
Economist Says Most of Billionaire Wealth Is Unearned - elberto34
http://evonomics.com/they-dont-just-hide-their-money/
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jonasvp
This has been espoused a long time ago by German economist/trader Silvio
Gesell:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Gesell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Gesell)

His main work is about reducing the possibility to extract "rents" from
society by closing loopholes in our current economic system:

1\. Money is "better" than everything else so those holding money can extract
surplus value by lending it out. This was later also found out by Keynes and
others. Keynes' solution: inflation. Gesell's solution: imposing carrying
costs on cash.

2\. Land is required by everybody yet impossible to increase. Solution: the
goverment is owner of all land yet leases it out long-term by auction. All
income is distributed among all mothers, since the price of land is direct
consequence of the number of children/people in a country. Now you would
distribute it among all citizens and call it "basic income".

His ideas are still completely valid and deserve a wider audience.

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YCode
> All income is distributed among all mothers, since the price of land is
> direct consequence of the number of children/people in a country.

Isn't an inherent flaw in this that it encourages people to have as many
children as possible?

I'm under the impression that at a point when your population is established
you want something like a 1.2 birth rate, or just a little more than enough to
cover your unexpected deaths.

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jonasvp
Well, that's a tricky argument since at what point is a population
"established"?

I concur, however, since I'd prefer it to be distributed among all residents,
whether born in that country or not. But that's another discussion entirely.

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throwaway2016a
I'm not a billionaire, but I hope to someday have most of my new wealth
"unearned". Otherwise it will be very hard to retire.

If I do ever get to the point where I have enough unearned income to cover all
my living expenses I plan to put it to good work.

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cryoshon
i really wish people would just read some pikkety, which explains conclusions
like the above.

the movement of wealth has a speed and a vector. all wealth moves along the
path of least resistance, which means wherever it can move at high speed.

the more wealth at one node (an individual) is concentrated, the faster wealth
moves toward that node, and thus it follows that the faster wealth moves
toward one node the slower it must subsequently move in all future directions
because there are substantially fewer people who have even greater wealth than
the node. this means that all capital flows ultimately point to the richest of
the rich, although there are a lot of other rich people who are enriched along
the way.

rents are just a steady drumbeat of wealth moving from those with the least
wealth of all nodes (proliterians) toward the middle or higher rung of nodes.

"unearned" is the wrong word. "structurally guaranteed" is a better term.

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qeternity
This author has conflated a lot of concepts behind a very ideologically driven
thesis. At best, they have confused "rents" with "producer surplus".

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ianai
If advertising aids your revenue then you're operating as a monopolist or
oligopolistic. In either situation you're outputting less than optimal,
extracting rent, and society loses out through waste. Billionaires have
accumulated a lot of inefficient rent.

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vixen99
How is it possible to do the math on the loss to society? Assuming a level
playing field, how does society lose out from a monopolistic business that
provides something no one else offers for which customers are of their own
free will, prepared to hand over their cash? And why should those buyers be
the only people to benefit because they happened to hear about the product or
service in the absence of advertising? Monopolies are always temporary affairs
with unpredictable life spans.

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floatboth
Most of Billionaire Wealth is Unearned. In Other News, Water Is Wet.

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refurb
It seems like "rents" has become the latest political buzzword. I see it used
incorrectly to label something as "bad", but it makes the person using the
word sound educated and sophisticated.

It's losing it's impact.

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desireco42
I feel like he defined the term quite a bit before he used it. It does
describe very specific way of earning income.

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aaronchall
If it's a very specific way of earning income, isn't the income, thus, earned?

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the_gastropod
That depends on what the definition of "earned" is: "obtained" or "gained
deservedly". I think this is an example of the former definition.

