[anm89]

Yeah, I think if the average person understood this there would be riots in the streets. It's an unbelievably huge regressive welfare program for the .01%.

Fortunately it's boring and complicated which is a built in guarantee that a large percentage of people will never care about it.

[anm89]

A big irony to me regarding this is that people see the huge inequality in America and conclude "capitalism" has failed and that we need "socialism" as a remedy to the inequality failing to understand that the means that top echelons are capturing wealth right now are more socialistic than capitalistic (ie, using legislation to redirect wealth as opposed to making money by selling products and services). It's essentially a bizarre form of regressive socialism that got us into this mess.

Turns out when you create methods to transfer wealth within a society, whoever has the most power in that society usually uses it to capture wealth. We already have a type of de facto socialism, it's just controlled by the ultra wealthy for their own benefit.

I happen to be in the Hayekian camp that says this isn't really a just a failure to correctly implement socialism, this is an actual property of all socialism. Obviously you could argue that, but this seems to historically generally be true.

I believe that even if a well intentioned Bernie type came in and created a wealth transfer system, over time that system would be captured by the powerful and still end up transferring wealth back to them. You can be guaranteed that at a minimum there will be an attempt to do this.

Ironically, a switch to a more truly capitalistic situation where businesses had to make money in the marketplace instead of rent seeking for conducive fed policy would probably be less friendly to large business interests on average.

[salawat]

>Ironically, a switch to a more truly capitalistic situation where businesses had to make money in the marketplace instead of rent seeking for conducive fed policy would probably be less friendly to large business interests on average.

You focus so much attention on the Fed you lose sight of the fact that rent seeking would shift from the Fed to the Customer.

The problem is fundamentally tied to conservative investment behavior. Given a rational choice, most people lend money to the people most likely to pay it back which are the same entrenched players the lenders are already dealing with.

Throw in the wage growth stagnation incentivized in order to put on the appearance of bigger growth numbers, and you develop a clot in the flow of money to the labor class, therefore decreased mobility from the labor to capital side of things.

Throw in hyperoptimization facilitated value deserts around rapidly consolidating industries, and you have a perfect positive feedback loop to enable wealth extraction from the middle class, while the capital wielders are scratching their heads wondering where all the new blood is.

Crushed with debt, bled dry by the XaaS revolution, exorbitant uncontrolled healthcare costs, and in a distorted market in which the name of the game is to try to keep people buying for the love of God.

Agriculture is already starting to suffer from over consolidation of the dairy industry since Walmart's vertical integration combined with USDA policies favoring the hyperoptimized industrial farmer over everyone else.

Something has to give. Will be interesting toseewho throws up their hands first; Bankers, Business, the Fed, or Labor.

[derision]

As a small retail investor, and someone who's income puts me in the middle class, I've had big gains in my equities. I consider myself an "average person". Why should this make me want to riot in the streets? Is your implication that only the 0.01% actually own stocks? Even my grandmother, albeit managed by a financial advisor, has a stock portfolio that is benefiting from the current market activity.

[cconroy]

Look into Cantillion Effect

"...recipients of new money enjoy higher standards of living at the expense of later recipients..."[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cantillon#Monetary_the...

[FiatLuxDave]

Ah, thank you! That's exactly what I was trying to think of when I posted this question 7 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20164397

+50 internet points for you!

[anm89]

> I've had big gains in my equities

Stocks go up and down. When the whole reason that stocks go up is because a arbitrary number inside the fed and treasury databases went up, I'd argue that move up probably won't last forever. If you time the market then maybe you could profit off of this. Timing the market is hard, even when you can see the bigger picture.

But no, the .01% are the PE people who are using this imaginary money to transfer possession of real assets to themselves with 0 interest loans which will be subsidized as "too big to fail" in the event the whole scheme doesn't work out and the executives who are buying their own stock with the money to trigger their own 7 and 8 figure incentive packages before the scheme collapses then further triggering their golden parachutes.

You aren't the smart money here (neither am I).

[rconti]

You're not making as much as the tremendously wealthy; your equities likely represent a tiny fraction of your income.

If your equities are going up 10% a year but you only have $20k in the market, but make $100k in salary, and your salary growth is falling behind the cost of living, you're not doing well, particularly compared to the person with $100M in the market and not going to work for a living.

[abofh]

Because it's taking huge amounts of treasuries purchased to simply support the market. You're seeing stability, but your children are seeing a higher debt burden.

[fallingfrog]

Because when gravity reassert itself and the market finally crashes, the hedge fund guys will get out early and you and your grandma are going to be left holding the bag, again.

[derision]

My positions are hedged

[triceratops]

As a small retail investor, I'd very much like all this artificial growth in my portfolio to stop so I can buy more investments at more reasonable prices and get better returns in the long term.