds.com/comment/mc251028/