[bluefirebrand]

> I struggle to articulate the way that abundant cheap goods lead to that outcome.

It has nothing to do with how cheap the goods are

The problem is that at some point people won't be able to afford literally anything because all, and I mean literally all, of the wealth will be hyper concentrated in a super small percentage of the population

[squigz]

Do you have anything to support this hypothesis?

[heavyset_go]

https://delong.typepad.com/plutonomy-1.pdf

[squigz]

Link's broken.

[heavyset_go]

https://web.archive.org/web/20250126183923/https://delong.ty...

This should work

[neel8986]

Simple hypothesis. Top 5percent of US wealth now belongs to top 50 richest American. Even if you ignore corruption, lobbying and any ill intent you can definitely conclude that this top 50 individuals have better way of getting return from money than rest of the population. Even if if their delta of return is 5% we can assume that withing next 50 years there is a high probability that these guys will own 30-50% of wealth. I have a strong belive AI will acclerate that further.

[prewett]

But all your numbers (except maybe top 5% one) are completely made up. Strong beliefs don't prevent one from being completely wrong. Neville Chamberlain has a strong belief that he had ensured peace; Einstein had a strong belief that quantum theory's "spooky action at a distance" was incorrect. Both were wrong. Fifty years is a long time, and anything could happen. The last fifty years had the fall of Communism, the EU, China going from an impoverished countryside to a superpower, video phones in our pocket, social media upending communication and mental health, renewable energy displacing coal, Trump, etc.

[squigz]

Not to mention that 50% of US wealth is only 15% of the world's total wealth - a far cry from "literally all wealth"