alt Hacker NewsLet's put this math in a mirror and do the leftie version of the exponentials:
"The purpose of capitalism is to pay rich people for being rich in proportion to how rich they are, thereby establishing, reinforcing, and perpetuating a class hierarchy where the people on the bottom must constantly pay to exist while the people on top constantly get paid to exist."
Dear reader, if you bristled at how casually this statement ignored that compounding returns are a feature of the real world that we want our economy to model and encourage, now you understand how a normal person feels when a megacorp or megacorp cheerleader casually fails to account for everyone they displaced and stepped on in order to capture the value that they did. "Negligent accounting" is a strategy that points both ways.
Replies
We also want a compounding (progressive) tax rate to address compounding wealth (and perhaps we need a wealth tax?).
If you start with a mere two million and get really lucky, you, too, can be a billionaire!
Now, if that isn't inspiring, I don't know what is! Some of my rich buddies got to be super rich following my advice!
I really don't know why the average person hates the rich. Those poors are so out of touch!
> Let's put this math in a mirror and do the leftie version of the exponentials
The plot twist is that the 'rightie' and the 'leftie' are both entirely correct. Which is why most developed economies try to remove sources of wasteful, unearned rent and also include significant amounts of redistribution/social insurance rather than relying on pure market outcomes. This doesn't erase the compounding dynamics altogether, but it hopefully ensures that folks at the lowest end of the distribution can keep a tolerable standard of living that doesn't have them 'paying' too much.