@jerry

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, it’s just an inside game of their manipulating stock prices.

@GhostOnTheHalfShell
Is that true, that “ a handful of billionaires own about 80% of all stocks, it’s just an inside game of their manipulating stock prices”? 🤔
Terrifying!
#USPol #InsiderTrading #corruption #briberyAndCorruption #NoConsequences

@jerry

@Su_G @jerry

The top 10% own 94% of all stock.

“ …found that the lion’s 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.”

https://inequality.org/article/stock-ownership-concentration/

@lizzard @Su_G @jerry

I haven’t pinned it down, exactly what the roughly the starting income level for the 90% is, but I think it’s 250,000 a year.

The wealth disparity is very real.

@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.

@lizzard @Su_G @jerry

That’s slightly depends on the definition you meaning of income. There’s salary and wages and that kind of compensation and then there’s interest income.

But to your point, the very richest people derive all their income from their assets.

Yet there’s one more perversity here. Very rich people don’t spend their assets. They use them as collateral for loans. Financial engineering allows them to minimize their tax liability. Complicated but that’s 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.)

@lizzard @Su_G @jerry

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 doesn’t 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.