Do the Rich Get All the Gains from Economic Growth? - "Adjusted for inflation, the US economy has more than doubled in real terms since 1975. How much of that growth has gone to the average person? According to many economists, the answer is none or close to none... these depressing conclusions rely on studies and data that are incomplete or flawed. They understate economic growth for the poor and the middle class because they use measures of prices that mis-measure inflation. Some studies leave out important components of compensation such as fringe benefits which have become increasingly important in recent years. And some studies include the elderly which lowers measured progress because the elderly are an increasing share of the population and they are less likely to be working full-time if at all... Many of the most pessimistic studies about the fate of the American middle class ignore the changes in the American family since the 1970s and the effects have had on the way we measure changes in household income... the biggest problem with the pessimistic studies is that they rarely follow the same people to see how they do over time. Instead, they rely on a snapshot at two points in time. So for example, researchers look at the median income of the middle quintile in 1975 and compare that to the median income of the median quintile in 2014, say. When they find little or no change, they conclude that the average American is making no progress. But the people in the snapshots are not the same people. You can’t use two snapshots to conclude that only the rich have made progress. It’s possible that everyone from the earlier snapshot has actually gotten richer and then been replaced by different people whose incomes will also rise. This is especially true when there is immigration. If new immigrants are disproportionately less skilled than Americans already here, measured incomes can fall even when those who are already here have steadily improving economic prospects. And when marriage rates are falling and people are increasingly living on their own, household income can fall while every individual is doing better. Estimate of economic progress based on household income are distorted by these effects. What the snapshots show is that the rich today are richer than the rich of yesterday. If the rich people are the same people as yesterday, then one’s class determines one’s fate. But if they are not the same people, the snapshots tell you that the dispersion of income has increased. That may or may not bother you, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a distinct group called “the rich” who are capturing all the gains while the rest of us tread water. How important are these issues? One way to find out is to follow the same people over time. When you follow the same people over time, you get a very different story from the standard one. When you follow the same people over time, the largest gains over time often go to the poorest workers; the richest workers often make no progress. The most dramatic claims by the pessimists that no one is making progress other than the rich are wrong. A study by Leonard Lopoo and Thomas DeLeire for the Pew Charitable Trusts uses the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and compares the family incomes of children to the income of their parents... 93% of the children in the poorest households — those in the bottom 20% — surpassed their parents. Only 70% of those raised in the top quintile exceeded their parent’s income... Julia Isaacs’s study for the Pew Charitable Trusts looking at the late 1960’s up to 2002 finds that children raised in the poorest families made the largest gains as adults relative to children born into richer families. The children from the poorest families ended up twice as well-off as their parents when they became adults. The children from the poorest families had the largest absolute gains as well. Children raised in the top quintile did no better or worse than their parents once those children became adults... Moving forward in the time of the analysis, Gerald Auten, Geoffrey Gee, and Nicholas Turner of the Office of Tax Analysis in the Treasury Department used tax returns to see how rich and poor did between 1987 and 2007. They find the same encouraging pattern: poorer people had the largest percentage gains in income over time... The median income of the people in the top 20% in 1987 ended up 5% lower twenty years later. The people in the middle 20% ended up with median income that was 27% higher. And if you started in the bottom 20%, your income doubled. If you were in the top 1% in 1987, 20 years later, median income was 29% lower... Splinter’s numbers don’t control for age. Presumably the lowest quintile workers in 1980 are going to be younger so perhaps the growth we see is just normal raises as workers gain experience. So I asked Yonatan Berman who has been working with the same data to do a similar calculation but restricting the sample to workers who start out 25–30 in 1980... All groups, and not just the richest, gain over their lifetime. The poorest workers make the largest percentage gains. The two lowest quintiles see their incomes more than double over their working life. The absolute gains for the three lowest quintiles are $18,800, $22,300, and $23,800. While the rich have larger absolute gains, the variance is much larger. Finally, this is labor income. It does not include any measures of fringe benefits, benefits that became larger part of compensation over this period. No government transfers. No capital gains. And I would argue that the national income deflator imperfectly controls for improved quality of the goods we consume. This biases it upward meaning real growth is understated for all groups. Going in the other direction — these numbers are for workers — people who had earnings at both the beginning and the end of the period, so this probably overstates the increase in labor income of people at the bottom. The American economy isn’t just helping the richest Americans. Prosperity is being enjoyed widely... This does not mean that everything is fine in the American economy. There are special privileges reserved for the rich that help them reduce their risk of downward mobility — financial bailouts are the most egregious example. There are too many barriers like occupational licensing and the minimum wage that handicap the disadvantaged desperately trying to succeed in the workplace. And the American public school system is an utter failure for too many children who need to acquire the skills needed for the 21st century. But the glass is at least half-full... the proportion of households with two earners has actually decreased since 1980. (See Table H-12 here from the Census Bureau.) That’s because while more married couples are households where both spouses are working, the marriage rate has fallen."
ً on X - "The absolute funniest part of capitalist ideology is that they someone managed to convince everyone that "freedom" meant like...the freedom to choose between 63 kinds of shampoo, and not like...the freedom to quit a job you hate without losing your health insurance."
Canada has single payer healthcare but left wingers there are just as miserable, because left wingers are always miserable
Polymarket on X - "BREAKING: Florida becomes the first state to block welfare cash from being spent on tattoos, theme park tickets, video games, vapes, & other non-essential purchases."
Paul on X - "Welfare can be used on Tattoos, Theme park tickets, Video games, vapes, and other luxry goods?"
Left wingers just accused this of being fake news and people believing it of being stupid
No meta-analytical effect of economic inequality on well-being or mental health
End Wokeness on X - "Here's the cabin that Dolly Parton grew up in with 11 siblings. No electricity or water. Dolly died worth $650+ million, after $500 million donated to charity! This is America."
Clearly, she oppressed lots of people by getting rich and it's good that she died
Krystal Ball on X - "There is very simple math behind the need to tax billionaires. Billionaire wealth is increasing at an accelerating rate vastly outpacing the overall rise in GDP. This means that their wealth is not growing because the whole pie is growing. Their wealth is growing at your expense and the trend is accelerating. If you are not a billionaire and you and your children want to own things, this is your fight."
Crime In NYC on X - "If “the whole pie” remained at a constant size while their share grew, then your “very simple math” would make sense."
Left wing zero sum thinking again. They think they are poor because other people are rich.
Meme - Josh Howerton: "When Christians use the word "generosity" they mean "generosity with your own money." When progressives use the word "generosity" they mean "voting for the government to forcibly redistribute other people's money.""
sasseite @RespectableCon: "Presented without comment."
"Charitable giving by county in 2013. Percent of income given to charity *high in Christian/left wing areas, low in secular/right wing areas*"
The Kobeissi Letter on X - "BREAKING: Nike stock, $NKE, collapses to its lowest level since September 2014, now down -78% from its all time high seen in 2021. The stock has now officially erased over -$200 billion in market cap since its record high."
Lauren Chen on X - "EBT is reworked so that people need to spend their own money to get junk food, and now Nike's stock is collapsing. lol. lmao, even"
Meme - "WHY IS IT OKAY FOR BEYONCE TO MAKE $60 MILLION... _BUT NOT OKAY FOR A CEO WITH 3,000 EMPLOYEES TO MAKE $5 MILLION?"
Meme - Richard Hanania: "Businesses are fleeing blue states to go to red states. Biggest losers in terms of corporate headquarters are SF, LA, NYC, Chicago and SD. Biggest winners: Dallas, Austin, Houston, Phoenix, and Nashville. Capitalism just works better than statism. Why can't people admit it?"
"Southern hospitality. Net change in number of company headquarters from relocations, 2020-25"
Meme - Basil @LinkofSunshine: "NYC ran an experiment: a separate minimum wage for construction workers on buildings above 99 units ($72.50 an hour) As a result, almost all construction has been scaled back to 99 units, and we've built significantly less housing"
"Filings for new buildings by number of units"
Clear proof that the solution is to not have any exemptions and to pay all construction workers on buildings "fairly", and that the housing shortage is due to greedy capitalists and we need to seize houses to end it
Meme -
qasimrashid: "A reminder that it is always the right time to tax billionaires out of existence and protect working people, our democracy, and our future humanity"
qasimrashid: "NASA used our tax dollars to successfully complete a historic trip around the moon. Bezos skipped out on paying taxes and built his Blue Origin New Glenn rocket to explode on a launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Tax billionaires out of existence."
"Me when I have no idea how rockets work and know nothing about the history of NASA SLS or Orion."
When left wingers are very clear that when they say "tax the rich" or "tax billionaires", they are spiteful and mean to tax them until they are no longer rich or tax them until they are no longer billionaires. The primary motivation for left wing taxation policy is not to raise money but to punish the rich and successful (at any rate, those more rich and successful than them).
Blue Origin New Glenn's explosion didn't kill anyone. The Challenger disaster killed 7 people and Columbia killed another 7. This is proof that the US needs to confiscate Jeff Bezos's wealth to fund NASA
Stephen Moore on X - "Americans now pay more in taxes than they spend on food, clothing, and shelter combined. Think about that. Government has become so big and bloated that taxes cost more than life's basic necessities. Every American taxpayer should be outraged."
Of course, left wingers demand even higher taxes, because they think only the "rich" will pay them
Robert Schultz on X - "people will be like “but if we raise taxes on billionaires then the billionaires will just leave!” and it’s like, oh really, you’re saying we’d either gain more money in tax revenue or lose the weirdest people with the worst vibes? sounds like a win-win"
involuntary sentient on X - "The weirdest people with the worst vibes who are also the ones stealing all our money. So like...the cause of the problem will leave. Oh no."
Left wingers just hate rich people. Good luck paying for social spending when all the rich people leave
Left wingers think they are poor because other people are rich. Weird how when there were fewer billionaires, people were poorer
Handre on X - "$17 billion for 3.4 miles of subway tunnel. That works out to roughly $5 billion per mile, making the Second Avenue Subway the most expensive transit construction project in human history, per mile, by a significant margin. Madrid built its entire metro expansion in the early 2000s at under $100 million per mile. You are not misreading those numbers. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority spent 86 years planning Phase 1 (the stretch from 96th Street to 63rd Street, opened in January 2017) before finally breaking ground in 2007. Decades of studies, committees, environmental reviews, and public hearings. Nobody personally paid for those delays. Nobody got fired. No executive absorbed the cost of a decade's worth of inflation, redesigns, and contractor overruns. When you insulate decision-makers from financial consequences, you get exactly this: paralysis followed by extravagance. Free market economists have a term for what drives this: the calculation problem. Without real prices generated by voluntary exchange, planners cannot rationally allocate resources. The MTA doesn't discover the most efficient tunnel route through competition. It negotiates with unions whose contracts prohibit obvious efficiencies, hires consultants paid by the hour with zero incentive to finish, and answers to politicians who measure success in ribbon-cutting photos rather than cost per passenger mile. The deeper issue is who pays. New York State taxpayers, federal taxpayers, and future riders through fare revenue all absorb the tab. The people who made the decisions that produced $5 billion-per-mile costs face no personal liability. A private developer whose budget overruns sees his equity evaporate. He has skin in the game. The MTA's leadership has a salary and a pension. Phase 2 (96th Street to 125th Street, 1.5 miles) carries a projected price tag above $7.7 billion and has just broken ground. The political class will tell you this is what world-class infrastructure costs. What they won't tell you is that Tokyo, a city with arguably the most sophisticated rail network on earth, builds subway lines at roughly $250 million per mile, using private operators who survive only if they perform."
This doesn't explain why Anglo countries are prone to this sort of cost inflation
Austin Padgett (LudwigNeverMises) on X - "The money you save using cheaper labor in China is three times less than what it costs to ship the stuff all the way back here. The reason it is impossible to build in the US is we made it illegal. And so the industrial ecosystems developed in China. Avg labor cost as a percent of manufacturing revenue
China- 11%
US-14%
Difference- 3%
Trans pacific shipping as a percent of manufacturing revenue- 10% 10 percent is over three times more than 3 percent. So if it costs three times more to ship stuff halfway across the world than we make in labor savings why are we manufacturing so much in China? The idea that we lost our production to foreign slave labor has elements of truth in the rare cases which prove to be exceptions to the rule. But generally it is a pernicious leftist myth that distracts people from the real causes of our failure and creates a sense of fatalism that prevents us from solving the problem. Interior China didn’t out compete coastal China even though the labor cost is lower. The whole point is skilled labor, the technology to maximize labor efficiency and the synergy of industrial hubs. 100 people picking rice in a field can’t compete with a tractor. We can make stuff in America and we can make it not only cheaper, but also BETTER than anything the world has ever seen. We’ve done it before, we can do it again. In fact we’ve already started."
Mark Grote | Facebook - "If you care about affordability, you must look at what is happening to Seattle. For years, state leadership has used liberal loving "tax the rich" policies as a low-risk political tactic, replacing a culture of achievement (the few) with one of resentment (the many). The results are now undeniable:
A "Zombie" Downtown: High-tech hubs and corporate job creators have been chased off by aggressive corporate, employee, and wealth taxes, leaving behind a skyline of vacant offices. Seattle now has the highest vacancy rate in the country.
The Hidden Cost: Because the tax base has eroded, the burden is shifting directly onto local homeowners even before now. Our personal King County property taxes are up 77% since we built our house in 2010 - and that before these recent headlines, painting a foreboding future for taxpayers.
A Shrinking Pie: Rather than focusing on growing the economy to expand opportunity for everyone, lawmakers have used these policies to alienate the very engines of growth that fund our state services. Their hubris never looks at the results of these terrible policies. It's just one bad idea that leads to another.
We are now trapped in a viscous cycle where service dependent low income earners flood the market while business flight shrinks the tax base, forcing the government to squeeze residents to make up the shortfall. Unless we shift away from a strategy of envy or "soak the rich" to one that attracts upward job creators, your taxes—and your cost of living—will continue to spiral upward, not only driving away job creators and tax revenue, but driving all of us away as well."
Meme - Freyja Katra, Girl IRL Cat URL @FreyjaErlings: "A thing they don't tell you about the "push a button for a million dollars but someone you don't know dies" hypothetical is that literally every billionaire is effectively pressing that button as much as they can all the time because that's how exploitation works"
Left wingers have a zero sum view of the world and think that for someone else to be rich, others must be poor
Is Met Gala sponsor Jeff Bezos evil just because he's rich? - "Our politics have been analogized to Veep. A more apt comparison some days is that we are living in a cartoon. Every good cartoon needs a supervillain or three. Our supervillains created millions of jobs, made goods cheaper and far easier to obtain, and revolutionized access to information, among other terrible, terrible things. I am referring to billionaires. Reasonable people will debate, and disagree on, the best way to sketch out the tax code. Protestations to "tax the rich" have long been central to progressive politics. But last week's Met Gala was a reminder that there is something else undergirding those calls: what seems like legitimate hatred or, at a minimum, disgust. Why?... The common theme here is that Bezos et al. are, in effect, not just subject to an unfair tax rate. It is that they are evil. He is not paying his "fair share," he is throwing people out onto the streets, he and others must have abused the law... it's also important to interrogate the basic idea that someone is evil because he is rich, which has become common wisdom in certain circles. There are certainly wealthy people who are rotten. Making a product that others want, though, does not make someone a bad egg. Amazon, founded by Bezos, allows people to get items much quicker and often for considerably less money. As of December of last year, the company employed 1.58 million people. He is our cartoon villain? There are other examples. Sergey Brin and Larry Page gave the world near-unfettered access to information with Google. Maybe it's even how you found this article. (Thanks.) Steve Jobs effectively put computers in our pockets, facilitating more intimate communication and connection with friends and loved ones near and far. Elon Musk, for all of his controversy, helped pioneer the modern electric vehicle and is investing in technology to help people with neural issues regain function. Why is this never a part of the story? This ire is not constrained to the yearly Met Gala. Perhaps nothing captures it better than a video New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani filmed last month, standing on the street, sneering while he informed constituents that "today, we're taxing the rich." The proposal: a pied-á-terre tax on luxury units whose owners do not live full-time in the city. Why sneering? Because Mamdani was outside of one such unit. He pointed upward at the penthouse and named and shamed its owner, Ken Griffin. Perhaps there is a conversation to be had about an additional tax on high-end, part-time residences. A government leader expressing such revulsion for a constituent is another thing entirely. One of the two men has a lot of audacity, and it is not the private citizen. Griffin, after all, is a major contributor to the New York economy, though he has reportedly begun scaling back in response to the video. He is also a major philanthropist, having given away billions of dollars. Bezos, meanwhile, recently gave a $100 million donation to a charity funding early childhood education in New York. Will Bernie Sanders add that to his list of Bezos expenditures?"
Left wingers hate success, after all.
Rock Chartrand on X - "The buyer is just as "greedy" for wanting lower prices as the seller is for wanting higher ones. The employee is just as "greedy" for wanting higher wages as the employer is for wanting lower labor costs. The free market channels these competing interests into voluntary exchange instead of coercion, and the resulting price is whatever both parties find acceptable. Neither side gets everything it wants, but both walk away believing they're better off than before, or no change takes place."
Turd Ferguson on X - ""Greed" is a term always applied to other people's wants, and never to our own."
Possum Reviews on X - "Remember how pissed Democrats got when the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron rule in 2024? That was the rule that enabled government agencies to make up their own interpretations of ambiguous regulations. This effectively gave them the power to fine people for made-up violations whenever they felt like it. Naturally, they would enforce their own rules selectively and arbitrarily. Of course they couldn't do that on paper, but in real life, not everyone had the resources to sue the government when the EPA or FDA hit them with a bogus violation and fined them for something that was perfectly legal a week prior. This resulted in veterans being denied benefits they previously qualified for, made criminals of the owners of legal firearms, and the EPA used an absurd definition of "navigable waters" to justify fining farmers for filling in puddles. When fines for trumped-up violations were imposed, they could force someone to pay money to a third party, including politically-aligned NGOs. In other words, when the Democrats controlled the government, they used this power to essentially bully political enemies out of their money and give it to themselves. This isn't a conspiracy theory or even a secret. The Obama administration considered it a legitimate method of fundraising for Democrat-aligned organizations (and therefore themselves) without going through Congress. The Trump administration tried to stop it during his first term, but then Biden started it up again under the pretense of "environmental justice". But then the Supreme Court overturned Chevron in 2024, and now the Democrats are broke. I don't think that's a coincidence."
Meme - "1. WE FORCE YOU TO PAY FOR ROADS, SCHOOLS, AND HEALTHCARE..
Man in tie: "It's for the common good!" *roads schools healthcare*
2. THEN WE TELL YOU THAT YOU DIDN'T BUILD ANYTHING BECAUSE YOU USED IT.
Man in tie: "You didn't build any of this. You just benefited from it."
3. SOMEHOW THE PEOPLE WHO PAID THE MOST ARE TOLD THEY OWE EVEN MORE TO THE PEOPLE WHO PAID THE LEAST.
Man in tie: "You successful people owe them even more!"
4. AND IF YOU OPPOSE BEING FORCED TO PAY FOR THEM BUT USE WHAT YOU ALREADY PAID FOR, WE CALL YOU A HYPOCRITE.
Normal man: "I oppose being forced to pay, but I'll use what I already paid for."
Man in tie: "HYPOCRITE!"
"Our philosophy: guilt the producers. Glorify the takers."
"A MARVELOUS SYSTEM-ONE THAT ALWAYS FINDS GUILT IN THE TAXPAYER AND VIRTUE IN THE TAX COLLECTOR.""
Left wingers are never grateful to the rich people who keep the gravy train going, because they feel entitled to all their property in perpetuity, and think if they keep any of it for themselves, that's "theft" and "subsidies for the rich"
Meme - "U.S. STATES GAINING vs LOSING NET INCOME (AGI) FROM MIGRATION
BASED ON IRS DATA FOR TAX YEARS 2022-2023 Shows the net amount of Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) that moved into or out of each state due to interstate migration.
STATES GAINING (NET INCOME INFLOW)
Florida +$21B
Texas +$6B
South Carolina +$4B
North Carolina +$4B
Tennessee +$3B
Arizona +$3B
Nevada +$2B
Idaho +$988M
Georgia +$746M
Colorado +$715M
Alabama +$540M
Maine +$502M
Montana +$500M
Utah +$477M
Arkansas +$447M
STATES LOSING (NET INCOME OUTFLOW)
California -$12B
New York -$10B
Illinois -$6B
Massachusetts -$4B
New Jersey -$3B
Pennsylvania -$2B
Ohio -$2B
Minnesota -$1B
Michigan -$956M
Virginia -$912M
Louisiana -$799M
Oregon -$476M
Connecticut -$460M
Kansas -$361M
Indiana -$326M
This measures the net amount of Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) that moved into or out of each state-not total wealth or assets.
Source: IRS SOI Tax Stats Migration Data (2022-2023) I Analysis: Realtor.com"
I wonder what common thread links most of these
