[solidsnack9000]

I'm not sure how there is a societal problem with "run-away levels of wealth".

We have societal problems around food costs, housing costs, healthcare costs, &c; but people with extreme wealth are not bidding up sandwiches, studio apartments, &c, &c. If we "solve" their wealth by taking it from them and giving it to the government, what does that help? What good is the government going to do with that? Allocating money through the government has not been a particularly successful strategy for improving the overall standard of living.

[accrual]

> but people with extreme wealth are not bidding up sandwiches, studio apartments

They are, though. Private equity continues to buy apartments and increase rates. States with increasing PE ownership also have increasing rates of cost-burdened renters spending more than 30% of income on rent and utilities, e.g. in Tampa, Phoenix, DFW, and Atlanta. Maybe not specific people, but the ultrawealthy nonetheless drive these changes.

[solidsnack9000]

When a PE fund buys an apartment building, isn't that really competing with landlords, not renters? The PE fund is not living in the apartment -- they have to try to rent it out, after all.

[defrost]

> they have to try to rent it out, after all.

Not really.

It's also a plan to hold onto real estate as market prices rise, flip for profit later, and not deal with all the issues that renters bring (management and maintenance costs, bringing up and keeping to code, potential damages and law suits, etc).

Keeping a floor or two active for Air BnB type short churn rentals while shuttering the bulk of a building can make $$$-sense to a PE.

[solidsnack9000]

Because a PE can have longer time horizons than a landlord or a real estate company?

[defrost]

"Landlords" (aka individual non corporate property owners of more than one residential dwelling) and real estate companies (those with portfolio's of land assets rather than those that just take a commission on sale) can do pretty much the same thing if the numbers pan that way and/or they have no stomach for dealing with Tennants for marginal extra profit.

Ownership of rentable property that is empty is a thing across the board, at least here in Australia where (stupidly(?)) investment rules and returns have made multiple property ownership a sound investment that grows regardless of occupancy.

Don't even need a long ( > 10 year ) time horizon, flipping on a two or five year scale still makes money regardless of renters being present or not.

[solidsnack9000]

It seems like you're saying, that PE, landlords, &c, are in a market where a landowner can hold on to property, not rent it out or put it to other productive use, and still make money. That is a problem, but not a problem with wealth or wealthy people per se.

[HDThoreaun]

Housing is only a good investment when supply is constrained. These PE firms buy housing because they see that NIMBYs are in control. As they predict rents soon begin to rise. Youve got the cause backwards

[ethbr1]

What's to stop PE from supporting NIMBYism in markets they're part of?

[solidsnack9000]

Nothing -- but the crazy thing is that people vote for it, not that landlords support it.

[i_cannot_hack]

> Allocating money through the government has not been a particularly successful strategy for improving the overall standard of living.

What are you even basing this assumption on? Just quickly comparing the highest ranking countries by Human Development Index with the highest government budgets per capita and the highest income tax rates would, if anything, support the opposite conclusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen...

https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/personal-income-ta...

[solidsnack9000]

This is potentially a long conversation; but why would you start with rankings like this, which only go back a relatively short time?

Broadly speaking, human welfare got a lot better in the last three hundred years, due to productivity improvements that were tied to things like property rights, joint stock companies, availability of credit, &c.

We haven't really found a good alternative to it. It may seem to you that countries like Austria, &c, are doing the right thing by taking very large amounts of GDP out of the hands of private enterprise and using it "for good" instead of "for growth"; but that is just eating the seed corn. It looks good in the short term.

[i_cannot_hack]

The HDI ranking has been published for 36 years now. And for many of those countries I would feel confident claiming the trend goes back to at least WW2, altough you would of course have to use other, contemporary metrics to support that to get a rigorous analysis.

If the initial step in your theory about human wellfare is to selectively ignore the last 35 or 75 years of history in the highest wellfare countries on earth, I think you should at least consider the possibility that your theory might be somewhat out of date.

[solidsnack9000]

Most of Europe post-war was very poor. I'm not sure the trend could go back as far as that.

How are you weighing the trend you highlight relative to overall long run success of private ordering, stock companies, readily available credit, strong private property protections, &c, &c, in raising people's standard of living?

[Epa095]

Money is votes into the economy and what it shall produce. The more money you have, the larger vote you have. Taxes are the way the government takes controll over a fraction of the votes. Then the government can use this power to make good or bad decisions. One thing which is clear is that the billionaires is not using their power over the economy to fix any of the deep fundamental problems we are facing

[solidsnack9000]

Consumption is a kind of voting in the economy, I suppose; but the economy is heavily geared towards making things that regular people want. How many Corollas are there for every Bugatti?

If what you're saying is true, would it be unfair of me to say that the government is not using their power over the economy to fix any of the deep fundamental problems we are facing?

Is it good policy to take people's money because they aren't doing what we think they should be doing with it?