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Yes, a VC is looking to unshackle the middle class, thank you! Someone is looking out for the US middle class, Scott Kupor, managing partner Andreessen Horowitz apparently. Barf. Who is dumb enough to swallow this? Sounds like an echo of Bill O'Reilly's "I look out for the little guy". You tend to hear this term "middle class" from on high a lot, as it means absolutely nothing. What is the middle class in the middle of? Apparently people with income of $200k or over, or assets of $1 million+ are not middle class in his definition. Excluding worth of primary residence of course, which he neglected to mention. I guess this means doctors are not middle class. They must be in the upper class - a doctor is in the same class as Alice Walton, who inherited $26 billion. What is the dividing line between the middle class and the class under it? What class are janitors in, middle, lower? Class used to mean ones relation to production, but that doesn't fit into the kind of babble people like to put out. To the big point of why this is nonsense. If you look at the Survey of Consumer Finances done by the Federal Reserve, that 4% of Americans he speaks of are the ones who hold the majority of stocks, the majority of bonds and whatnot. Just look through one of these Federal Reserve papers and you'll see that, other than primary residences, this top 4% own almost everything. Outside of primary residences, the next 5% to 20% swallow up pretty much everything the top 4% does not get. Which is not much, relatively. The bottom 80% have virtually no wealth outside of primary residences. The idea that the median American will benefit from investing in VC is ludicrous. The median American does not have the money to invest and benefit from this. Stocks, dividends and profits are a weapon against the median American. They are dependent on the stock owners, the small top minority, getting the lion's share of the wealth created by the median American. If American workers had strong unions and most of the created wealth in corporations went to wages, not dividends, this would hurt the owners of stocks. The weaker the median American is in this equation, the better the stock does. The median American is all about wages, the crumbs of VC he might pick up are almost nothing. He has no money to invest, so even if his shares go up 20% a year, it amounts to very little. Obviously, this is yet another thing to benefit the very wealthy. But to sell it, people have to say it's for the middle class. Whereas the middle class, whatever that means, is actually hurt when the wealth they create at companies goes to profit and not wages. It is coming out of their pockets - they create the wealth, then it goes out to heirs like Alice Walton in the form of dividends. Or payments to limited partners from VC. And the like. |