(Labor theory of value, they got rich by stealing what was rightfully yours, lots of linguistic games, private ownership is the root problem, yada yada...)
They didn't say the words, but they sure painted the picture (plus the usual Marxist game of moving the meaning of words around to keep the grift going).
You're suggesting that capital holders restrict the supply of capital so that they can extract rent on it? And if they didn't do that we'd just have unlimited capital and everybody would get to be arbitrarily rich?
Then what do capital holders get out of restricting the supply? Wouldn't they rather be arbitrarily rich instead?
> Every claim on human effort that exits the productive system as rent is a claim that cannot circulate internally, cannot pay workers fairly, cannot fund the next big idea or reduce the cost of the next product.
What? Why? When you pay rent do you think your landlord isn't going to spend that money?
And much of the popular critique of capitalism is driven by those who don't distinguish between profit and rent, when in fact the near entirely of the extraction that is causing inequality is from rent extraction and not "profit" as used in this piece. Especially when it comes to real estate, which is most people's largest expense, growing, and one of the biggest political challenges we face today. (Broad homeownership has created a lot of people that benefit from increasing residential housing costs, or at least don't see any problems with them).
Glad to see Schumpeter get mentioned, as Schumpeterian rents are perhaps defensible for a while, I think.
Modern Capitalism Is Weirder Than You Think: It also no longer works as advertised
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/how-asset-managers-h...
Generally no, though you won't get this answer directly.
Many people prefer to be rich relative to others than arbitrarily rich. If you ask a bunch of random folks if they'd rather be in the middle class in their current country of residence in 2005, or of noble birth in ~1100 CE, you'll get the latter answer _a lot_ despite that being an objectively worse quality of living.
In neoclassical economics, savings never pay off compared to investment. But in the real world, savings have important advantages:
1. They help you sustain longer in the case of strike (be it labor strike or investment strike).
2. They allow you to react to the market (for example, buying a promising startup winner after a competition consolidation) instead of being a first mover.
3. They allow you to price dump rapidly if a competitor threatens oligopoly pricing (usually the status quo), to drive them out of business.
That's why savings give you an actual power, which increases the richer you are.
Also, in my worldview, savings are liquid/reversible investments, while real capital investments are iliquid/irreversible - if you decide to build a factory you're commiting to an irreversible decision, if you buy an index fund, the decision is reversible, so it's basically savings. Making as few irreversible decisions as you can gives you an edge compared to others.
inshard•57m ago
stetrain•51m ago
jaggederest•32m ago
electric_mayhem•50m ago
bluefirebrand•48m ago
What disposable income? When I was younger I had none, I was too busy paying rent and tuition,
bluGill•41m ago
I have observed people from the very poor homeless all the way up to multi-millionaires - his observation hold true for the vast majority. Nearly all of them are living paycheck to paycheck despite the massive amount of difference in income.
When you are young investing in education - that is tuition - is the correct call. When you finish school though many people stop investing at all instead of investing in equities.
reeredfdfdf•44m ago
Only thing I can think of is moving abroad, but sending lots of young people abroad is not very sustainable from a domestic economy perspective.
__MatrixMan__•40m ago
alistairSH•19m ago
Because taking 20% of the former leaves a lot of the population unable to pay for essential living expenses because they effectively have zero of the latter.
inshard•8m ago