<story><title>Our Broken Economy, in One Simple Chart</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonhardt-income-inequality.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nostrademons</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;re partially right.  The other half of the puzzle is negotiating leverage.&lt;p&gt;One of Warren Buffett&amp;#x27;s annual reports (I forget which year, but I think it was the late 1990s) had an interesting observation: inflation doesn&amp;#x27;t affect all firms equally.  Instead, it pools where there is a competition bottleneck.  If you are the monopoly provider in a market, you have complete and total ability to raise prices in response to your customers having more money available to pay.  If you are in a very competitive market, then every time you try to raise prices, some other entrant undercuts you and your customers and suppliers capture the surplus instead.&lt;p&gt;The Fed, however, measures inflation based on a basket of goods bought by the &amp;quot;average&amp;quot; consumer.  Most of these goods are in competitive markets: groceries and gas and consumer electronics.  And so the measured inflation rate that the Fed uses to control the money supply significantly undercounts the true inflation rate, with much of the money injected into the economy pooling in differentiated industries like high finance, elite universities, health care, Google &amp;amp; Facebook, etc.  From there, it doesn&amp;#x27;t circulate the way it should, because people in those industries need few goods that the average American produces.  Instead, it goes into asset prices, as they try to buy up more future earning potential.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve suspected that maybe a simple way to fix this would be with &amp;quot;helicopter&amp;quot; Bernanke&amp;#x27;s crazy idea: drop money out of helicopters.  Maybe not literally (imagine the fights on the ground!), but perhaps the Fed could inject money into the economy at the bottom, through direct deposit into consumer&amp;#x27;s bank accounts or tax refunds, and then collect it from the top, through fees on banks.  That way, the money is immediately spent, and so the true effect of the money injected is more easily measurable in the CPI.</text></item><item><author>nateabele</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Different policies could produce a different outcome. My list would start with a tax code that does less to favor the affluent, a better-functioning education system, more bargaining power for workers and less tolerance for corporate consolidation.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It floors me how anyone, especially anyone with even a &lt;i&gt;basic&lt;/i&gt; STEM background, could look at a growth curve that approaches infinity &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt; rapidly, then turn around and say &amp;#x27;gee, I wonder if tinkering around the periphery of the system would solve the problem&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;No! Clearly some central mechanism has gone horribly awry.&lt;p&gt;The only explanation I&amp;#x27;ve ever seen that adequately accounts for those curves is inflation. Inflation drives up prices, both of goods and of assets. A higher cost of goods narrows the margins for wage-earners (i.e. the poor and middle class), and higher asset prices inflate the net worth of people who earn income from assets (i.e. rich people) — this effect compounds over time.&lt;p&gt;If I&amp;#x27;m wrong, please, convince me. Article &amp;amp; book recommendations gladly accepted.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>maxsilver</author><text>&amp;gt; measures inflation based on a basket of goods bought by the &amp;quot;average&amp;quot; consumer. Most of these goods are in competitive markets&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I&amp;#x27;ve suspected that maybe a simple way to fix this would be (snip) to drop money out of helicopters.&lt;p&gt;Wouldn&amp;#x27;t a simple way to fix this, be to change the relative importance of the &amp;quot;basket of goods&amp;quot; so that it reflects what real people actually spend money on?&lt;p&gt;Because housing, healthcare, and daycare&amp;#x2F;education when totaled should probably be 60-75+% of that basket, since that&amp;#x27;s where most people&amp;#x27;s money actually goes. Based on this - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bls.gov&amp;#x2F;news.release&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;cpi.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bls.gov&amp;#x2F;news.release&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;cpi.pdf&lt;/a&gt; - the percentages the Fed currently uses seems far, &lt;i&gt;far&lt;/i&gt; too low.&lt;p&gt;The cost of gasoline going up 50%, or the cost of laptops going up 50% is far less hurtful than say, the cost of rent going up 50%, or the cost of healthcare going up 50%. I suspect if we used realistic numbers for inflation cost calculations, we&amp;#x27;d see the real rate is far higher than is currently claimed, which would help economists better understand why so many people are suffering so much under a &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; economy.</text></comment>
<story><title>Our Broken Economy, in One Simple Chart</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonhardt-income-inequality.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nostrademons</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;re partially right.  The other half of the puzzle is negotiating leverage.&lt;p&gt;One of Warren Buffett&amp;#x27;s annual reports (I forget which year, but I think it was the late 1990s) had an interesting observation: inflation doesn&amp;#x27;t affect all firms equally.  Instead, it pools where there is a competition bottleneck.  If you are the monopoly provider in a market, you have complete and total ability to raise prices in response to your customers having more money available to pay.  If you are in a very competitive market, then every time you try to raise prices, some other entrant undercuts you and your customers and suppliers capture the surplus instead.&lt;p&gt;The Fed, however, measures inflation based on a basket of goods bought by the &amp;quot;average&amp;quot; consumer.  Most of these goods are in competitive markets: groceries and gas and consumer electronics.  And so the measured inflation rate that the Fed uses to control the money supply significantly undercounts the true inflation rate, with much of the money injected into the economy pooling in differentiated industries like high finance, elite universities, health care, Google &amp;amp; Facebook, etc.  From there, it doesn&amp;#x27;t circulate the way it should, because people in those industries need few goods that the average American produces.  Instead, it goes into asset prices, as they try to buy up more future earning potential.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve suspected that maybe a simple way to fix this would be with &amp;quot;helicopter&amp;quot; Bernanke&amp;#x27;s crazy idea: drop money out of helicopters.  Maybe not literally (imagine the fights on the ground!), but perhaps the Fed could inject money into the economy at the bottom, through direct deposit into consumer&amp;#x27;s bank accounts or tax refunds, and then collect it from the top, through fees on banks.  That way, the money is immediately spent, and so the true effect of the money injected is more easily measurable in the CPI.</text></item><item><author>nateabele</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Different policies could produce a different outcome. My list would start with a tax code that does less to favor the affluent, a better-functioning education system, more bargaining power for workers and less tolerance for corporate consolidation.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It floors me how anyone, especially anyone with even a &lt;i&gt;basic&lt;/i&gt; STEM background, could look at a growth curve that approaches infinity &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt; rapidly, then turn around and say &amp;#x27;gee, I wonder if tinkering around the periphery of the system would solve the problem&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;No! Clearly some central mechanism has gone horribly awry.&lt;p&gt;The only explanation I&amp;#x27;ve ever seen that adequately accounts for those curves is inflation. Inflation drives up prices, both of goods and of assets. A higher cost of goods narrows the margins for wage-earners (i.e. the poor and middle class), and higher asset prices inflate the net worth of people who earn income from assets (i.e. rich people) — this effect compounds over time.&lt;p&gt;If I&amp;#x27;m wrong, please, convince me. Article &amp;amp; book recommendations gladly accepted.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>utexaspunk</author><text>Our top marginal tax rate starts around $418k(single) to $470k (joint). It seems ridiculous to me that every dollar beyond that amount is taxed at the same rate, whether it&amp;#x27;s dollar 500k or dollar 500m. IMHO, we should have several more brackets, like for the top 0.25%, 0.1%, 0.01% and 0.001% of incomes, with the rates rising sharply. Tax the shit out of the ultra-rich and spread it around.</text></comment>