Reddit reviews Capital in the Twenty-First Century
We found 18 Reddit comments about Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Reddit reviews Capital in the Twenty-First CenturyWe found 18 Reddit comments about Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
He wrote the book capital. Thomas Piketty, a world renowned french economist who talks about the inequality in our society.
"Let me break down to you why not only should you change your perspective on UBI, but why you should know it's inevitable... and I'll use my own words years ago when Joe Rogan first heard about it, and thankfully since then he's shifted his stance... and hopefully you as well."
Tighten your sphincter holes ladies because this is a long one. So... before we begin let's throw out some palabras:
• The Strange Reality of Fiat Money
• Debt-damned economics: either learn monetary reform, or kiss your assets goodbye
•1 billion living in poverty
•15% live below poverty line in US
• 46.2 million Americans are on food stamps
• There’s no 100% capitalist or socialist country in the world
• Corporate profits are at an all-time high
• Unemployment is at multi-decade low
• Shallowest period of job recovery (jobless recovery)
The statement “r > g” (meaning that the rate of return on capital is generally higher than the rate of economic growth)
50% jobs will be completely automated by 2040, and other estimates saying sooner, by 2030: Transportation, retail sales, first line supervisors, cashiers, secretaries, managers, registered nurses, elementary school teachers, janitors/cleaners. Multibillion dollar companies’ are hiring fewer and fewer people. Combine Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon, they are worth 1$ trillion, but only have created 150,000 jobs.... marinate on that for a moment. Now Uber has acquired $18 billion in a short amount of time, however, they only employ a few hundred people. This leads to inequality, and situations like these only exacerbates it. Humanity desperately needs to reassess the future.
Structural inequality, means that it’s ingrained the system the same way money is. The fairy stale we tell ourselves, it’s inevitable and it’s the nature of capitalism. However, countries have already successfully redistributed wealth through policies and innovations like South Korea and Germany. But nobody has an answer to structural inequality. Nobody is having this discussion, but instead it’s a simplistic argument of agreeing or disagreeing with the argument about what they might do or whether it’s morally right. Or you might disagree because it’s atrocious or it’s not going to work, and you just can’t give money for whatever reason. And that is where the inherent challenge lies, so we should be asking the salient question: How much it will cost? How to pay for it? How to finance it? Would people stop working if they just receive an income? And will it solve the problem? Humanity should focus on the goal, not the story or the fairy tale that we tell ourselves, which Joe lost on during his interview with Eddie. He was very attached to and he defended it quite well through his wit and humor, but it’s still a devil’s advocate fallacy, and I'll address that further down.
So we need to think about the goal, otherwise it’s going to end up like the discussion with capitalism and socialism for perpetuity. We don’t have that time. A good starting point is from Article 25 of the International Declaration of Human Rights from the UN, it states: EVERYONE HAS THE RIGHT TO A STANDARD OF LIVING ADEQUATE FOR THE HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF HIMSELF AND OF HIS FAMILY, INCLUDING FOOD, CLOTHING, HOUSING AND MEDICAL CARE AND NECESSARY SOCIAL SERVICES […]
So does a basic income fulfill this goal or not? Because if it does, it won’t matter the dissenters ideology because it’s actually fulfilling the goal. Now, look at the experiments in 14 countries (out of 200 industrialized countries) 3 were unconditional UBI, and only two had more than a thousand. Let’s be clear here, this still isn’t enough data to argue for or against the issue because we simply don’t know or haven’t done enough experiments. But anyways, let’s start with two big industrialized nations:
CANADA
• 5 years (1974-79)
• ~10,000 People
• $500/Month
─ Hospitalization rates fell by 8.5%
─ Only two groups worked less: Women who took extended maternity leave and (male) youth.
─ High school completion rates increases
INDIA
• 3 years (2011-13)
• 6,000 Peoples
• $4/month (40% subsistence)
─ Improved food sufficiency
─ Improved nutrition
─ Increase in livestock
─ No increase in alcohol consumption
─ Reduced incidence of illness
─ Improved school attendance
─ People were 3 times more likely to start their own business
These results are definitely promising, but still inconclusive because there have been so few experiments. There are other open ended questions that need to be addressed, and that is rent. Suppose each one of us receives $1,000 dollars every month, what happens to rent? If you’re not a homeowner and you have a landlord instead, what’s stopping them (other than policy or mechanisms) to raise the rent exactly $1,000 dollars? But that inherently increases inequality because you’re moving more capital to those who already have capital, based on Thomas Piketty’s research. So actually, UBI would actually increase inequality and increase poverty, and destroy the middle class even faster. And then if you get rid of social programs and arbitrarily tell everyone to do whatever they want with their income so we don’t need this bureaucracy, because you don’t need so much social programs and government involvement. Well, everyone here should be abundantly aware by now (I fucking hope) what happens when you privatize healthcare. Quality goes down, prices go up, and everything goes to hell. So we have to remember that it’s not going to be a panacea, because complex things such as UBI need to be contextualized, and if implemented, they must be a comprehensive package of larger reforms, and the larger implications of what you’re doing. And it must be different in other countries because of different social contexts, social adaptation, and social norms, and not everybody is at the same social level. So it’s never going to be one size fits all. And of course, it always goes back to we don’t have enough experiments to come to anything conclusive. Which is why we need politicians and the people who are in position of mandating legislation to warrant more research and study, just like other controversial (but beneficial)* reforms as the legalization of marijuana and MDMA therapy.
Politicians who want to get on board and help should:
• Conduct their own experiment with at least 10,000 people
• Control Group
• Truly Unconditional
• More than two years
• True basic income
The key points is it has to be unconditional and long term because if they know it’s going to last 2 years, they can plan for the future, because if you only conduct the experiment for 6 months, you’re not going to see the social dynamics that actually unfold in a complex society. And it must be a true basic income, not a fraction of a percent, of like 10-40% of the poverty line, it must be, many economists suggest about half the median income, or somewhere close to that number. And we need detailed feasibility studies, because nobody has done a thorough research looking at all the implications in the economic activity in the largest sense of the broader research. The technology is available to make things easier especially for entrepreneurs to run a basic income experiment, thanks to block chains and crypto-currencies. And in developing countries mobile payments are very successful, like in Kenya.
Continued below...
>Just FYI, there's another side to that film (which is essentially propaganda). You should also research views and evidence from actual economists to get the whole picture.
Do you have a link to this other side? Because from what I gather from sources like Capitalism in the 21st Century and all the credible reviews of this book, is that there isn't much discussion or dispute about income inequality that would say Robert Reich's documentary is propaganda.
For context, the author of this article, Thomas Piketty, is one of the most prominent and influential left-wing economists in the world. His book, Capital in the 21st Century, was extremely well-received.
>"Why would I bother to read some marxist bullshit?"
Sadly, that is what many of the one-star reviews of Piketty's book consist of; people never reading Piketty, but calling it Marxist bullshit while literally comparing it to Das Kapital (which they probably did not read either).
Absolute nonsense.
I love how you site the Blackstone CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman, people like him live in an echo chamber that tells them every day they deserve all their money, because that is what they want to hear.
Let me break it down as simply as I can, and if you can't explain something simply, you simply don't understand it.
The Natural state of the unregulated market is Feudalism.
Remember Feudalism? When Rich Nobles ruled over the dirty, ignorant, uneducated masses. When a Noble girl could throw a coin out of a cart and watch filthy peasants kill each over it. Yeah, that was the state of human society for thousands of years.
And it happens because money trickles upwards. Corporations become bigger before they become smaller, and eventually the Monopoly game ends, and the rest of us runs out of money, then the rich eat each until only a few remain, Highlander style.
And the ONLY thing keeping this from happening are Market regulating, typically Left Wing policies.
Feel free to read all about it in Capital by Thomas Piketty, one of the most highly acclaimed books on economy in recent time.
What that means is that Sanders policies are the only thing that can actually save the market from destroying itself.
You: But but... Military spending creates technological innovation.
Nope. Only a tiny fraction of, and most of it completely by coincidence. If we wanted to incentivise technological innovation we would be far better off just creating an official science division of the US Government as an expansion of NASA.
Fact of the matter is Bernie saves the most money out of any politician out there.
Obamacare is already projected to cost 15 Trillion dollars over 10 years IF Pharmaceutical companies do not increase their projected INCREASE in Drug prices. (fat fucking chance of that).
Sanders wants a Canada style Single Payer system which costs HALF of what the cost is in the US Per Capita. And 30% less as a percentage of GDP.
So that is AT LEAST 5 Trillion shaved of that number.
Further more he wants to slash Military spending in half, which would be a good thing since the vast majority of it simply goes to producing weapons nobody needs and has no effect on innovation or technology in any way shape or form.
So that's another 3 Trillion over 10 years. Link
And he wants to raise taxes on the Rich, resulting in, at least, another 3 trillion dollars over 10 years.
So that's 5 + 3 + 3, or 11 Trillion saved from the 15. And he wants to take a large chunk of that and spend it on rebuilding Roads and other Government owned property, which is gonna hands down create massive amounts of jobs. People on the bottom will have money, they will spend that money on houses, goods and services, the market will grow, everyone will be happy. And it moves the market away from a purely speculative economy that benefits absolutely no one in the long run. (No jobs created, no new technologies invented)
The thing about Sanders policies is that they just make sense once you clean your head of Capitalist bullshit. Despite conspiracy theories to the contrary.
In fact, the most recent analysis by Thomas Piketty demonstrates that it was a combination of both factors - the war, and the abundance of socialist policies - that dramatically reduced income and wealth inequality, and that trajectory ends decidedly and empirically around the late 1970's/early 1980's, and continued steadily until the point we're at now thanks to both Reaganomics and neoliberalism.
http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/1491534656
Well, I would highly recommend renting some textbooks on American politics, American political history, and American political theory. Perhaps start here and work your way up: http://www.amazon.com/Logic-American-Politics-Samuel-Kernell/dp/1568028911
If you find textbooks too dull, then here is a good list of books to get you started:
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Federalist-Anti-Federalist-Papers/dp/1495446697/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1453181599&sr=1-1&keywords=federalist+and+anti-federalist+papers
http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-America-Penguin-Classics-Tocqueville/dp/0140447601
http://www.amazon.com/The-Ideological-Origins-American-Revolution/dp/0674443020
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Reconstruction-America-1860-1880-Burghardt/dp/0684856573
http://www.amazon.com/The-Nine-Inside-Secret-Supreme/dp/1400096790
http://www.amazon.com/Congress-Electoral-Connection-Second-Edition/dp/0300105878
http://www.amazon.com/What-Should-Know-About-Politics/dp/1611452996
http://www.amazon.com/The-Race-between-Education-Technology/dp/0674035305
http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/1491534656
*If you actually take the time to read these, you will be better informed than 99 percent of the voting public. <-- And after you read these, that sentence will terrify you because you will realize each of these books is just an introduction, and the world is being run by technocrats. JK, but not really.
Edit: But really.
>Sorry but this isn't high school economics where consumption is everything
No, but 800 pages of data.
http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/1491534656
What's your opinion on how libertarian policies fit in with the coming automation of massive number of jobs, doctors and lawyers included?
http://m.imgur.com/a/q2SNN
Hi, u/Jkirk3279,
Thanks for your response. I'm going to try to go point by point and address your concerns.
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> You’re demented. You believe these Conspiracy Theories
The fact that the U.S. has shifted toward a financial oligarchy is not a “demented” conspiracy theory. It is the professional opinion of many economists and political scientists. And their conclusions are backed up by data. A recent co-study by political scientists at Princeton and Northwestern University confirmed it: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
And here are a few other sources which cover this topic well I think:
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> you ALSO believe that a minority unable to get enough votes to nominate their candidate can "dismantle" the Democratic Party.
I think I get what you’re saying here (but let me know if I’ve misinterpreted) — How can a group that wasn’t effective or powerful enough to win a convention believe they could be powerful enough to do an even more dramatic and seemingly more difficult task of dismantling a party? If you can’t do the little thing, how can you do the big thing?
What I’ve suggested is sort of unknown territory, so I can’t say how things would shake out. But I can say two things.
a) We are not a tiny group. We’re close to half the party. More, if you count Independents. We don’t have to storm the capitol, stage a military coup, or do anything other than simply walk out en masse. If we walk away from the party, it loses half its constituency and either implodes, disbands, and re-forms quickly, or it limps along for a while as a very different party. It loses its reach. It becomes almost purely corporate, and loses much of its claims to authenticity. And given that the party has alienated and made feel unwelcome an entire generation of voters (well, really almost everyone under 40) – who were intended to eventually take the reins – it’s just a waiting game. It’s simple math. If you don’t replenish your numbers, you go extinct.
b) This campaign has solidified a social network among groups that were not really connecting before. It has excited and engaged a huge number of people who were not participating in the past. It’s set up a social infrastructure that is not going to just disappear. This group, in the past, was a disparate and dejected wash of people. But as an energized and organized group – and one that has a distinct identity (“Not me, us”) – we are a considerable threat. If we aren’t courted HARD and incorporated into the party, we’re going to form our own. And we’ve already got many of the tools and voter data that we need.
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> You didn’t have enough votes to win at the State Convention, you claimed the Democratic Party cheated you
If you'd like to debate any of the individual points presented above by /u/duder9000 , I'd be happy to discuss. Which of them did you disagree with?
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> and now you’re predicting BOMBINGS.
I’m not suggesting that someone is going to bomb the convention in November. What I am saying is that if the Party continues to take obvious moves to silence and stop us… riots seem like a predictable eventual result. And at that point, the Party could respond one of two ways — either backing down, opening up the circle, and saying “OK, let’s listen to their concerns and see how we can win them back” (de-escalating) or by digging in and cracking down harder (escalating). If they respond to riots with escalating actions, I’m simply suggesting that the tension and responses would escalate.
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> WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
Given that you’ve come to a Sanders-specific sub-reddit, made zero attempts in your post to establish any common ground or connect on any level, but simply to insult me and say, in essence, “You’re so stupid and insane on every level and we won’t ever agree” — I’m just trying to figure out what you’re trying to do?
Did you come here to insult a group of people thinking that would change their minds? Did you know that you wouldn’t change minds (so didn’t attempt to establish any credibility or kudos or ethos with us), but just decided that you would get some pleasure purely out of the act of hurling insults, regardless of its uselessness? Are you here because you’re being paid as a employee of the Clinton campaign’s Correct the Record group and you’re at work? Are you just a troll? What’s your goal? Why are you here? I know that it's really unlikely that you'll respond sincerely, but, I figure it's at least worth a try.
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Edit: formatting
Actually, I'm pretty sure the idea of Inheritance is a relic from our days under the Crown. Many of the founding fathers were against Inheritance.
Almost any coherent defense of capitalism at some point hinges on "market forces", "merit" and "optimal distribution of resources".
Inherited wealth contradicts all tenets of capitalism.
Inheritance is not a feature of capitalism: it is directly and very obviously a feature of pre-capitalism; when we were given a plot of land by the king and paid dues for protection.
Inherited wealth is based on the same logic as inherited Monarchy: because your father did something, you must be better than other people: better as nobility or as money).
That is fundamentally opposed to the principle of meritocracy or even democracy.
You cannot claim that wealth is purely a result of merit, and then distribute it without regard to same. Put another way, allowing unlimited wealth to be given to heirs is like allowing unlimited power to be given to heirs.
The Founding Fathers understood that clearly: they believed in success on merit, not on success by inheritance, and they opposed both inherited wealth & inherited aristocracy.
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>"A State divided into a small number of rich and a large number of poor will always develop a government manipulated by the rich to protect the amenities represented by their property" -- Harold Laski, political theorist (1893-1950)
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P.S. Im pretty sure Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are also opposed to inheritance
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I don't know if you read books, but Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty is a good read.
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Edit: Weird, I was debating with someone yesterday about how I have never heard someone wanting to go back to the feudal ages but was fighting for a theocratic form of society. I suppose I was wrong, I guess some people would like to go back to the dark days of Kings and Queens.
Military jobs will be lost, new and better jobs will be gained. The redistribution of wealth to build a larger middle class will have the effect of making those military guys better off.
I'm sorry if my statement about you being mislead feels insulting, but I'll say two things.
One, being mislead means that someone is lying to you -- not that you are stupid. The fact that I've researched this stuff more than other people doesn't make me smarter than these other people. But it does mean I've become aware of how the lying/misleading process works.
The second thing I'll say is that I can't apologize for telling you the truth. Republican leadership is misleading you. Democrats aren't perfect, but they are more honest about the state of the economy. I would strongly encourage you to pick up a book called "Capital in the 21st Century" : http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/1491534656
Here's a PDF to the full book: http://dowbor.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/14Thomas-Piketty.pdf
Or if you don't have time for that, here's a Wikipedia article that summarizes the book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century
I recommend you take a read of The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism. This book and Capital in the 21st Century helped clarify things for me.
I think the best thing to read would be his book.
City of Stairs. Pretty standard fantasy fare -- humans kill gods, bad things happen. But it was well written and I enjoyed it.
The last serious book I read was Capital in the 21st Century. Dry, but quite interesting.
I base my opinion on Capital in the 21th century, Why nations fail and this IMF note and few others that I didn't save the links for.
World population is going to decrease and it's not going to be comfortable, at all.
Check out this book to learn why.
You'll have to ignore some of Piketty's disgusting liberal sensibilities (a particularly irksome comment being that no Europeans suffered more in the mid 20th century than the wealthy), but it does a great job explaining how capital was accumulated and concentrated across the 19th century, then lost during the war years, and then began to concentrate again. He essentially shows you why that chart is the way it is, and it has nothing to do with any type of generational antagonisms.