| > In fact, the long decline observed in the past few decades is reminiscent of the secular decline that took place from 1870 to World War I. > The fact that returns to wealth have remained fairly high and stable while aggregate wealth increased rapidly since the 1970s suggests that capital accumulation may have contributed to the decline in the labor share of income over the recent decades (Karabarbounis and Neiman 2014). Predicted here: Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Harvard University Press. > In terms of total returns, residential real estate and equities have shown very similar and high real total gains, on average about 7% a year. > Housing, equity, bonds, and bills make up over half of all investable assets in the advanced economies today, and nearly two-thirds if deposits are included. Interesting, Housing is marked as "risky", and yet heavily invested. Investors are over leveraged in risky investments. They probably do it because controlling housing nets them power above and beyond normal returns. I wonder if this part of the reason for the "boom and bust" of market economies in the West when proper government regulation is removed. The riskiness of much of the investment of most investors may lead to sudden losses and shifts in risk, which may result in them withdrawing capital to "safer" investments, thus triggering a "bust". And `r ≫ g` shows why the wealthy can wield so much power. Holding capital hostage to regulate economic growth and control it is very powerful, and why they can exercise the kind of control they can. |