Iām catching up on the news today and see that Nvidia forecasts $1T in GPU sales over the next 18 months. That is crazy. I donāt know how that works at any level.
Also on the nvidia news front, they are making a version of the gpu for orbital datacenters. Now Iāve been around for a long, long time and Iāve heard some pretty dumb ideas in that time, and I feel like orbital datacenters is at least in the top 10.
I am now terrified to ask what the top 10 list you do have is.
Nothing about the casino economy has any contact with reality. And when we take into consideration that a handful of billionaires own about 80% of all stocks, itās just an inside game of their manipulating stock prices.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell
Is that true, that ā a handful of billionaires own about 80% of all stocks, itās just an inside game of their manipulating stock pricesā? š¤
Terrifying!
#USPol #InsiderTrading #corruption #briberyAndCorruption #NoConsequences
The top 10% own 94% of all stock.
ā ā¦found that the lionās share of these gains went to the richest 1 percent. This elite group owns 54 percent of public equity markets, up from 40 percent in 2002. The next 9 percent (or households in the 90th to 99th percentile) saw their share of public market value grow from 38 percent in 2002 to 39 percent, a modest gain.ā
https://inequality.org/article/stock-ownership-concentration/
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @Su_G @jerry it's not about income. It's never about income. It's always about what you already own and how much money that generates.
I'm from Germany, and a German book called "Crazy rich" has opened my eyes towards this fact and how "our" rich people behave. Can't really recommend as it's a great book, but ruins your mood.
The stock market thing though - I genuinely thought it was more diverse.
Thatās slightly depends on the definition you meaning of income. Thereās salary and wages and that kind of compensation and then thereās interest income.
But to your point, the very richest people derive all their income from their assets.
Yet thereās one more perversity here. Very rich people donāt spend their assets. They use them as collateral for loans. Financial engineering allows them to minimize their tax liability. Complicated but thatās the gist of it.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @Su_G @jerry yeah, I was thinking salary/wages. My language's "Einkommen" means exactly that, and it's easy to translate it as income and forget the subtle difference between the two languages.
I've realized what you describe only recently. Knowing that makes some lobby messages (especially re: inheritance tax) even more perverse: "you can't tax that! imagine what inheritance tax would do to family companies!" (The actual families hurt by inheritance tax would be exactly the kind of people who've never in their lives had to depend on salary or wages and couldn't transfer that to their offspring anymore.)
There is another aspect to inheritance tax. It is necessary to make resources, especially land, think farming, available to people who want to engage in farming or other business. The second generation doesnāt have a good track record running their inherited businesses. More often than not, the offspring see the company as a cash cow.
Consolidation of farmland, for instance, has just caused prices to go up preventing new entrants. This is why farmers are aging out.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell
Hey thanks for that, I guessā¦ what a depressing read (along with the rest of this thread). Gives new significance to the question Iām now seeing asked: who benefits from the elevated oil prices that are a consequence of the war in Iran. ā¹ļø
@GhostOnTheHalfShell
I found this para an interesting summaryā¦ albeit usual depressing ending
(the rest of the article is about American billionairesā āgiving pledgesā - now out of fashion, apparently):
āWealth last concentrated at such levels during the original Gilded Age, the 1890s through the early 1900s, and the correction didnāt come from philanthropists. It came from trust-busting, the federal income tax, the estate tax, and eventually the New Deal. It arrived as policy that was driven by political pressure too powerful to be ignored. The institutions that forced that correction ā a functional Congress, a free press, an empowered regulatory state ā look considerably different today.ā
https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/15/the-billionaires-made-a-promise-now-some-want-out/
#wealthConcentration #GildedAge #correction #taxes #institutions #USPol
#reconnectingconsequencesToCauses
Jerry š¦šš¦
GhostOnTheHalfShell
Su_G
lizzzzard