- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Key Points
- The wealth of the top 1% hit a record $44.6 trillion at the end of the fourth quarter.
- All of the gains came from stock holdings thanks to an end-of-year rally.
- Economists say the rising stock market is giving an added boost to consumer spending through what is known as the “wealth effect.”
The wealth of the top 1% hit a record $44.6 trillion at the end of the fourth quarter, as an end-of-year stock rally lifted their portfolios, according to new data from the Federal Reserve.
The total net worth of the top 1%, defined by the Fed as those with wealth over $11 million, increased by $2 trillion in the fourth quarter. All of the gains came from their stock holdings. The value of corporate equities and mutual fund shares held by the top 1% surged to $19.7 trillion from $17.65 trillion the previous quarter.
While their real estate values went up slightly, the value of their privately held businesses declined, essentially canceling out all other gains outside of stocks.
China imported $104.6 billion in food alone just last year, mostly from the USA.
They’re not the example you think they are. They are increasingly reliant upon imports (and USA’s capitalist system) for food security.
Now there’s plenty of downsides to capitalism. But collecing fucktons of money to fund $Billion ventures is one of the good things that capitalism does exceptionally well. You’re arguing against literally Capitalism’s greatest strength here. Go poke a hole at all the other problems capitalism causes, you aren’t going to make progress on this front.
BTW: China’s increasingly grown capitalist themselves, reliant upon huge bonds and stock markets to raise funds like the USA does. The debate is over, capital markets are widespread even in former Soviet Bloc’s and former Communist countries. And its been like that for decades.
Please read what I said again. The whole thing. I’m saying that the federal government of US doesn’t need to raise any money at all because of modern monetary theory.
It sounds like you just want US Government to nationalize John Deere and take over the production of tool equipment.
If there were no innovation happening (ex: Boeing situation), I think you’d have a point. But my understanding (I’m not a farmer, but just someone looking outside in), it seems like farm equipment innovation continues to skyrocket. IE: As bad and awful as John Deere is, they are doing their primary job of innovation and building new equipment.
I come from a Case family, so I’d rather they nationalized Case IH lol
On a serious note, we don’t need to nationalize the companies that make the machinery to solve this issue. There are many different methods (even in socdem ideologies) to solve this problem created by capitalism. Personally I think farmers should organize amongst themselves to collectively manage farmland and machinery. I don’t think we’d need to nationalize one of those farm equipment companies, we’d just have to abolish intellectual “property”. Then the machinery can be made and improved by anyone, because we don’t need free markets to innovate.
I’m absolutely for right-to-repair laws. I don’t think patents are full evil, but they absolutely need reform. Copyrights should likely be weakened as well.
So I don’t know about “abolishing intellectual property”, but I can meet in the middle: I can agree that patents have become stupid as the patent office no longer can keep up with the pace of inventions and fairly evaluate who is, or isn’t, deserving of patents. Reforming our country to this new reality (ie: that patents are unfairly, and inconsistently applied) is absolutely required.