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by zhoBEENG 2 hours ago
Should we perhaps look at the top 51% instead? Why pick one perspective over the other?

I’m not familiar with Dalio outside some weird pseudo-academic paper he wrote where he attempts to provide a new grand theory of economics based on “transactions”, but I would be interested to hear this perspective supported.

Edit: samiv above answered my question

2 comments

Well, if you're looking at the bottom X%, then you can be confident that the rest of the population are in a better position.
Technically yes but its not that straightforward.

Take a country like Sweden for example everyone is reasonably well off (if not exactly thriving) since income inequality is quite low. At the same time wealth inequality is extremely high since the rich pulled the ladder after them and there are hardly any options for the middle class to accumulate much wealth. In turn that probably doesn’t help productivity and innovation that much. Why work harder if you won’t get anything in return? Which is a general vibe vibe in Scandinavian work culture.

Then again they (well Denmark at least since a petrostate like Norway doesn’t count and Sweden hasn’t been stellar and the Danish government is hellbent on turning the EU into a fascist dystopia so maybe its not a price worth paying..) are doing quite well economically compared to most other European countries.

Ray Dalio created one of the most successful hedge funds ever and as he calls himself "a professional capitalist." The guy even helped with launching the Chickent McNugget (advising McDonald's with Poultry futures)

If you look at the top 51% things are going extremely well, but as this article shows it can hide a lot. I loved his explanation of how the economic machine works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0 his book Principles is pretty good too.