The book the 1% don't want you to read

[Simeon_Strangelight]

Forget Austrian Economics or the Mises crowd - it is basically a wet dream of the super-elite.
Also forget any form of taxation or closing loopholes etc. Worked a little in the 40s-70s, but in this globalized environment it is useless.

The only way is interest free economy, a US government owned central bank - exactly the one that Andrew Jackson founded (or abolished the 2nd private one) and paramount is also the abolition of Fractional Reserve Banking and most of the usury - real estate.

But the discussion is useless anyway except for recognition of who is leading the people into a dead end solution - Ron Paul, Libertarianism, Austrian Economics, "Updated" Communism etc.

 

[KorbenDallas]

Loopholes were closed in the 40s-70s? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

My grandfather was making a lot of money in those days and apparently no one paid the high tax rates. Deductions were allowed for hookers in Vegas the enforcement was so lenient.

 

[Suq Madiq]

Reminds me of when Mitt Romney offered to make a casual bet for 10 grand during one of the presidential debates.

That was during the Republican primary debates. Romney frequently bragged about his wealth and how unapologetic he was about it during primaries, then focused on presenting himself as similar to the average Joes during the presidential race against Obama.

 

[ElBorrachoInfamoso]

What Piketty is proposing -though unworkable - would actually stop the concentration of wealth at the top. I definitely don't support a wealth tax but it doesn't hurt me as bad as income taxes on "the rich" would.

The problem with most campaigns against the rich is that when they get put into practice they end up being campaigns against the upper-middle class. The people at the top pretty much stay at the top, give or take a couple severed heads to appease the masses. Picketty's proposal for a wealth tax would just turn into a tax on the upper-middle class i.e. people who do not live off of their capital. Businesspeople, physicians, etc. Mostly people who grew up middle class and worked their way up.

While I am not yet in the top 1% by wealth, I am in the top 1% by income. I grew up in the projects, in a family that was probably in the bottom 1%. While I may not be a typical example of the top 1%, I am far more typical than the stereotype many people have of Mr. Moneybags living it up on Grand Cayman. My parents were poor immigrants, not evil oligarchs.

 

[Simeon_Strangelight]

Loopholes were closed in the 40s-70s? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

My grandfather was making a lot of money in those days and apparently no one paid the high tax rates. Deductions were allowed for hookers in Vegas the enforcement was so lenient.

Taxation etc. worked a little - with it I mean some part of taxation - (a CEO's 100 mio. $ wage of today would be taxed at 70% in the 1960s) and a bigger part of unionized high wages. A factory worker of the lowest rung was paid the equivalent of 45.000$-50.000$ of today's wages with a lower tax-rate for that kind of money.

That ended in the 1970s. Loopholes were never closed - even if, then more complicated ones are opened. Wallstreet companies now deduct their high level hookers via shell-companies and "trainings", "company-massages" etc. Sometimes even middle-level managers used their business cards for that kind of entertainment - they just said that they had clients with them (70% of the time it was not true, but who can prove that shit?).

Now as I said I am no fan of taxation - interest free money and a Government which finances itself mostly via tariffs and a 10% non-negotiable-flat-tax on any income - that should be enough.

 

[BlurredSevens]

"The book the 1% don't want you to read"

I thought the book was going to be about entrepreneurship and innovation.

But no, of course it's about wealth redistribution and higher taxes. Take what isn't yours and give it to people who didn't earn it, and then label it a moral act. Blah blah blah. Sounds like communism to me. I don't think the wealthy are going to be too scared about this book.

 

[The_CEO]

Here, and in other interviews, he explains that he welcomes people to disagree with Part 4 of the book, and hopes that they will still find Part 1-3 interesting/useful. He also invites people come up with their own ideas for Part 4.
He points out that his expertise is at analyzing the past, not predicting the future.

 

[vinman]

The fact that mainstream Chicago/Austrian economists are losing their shit about this book means it should be read. Calling it populist is a pathetic refutation of his argument that capital accumulation and rent seeking (as seen since WWII)are bad for everyone who isn't already rich.

It is definitely on my reading list at some stage.

University of Chicago economists, and Austrians usually have disdain for each other.

 

[Crackshot]

Revolutions are traditionally led by middle class people. When they feel their ambitions are thwarted and thta the elites take too much. Happened in Russia, Peru and most recently Tunisia and N Africa

 

[Maciano]

BlurredSevens,

Indeed. There's something to be said against winner-take-all models where a slight amount of people, who through inherited talents & connections, are by birth much (much!) better off than anyone else. OTOH, the majority should just accept that they're not part of 1% and need to step up their game through hard work, risks, sacrifices and learning. There's just no other way around this. Redistribution wouldn't even work IF we wanted to.

Gregory Clark's book "The Son Also Rises" looked into social mobility in varying societies and found that, whether he was in communist China, capitalist US, classist UK, social democratic Sweden social mobility was low and has always been low. The descendants of Anglo-Normans who conquered England around 1100s are still over-represented among Oxford-university students today! Samurai-descendants dominate Japanese politics, business, media,...

Redistribution doesn't work. It doesn't matter what economic/political model people have tried, the outcomes have been the same everywhere. You need one of these: hard work, luck or good genes.

 

[Feisbook Control]

There is something perverse about a book like this being a best seller rather than the biography of an entrepreneur, or a book like The Richest Man in Babylon or The Intelligent Investor.

This has been stated before, but the middle class don't want education. They want entertainment. To that, I'd also add that they want validation. Rather than read about what it takes to become wealthy (and implement it), they'd rather read about how The Man is keeping them down. That's if they even bother to read. The average American watches five hours of television per day. The average Briton, Australian, etc. probably isn't any better.

We live in an age of unprecedented access to information, and people are stupider and lazier than ever. I used to have a copy of Seth Klarman's Margin of Safety. This is a book that is supposedly out of print and goes for $2,000 on Ebay. Yet you can find copies all over the Internet. How to get rich is not something you need to join the Illuminati to find out. I didn't study economics or finance at university. My parents didn't teach me this. Instead, I used these two crazy ideas called the Internet and libraries and educated myself.

In conjunction with wasting boatloads of time, the average person also wastes boatloads of money. Sure, if we're talking about a kid in Bangladesh not being able to accumulate capital, I'll buy that. Yet in the West, money can't burn a hole in people's pockets fast enough.

That's all it is: people are absolutely atrocious at managing resources -- be they time or money -- and they want validation for why that's someone else's fault, not theirs. Fuck them. They deserve to be poor because not only are they willingly ignorant, but they often revel in it. If this is what the West has become, then fuck the West too.

The 1% (or 0.1%) have nothing to fear from slothful, entitled morons.

 

[Tail Gunner]

While I am not yet in the top 1% by wealth, I am in the top 1% by income. I grew up in the projects, in a family that was probably in the bottom 1%. While I may not be a typical example of the top 1%, I am far more typical than the stereotype many people have of Mr. Moneybags living it up on Grand Cayman. My parents were poor immigrants, not evil oligarchs.

You are a perfect example of why this book is based on a false presumption. The important issue is not any perceived wealth gap, but the ability of almost anyone who is willing to work hard to have significant upward mobility in society.

Liberal fixation on a so-called wealth gap ignores the fact that anyone who focuses on building wealth and chooses to work hard can do so. Whiners, complainers, and professional victims need not apply. Economist Thomas Sowell, an African-American, wrote this editorial a few months back, differentiating wealth versus economic mobility.

While the rhetoric is about people, the statistics are almost invariably about abstract income brackets.

It is easier and cheaper to collect statistics about income brackets than it is to follow actual flesh and blood people as they move massively from one income bracket to another over the years.

More important, statistical studies that follow particular individuals over the years often reach diametrically opposite conclusions from the conclusions reached by statistical studies that follow income brackets over the years.

Currently we are hearing a lot in the media and in politics about the "top 1 percent" of income earners who are supposedly getting an ever-increasing share of the nation's income.

That is absolutely true if you are talking about income brackets. It is totally untrue if you are talking about actual flesh and blood people.

The Internal Revenue Service can follow individual people over the years because they can identify individuals from their Social Security numbers. During recent years, when "the top 1 percent" as an income category has been getting a growing share of the nation's income, IRS data show that actual flesh and blood people who were in the top 1 percent in 1996 had their incomes go down — repeat, DOWN — by a whopping 26 percent by 2005.

How can both sets of statistics be true at the same time? Because most people who are in the top 1 percent in a given year do not stay in that bracket over the years.

If we are being serious — as distinguished from being political — then our concern should be with what is happening to actual flesh and blood human beings, not what is happening to abstract income brackets.

There is the same statistical problem when talking about "the poor" as there is when talking about "the rich."

A University of Michigan study showed that most of the working people who were in the bottom 20 percent of income earners in 1975 were also in the top 40 percent at some point by 1991. Only 5 percent of those in the bottom quintile in 1975 were still there in 1991, while 29 percent of them were now in the top quintile.

People in the media and in politics choose statistics that seem to prove what they want to prove. But the rest of us should become aware of what games are being played with numbers.

http://www.redding.com/news/2011/nov/09/thomas-sowell-income-inequality-is-numbers-game/?partner=RSS

 

[lavidaloca]

This theory sounds stupid considering in order to take advantage of capital gains / dividends you have to make money in the first place.

The reason these people are able to make so much more than others is they took the initiative and risk to start their own businesses which often allow for unique taxation structures just as they should. These people provide employments for the masses. Should they not receive benefits for doing so and beyond that benefits to ensure the company success so that many people aren't out of work one day. The other part is largely going to be CEOs of major companies. So a guy climbs a corporate pyramid and is the #1 guy standing over 10's of thousands of employees...should he/she not be paid accordingly?

 

[Simeon_Strangelight]

Frankly in a way I agree with Rollo Tomassi from Rational Male that the manosphere should best stay out of politics and religion since those topics easily divide people.

What we likely ALL CAN AGREE upon as rational Red Pill males, who are willing to change when faced with facts to the contrary is that we could easily field-test ALL current economic policies. It is not even that difficult to implement libertarian economic policies in one State and field-test interest-free economics & usury free economics in another State. Very soon it would become obvious what is best for most of humanity.

Either way - we all agree that we are willing to test viable systems and find the best one in a rational way. It is actually quite easy to do, but will not happen of course because a few profit from the system too well at the expense of most.

 

[Prophylaxis]

This has been stated before, but the middle class don't want education. They want entertainment. To that, I'd also add that they want validation. Rather than read about what it takes to become wealthy (and implement it), they'd rather read about how The Man is keeping them down.

My thoughts exactly.

Even if a step-by-step book existed which told you precisely how to have a shot at being the 1% (! The Lean Startup) the middle class wouldn't put in the time or effort. Rationalising is so much more convenient.

The books which have changed my life have often been the driest. I find most 'Best-Selling' books to be hyped up or have little-to-no practical application. They appeal to the lowest common denominator and we all know where that mindset will get us.

 

[Tail Gunner]

This has been stated before, but the middle class don't want education. They want entertainment. To that, I'd also add that they want validation. Rather than read about what it takes to become wealthy (and implement it), they'd rather read about how The Man is keeping them down.

My thoughts exactly.

Even if a step-by-step book existed which told you precisely how to have a shot at being the 1% (! The Lean Startup) the middle class wouldn't put in the time or effort. Rationalising is so much more convenient.

The books which have changed my life have often been the driest. I find most 'Best-Selling' books to be hyped up or have little-to-no practical application. They appeal to the lowest common denominator and we all know where that mindset will get us.

While I agree with your point, I am not sure why you guys are harping on the middle-class. I have no problem with people who wish to glide through life in the easiest manner possible, as long as they do not become financially dependent on society. It is the middle-class which has suffered the most this past decade, not the poor, as Fed policy has shifted wealth from the middle-class to Wall Street by frittering away savings accounts through artificially low interest rates.

It is the liberal intelligentsia, supposedly working on behalf of the poor and the disadvantaged, who promote most of these mindless policies to advance their political agenda. That these policies are counter-productive and historically harm the poor is of no consequence to them. It is all about building a permanent base of support to keep them in political power.

 

[The_CEO]

The Economist magazine gives a chapter by chapter breakdown/critique of the book:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/03/book-clubs-0

 

[ElBorrachoInfamoso]

Some posters have brought back the old canard that the upper-class has been getting richer at the expense of the middle-class. That is kind of true, but the new upper-class was the old middle-class. This picture summarizes the changes nicely.

Clearly the poor segment of society is not growing. That's another myth we can discard right now.

The middle-class has been shrinking, but it's only been shrinking because the middle-class has been moving up the socioeconomic ladder. The wealth distribution has spread out more, but none of the segments shown here are worse off.

 

[Feisbook Control]

Tail Gunner: I can't speak for others, but my problem with the middle class is that they're not willing to engage in any kind of introspection, they think there is not a game being played, they take everything completely at face value, they allow themselves to get shorn, and then they go back to be skinned. Then they complain about it.

At best, they play it safe all their lives (many do not even do that and instead have spent the past few decades with negative savings rates because they just had to have a big house, they just had to have a big car, etc.), completely unwilling to open their eyes and see the world for what it is. They act as though life is perfectly ordered, that there's some overarching cosmic justice. They're so naive. They're like children. They think everyone deserves a medal just for showing up.

Even when they profess to know that they're being skinned, they still go along to get along. I guarantee that the average person reading that book will still vote Republican or Democrat, just as they always have and always will. You could come and put the secrets of the universe right in front of them and they still wouldn't know what to do because all they want is to be sheep. Yet it is axiomatic that sheep get shorn. They want to be sheep, but they don't want to be shorn. That's a circle that cannot be squared. The middle class are a bunch of betas who believe that if they're really nice, they'll get the girl because they deserve the girl.

This whole thing, but especially 7:37 until the end.



A loser is a loser.

 

[berserk]

"The book the 1% don't want you to read"

I thought the book was going to be about entrepreneurship and innovation.

But no, of course it's about wealth redistribution and higher taxes. Take what isn't yours and give it to people who didn't earn it, and then label it a moral act. Blah blah blah. Sounds like communism to me. I don't think the wealthy are going to be too scared about this book.

Exactly. Here is the thing I feel when I read stuff from leftists. It almost always feel like one big intellectual rationalization for "I am jealous that I don't earn as much money in my low-risk public job and therefore those in high-risk jobs should have their money taken".

It's like every smart argument these people make and their research falls to pieces once that inevitable last 'gimme their money' conclusion eventually shows up.

Wealth redistribution have been tried and failed almost anywhere. Even if it does lead to less risk for a lot of people, the tradeoff is much less personal freedom. Read 'Don't Bang Denmark' by Roosh, it has plenty of good examples of what life is like in a country with high wealth redistribution.

Solutions to the perceived massive wealth inequality, which is true, must come from something else than the tired old, left-right, paradigm. History shows us that technology is the main driving force in increasing living standards and personal freedom.