The proto-Internet. GPS. Nuclear energy. MRIs. Fracking. The Human Genome Project. Fiber optics. Optical data storage. Jet engines. Heck, the entire space industry. Lithium ion batteries. Radar. Night vision technology. Modern lower limb prosthetics. Just off the top of my head
Jet engines - Frank Whipple (England) and Franz Ohain (Germany) invented them. In both cases the governments were not interested in them until flying jet aircraft were demonstrated. Lockheed was ordered by the government to abandon their jet engine project and focus on piston engines instead (which resulted in the US having to get started on jet aircraft by buying British machines).
Human genome - J. Venter was the first to sequence the human genome, privately funded.
the entire space industry - Liquid fuel rockets were pioneered by Goddard, through private funding.
Radar - originated from late 19th-century experiments on radio wave reflection, pioneered by Heinrich Hertz in 1886. While Christian Hülsmeyer patented a "telemobiloscope" for ship detection in 1904
The proto-Internet - Pioneered by Samuel Morse, see "The Victorian Internet" by Tom Standage. Privately funded.
Whittle (Whipple is a painter) "invented" the jet engine while serving in the RAF, so technically not privately funded at the point of invention. There was private funding used later to create prototype engines.
Quite a stretch to say the Atomic Bomb was privately funded!!!
The original Whittle engine was developed with private funds.
From "The Development Of Jet And Turbine Aero Engines" by Gunston:
pg 123: of which £200 came from an old lady who ran a corner shop near Whittle's parents in Coventry
pg 123: But a direct request to Air Ministry for a research contract in October 1936 brought flat rejection,
pg 124: Whittle could see that the only possible way to proceed was to take the gigantic gamble of running a complete engine.
pg 125: Indeed, there was little money for anything. While the RAF backed Whittle in every way they could - for example, by not requiring him to take the usual examination for promotion to Squadron Leader - the Air Ministry contributed nothing to Power Jets until May 1938, and Whittle had to watch every penny. He nearly cracked under the strain, which in fact was to get worse for seven years, not because of the Problems in developing the engine, but from the suspicion and enmity with which he was regarded by officials and manufacturers, and by the outrageous behaviour of the Company picked by the Air Ministry to produce his engine.
Until recently, no private company wanted to go to the Moon.
And it is particularly ironic to select that since the government’s attempt to return is the most expensive, slowest, least tested launch system possible, and still needs help to get to the Moon.
How about if your neighborhood wanted to keep out people of a certain ethnicity instead? Is that a democratic outcome that we need to respect?
The definition of democracy is that we hold regular elections for political office. It does not mean that every single decision in society is up for a vote at the local level. 51% of my neighbors cannot decide that they'd like expropriate my house or checking account. The point of YIMBYism is that these kinds of decisions have negative externalities and a larger group of voters- at the state or national level- are removing that decision-making power from a smaller group at the local level. This is a democratically legitimate outcome!
> How about if your neighborhood wanted to keep out people of a certain ethnicity instead? Is that a democratic outcome that we need to respect?
Come on, you know that's not analogous.
> It does not mean that every single decision in society is up for a vote at the local level.
It also doesn't mean "any policy the voters want, as long as long as it's the one I want."
Nowadays, when people bring up examples like you did above, it's usually part of an attempt to shut down democratic decision making, by making false comparisons.
Not who you responded to, but I thought it was completely fair. We were a nation filled with Sundown Towns[0,1] very recently. Some probably still exist but are more discrete about it to avoid unwanted attention from those of us who would (loudly) call bullshit on the practice.
> Nowadays, when people bring up examples like you did above, it's usually part of an attempt to shut down democratic decision making, by making false comparisons.
I think you're trying to shutdown someone who has a different opinion from yours by delegitimizing their position. It's not reading the way you thought it would.
Maybe not analogous, but closely related: Many of those suburbs were built for people who wanted to segregate themselves from minorities, and took steps to keep them out.
> when people bring up examples like you did above, it's usually part of an attempt to shut down democratic decision making, by making false comparisons.
You seem to be shutting down the conversation. IME that is what happens overhwhelmingly when attempting to discuss issues of racism - far more than the few times people address the issue seriously. It's as if they think racism doesn't exist.
It's definitely analogous. The suburbs around me are voting to leave the regional transit org. Many people openly state the reason why they want to leave is because it brings "the wrong kind of people" to our neighborhoods.
This kind of voting still happens today. Don't bury your head in the sand.
From an institutional engineering POV (warning- I am a grouchy old former political scientist), it would be interesting to come up with institutional solutions for some of the problems America is facing right now. Specifically I think I'd remove the Attorney General role from the President's authority and give it to Senate, to nominate & confirm exclusively. Let's say 51 votes to confirm and 55 votes to impeach. Even among presidential systems, the US cabinet is unusually presidential-centric. I'm not a big LatAm expert, but I think they typically separate the public prosecutor from the president's nomination capacity.
Of course I would strongly prefer to not be a presidential system at all. But if we're discussing post-Trump constitutional reforms that could plausibly pass, I think removing the Attorney General/DOJ from the president's purview and also placing some checks on the pardon power seem doable
>Of course I would strongly prefer to not be a presidential system at all.
Having grown up in the US and having blinders on, I always thought all those parliamentary systems seemed unstable and sometimes comical. But now I see the value in it. Once a leader has demonstrated he is not up to the task, has grown out-of-touch, or has descended into madness, he can be replaced by his party, and if that didn't happen, a no-confidence vote could trigger an election. No guarantee either of those things would happen, but the option exists. The fixed four-year term idea now seems artificial and inflexible.
I suspect the current US leader and maybe even the previous US leader (maybe in his 4th year) would have suddenly found himself a back-bencher.
Also, the ‘leader’ in a parliamentary system is simply a lot less powerful. The executive is the cabinet, not the PM. The PM usually appoints it, but the ministers don’t get to fall back on ‘just following orders’; they are very much using their own authority. And again there’s always the threat of replacement of PM and re-alignment. Realistically, the threat is more important than the thing itself.
I'm not sure if it's true that the leader is less powerful.
In many countries, it seems that the leader has near total control over candidate selection, and dissent is punished ruthlessly.
In the US, it's easier for a member of Congress to openly dissent against the President's agenda. This was a major thorn in the side for e.g. Joe Biden.
Some Republicans today fear dissenting (though of course, most are enthusiastically on board), but I'm not sure that it would be any different in a place like Canada or the UK.
> Having grown up in the US and having blinders on, I always thought all those parliamentary systems seemed unstable and sometimes comical.
There are so many different variables between countries, and plain luck, that it's tough to extrapolate too much, but this just jumped out a bit for me as a Canadian - the average Canadian PM term has historically been marginally longer than the average American Presidential time in office.
This would give congress much more power over the Executive branch. The justice department is run by the Executive branch. Congress's job is to legislate, not prosecute crimes. A president can be voted out or impeached if they do something bad.
It's not like campaigning and running elections are terribly hard these days. The AG (and other heads of independent executive departments) should be each their own races voted on by the public. (Yes, this obviously requires repudiating this new innovative brain damage called sparkling autocracy theory^W^W^W unitary executive theory.)
We also need Ranked Pairs voting so we end this two party duopoly bullshit. Primaries can remain, but voters should be able to vote in all parties' primaries (rather than having to pick just one).
We also need some sort of recall mechanism, either periodic option to vote no confidence (twice a year when elections/primaries are already held?), or something triggered when signatures/polling get high enough.
Since I'm making my Christmas list, we also need to drastically neuter sovereign and qualified immunity - remove their applicability for any action not explicitly authorized by the legislature (and Constitution). No more general "agents of the government" who unilaterally act with impunity, with only narrow legal ways of recovering damages.
But part of the difficulty that has precipitated our current situation is the absolute gridlock in Congress for the past twenty+ years. That's what pushed more and more power into the executive and executive agencies. I don't know if Ranked Pairs would be enough to fix that with fresh blood, or we need more direct democracy (voters can override their sen/rep vote on a bill?), or what. Maybe triple the number of sen/reps from each district so that voters won't feel they're losing their experienced politicians if they vote out the worst of the three.
I believe that if Trumpism is overthrown (because that's probably what it will take) there will be considerable effort to change the rules and set up strong constraints on the executive branch that cannot just be worked around by blowing past the guardrails. Trump exposed how weak the balance of powers actually is and how much it relies on (somewhat) good actors.
Glad to see future builders focusing on bureaucratic compliance first & foremost. It's a stirring vision. This is a great European VC on Twitter you may want to tag about your project, he invests solely in GDPR-compliant European tech https://x.com/compliantvc
I'm pretty sure you're replying to a comment which itself was supposed to be a parody. The "focusing on bureaucratic compliance first & foremost" seems to be something of a tell.
Why do people persist in repeating this dumb meme? Tyler Cowen, who should really know better, does it too. To be profitable shorting, you have to not only be right about the direction of the market but you have to time it precisely. Shorting is not 'I think the market is going to decline at some point in the future', or else we'd all do it.
You're borrowing to short, and your broker can call your loan at any time for any reason or no reason at all, including 'our risk algos felt nervous this afternoon'. If you try to short a stock or ETF and the market surges in a dead cat bounce before declining, you get completely wiped out even if you're going to be eventually right
no, neither of you are right. to short you just need to buy ATM puts. while technically not the classical short, if you believe it's downhill from there, this will pay.
get ATM into 2028dec and you're good if it crashes.
I going to defend Zoltan here and say the comment they responded to had about the same level of thought. "I read the market is overvalued" is no different than asking about short positions. I've been reading about the market being overvalued for like a decade at this point, meanwhile we've had the longest bull market in history. I feel for all the people who have been sitting cash all this time because they heard somewhere things were overvalued.
The train of thought is
1. The economy is making me nervous.
2. You're right to be nervous.
3. Then what are your short positions, since you're so smart?
It's their private property, they can ban or promote any ideas that they want to. You're free to not use their property if you disagree with that.
If 'silencing people' doesn't work- so online platforms aren't allowed to remove anything? Is there any limit to this philosophy? So you think platforms can't remove:
Holocaust denial?
Clothed underage content? Reddit banned r/jailbait, but you think that's impermissible? How about clothed pictures of toddlers but presented in a sexual context? It would be 'silencing' if a platform wanted to remove that from their private property?
Bomb or weapons-making tutorials?
Dangerous fads that idiotic kids pass around on TikTok, like the blackout game? You're saying it's not permissible for a platform to remove dangerous instructionals specifically targeted at children?
How about spam? Commercial advertising is legally speech in the US. Platforms can't remove the gigantic quantities of spam they suffer from every day?
Where's the limiting principle here? Why don't we just allow companies to set their own rules on their own private property, wouldn't that be a lot simpler?
I used to believe this. But I feel more and more we need to promote a culture of free speech that goes beyond the literal first amendment. We have to tolerate weird and dangerous ideas.
Refuting does not work... You can throw scientific study upon study, doctor upon doctor, ... negatives run deeper then positives.
In the open, it becomes normalized, it draws in more people. Do you rather have some crazies in the corner, or 50% of a population that believes something false, as it became normalized.
The only people benefiting from those dark concepts are those with financial gains. They make money from it, and push the negatives to sell their products and cures. Those that fight against it, do not gain from it and it cost them time/money. That is why is a losing battle.
> It's their private property, they can ban or promote any ideas that they want to. You're free to not use their property if you disagree with that.
1) They are public corporations and are legal creation of the state and benefit from certain protections of the state. They also have privileged access to some public infrastructures that other private companies do not have.
2) By acting on the behest of the government they were agent of the government for free speech and censorship purposes
3) Being monopolies in their respective markets, this means they must respect certain obligations the same way public utilities have.
Re: 1- one certain protection of the state that they benefit from is the US Constitution, which as interpreted so far forbids the government to impair their free speech rights. Making a private actor host content they personally disagree with violates their right of free speech! That's what the 1st Amendment is all about
The 6–3 majority determined that neither the states nor other respondents had standing under Article III, reversing the Fifth Circuit decision.
In law, standing or locus standi is a condition that a party seeking a legal remedy must show they have, by demonstrating to the court, sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party's participation in the case.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the opinion, stating: "To establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a government defendant and redressable by the injunction they seek. Because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction."
The Supreme Court did not say that what was done was legal, they only said that the people who were asking for the injunction and bringing the lawsuit could not show how they were being or going to be hurt.
1. By accepting unique protections and benefice of and from the state, they are no longer entirely private.
2. See comments below. It doesn't say what you think it says.
3. Google has a quasi monopoly (it doesn't require having full control) and abused it with YouTube with its search result. While it's true that it's not YT entirely by itself.
How about "If the content isn't illegal, then the government shouldn't pressure private companies to censor/filter/ban ideas/speech"?
And yes, this should apply to everything from criticizing vaccines, denying election results, being woke, being not woke, or making fun of the President on a talk show.
Not saying every platform needs to become like 4chan, but if one wants to be, the feds shouldn't interfere.
What is Youtube a 'near monopoly' in? Online video.....? Do you have any idea how much video there is online that's not on Youtube? They don't meet the legal definition of a monopoly
>the journey to modern democracies involved centuries of concessions by kings to the emerging middle classes
Eh, sort of disagree. The journey to modern democracy started with centuries of concessions by kings, first to other nobles (Magna Carta, etc.) Then, to other local power brokers like large landowners, business elites, etc. None of these parties wanted one single figure to have absolute power over their affairs & finances, mostly because they tended to make terrible decisions (random wars, taxation, and so on). Early proto-parliamentary systems in the UK, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Japan in the 19th century etc. were just a council of local, powerful elites who wanted to check the power of the king. The 'middle class' part came absolutely last
Fun fact, but there's essentially zero correlation between income inequality & wealth inequality- and the Nordics have some of the highest wealth inequality in the world. For example in 2019 by Gini coefficient, the most unequal countries in the world were #1 the Netherlands, #2 Russia, #3 Sweden, and #4 the United States (with Denmark coming in at #8). The data is clearly pretty noisy, but as far as I can see Sweden was again more unequal than the US in 2021:
Meanwhile Southern Europe has reasonably high income inequality, but not much wealth inequality. Just kind of an underdiscussed piece, especially as many people like to issue catastrophic warnings about how wealth inequality destroys a society- then quickly change the subject when you note that the Nordics are more unequal than America
> many people like to issue catastrophic warnings about how wealth inequality destroys a society- then quickly change the subject when you note that the Nordics are more unequal than America
A missing piece of the puzzle may be regulatory capture and a strong political/legal structure that resists the worst ambitions of cruel people whether they be wealthy or poor.
You can think of wealth like the potential energy of a spring under tension. If used properly it is capable of powering the most amazing and intricate social mechanisms but if poorly regulated it destroys social fabric and the well being of every day people.
Things like Citizens United and lobbyists representing cruel wealthy interests running unchecked over American democracy are examples of the socially destructive potential energy of wealth.
I'm also curious if there's a selection pressure in play where the more cruel wealthy people in the Nordic countries move to the US because they see more opportunity to make money and be cruel in that environment while wealthy people who have some affinity with their nation and the people of it choose to remain and don't or can't lobby for terribly antisocial policies.
People need to start getting specific about their grievances. It’s not inequality per se. People don’t care if some people have more than them. There are specific concrete things.
For Americans the big ones are: a health problem can destroy your life and your life’s savings, housing costs are too high, and college is too expensive and leaves people in debt.
Housing, health care, and tuition.
Two out of three of those are better in Europe, mostly: health care and college costs. They are better even if things are on paper more unequal.
High housing costs are a disease across the entire developed world.
> It’s not inequality per se. People don’t care if some people have more than them.
Actually it is. Inequality has been correlated with high crime, lower life expectancy and lower health (even for the rich subsection of the population, compared to a more equal country). In your example, high housing cost entrenches inequality and gives generational wealth a leg up.
Trying to make a country good but inequal is like trying to push water uphill.
High housing costs are a disease of major cities in the developing world; there's plenty of places where housing is quite affordable. Yes, many of these places are at least semi-rural, but this no longer much of a limitation, seeing as high-bandwidth Internet is now available literally anywhere on the planet.
We didn't have any meaningful primaries in the last presidential election. The elites picked their candidates for a token vote by the people. Third parties are actively suppressed by those same elites.
Smaller state and local elections are better, but that's not where the power or money goes.
Getting specific allows people to go after their specific problems with pragmatic solutions.
The top poster was highlighting the fact that there are societies that are just as unequal (or worse) but better on many of these fronts. That doesn’t mean inequality is good. It means that it’s not a single underlying cause, and it’s not that simple.
Refusing to get specific leads to hand wavey populist demagoguery. In this case it leads to a broad unfocused crusade against “elites” and “the rich” that history shows often morphs into fascism (lots of Bernie voters went MAGA) or results in policies that land broadly on the middle and upper middle class and often spare the truly rich. Usually the result is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, since it’s easy to be a demagogue and pound the table about vague “underlying causes” without doing anything but virtue signaling and dog whistling to the base. No specifics means no KPIs for politicians, nothing to hold them accountable.
If you elect someone on a platform of making housing, health care, and tuition affordable and those things don’t become affordable, it’s hard to weasel out of that with posturing and bullshit.
>history shows often morphs into fascism (lots of Bernie voters went MAGA)
This is FUD that is very specifically DNC coded. The extremely plutocratic DNC-linked propaganda outlets that fed this absolute nonsense peddled all sorts of other nonsense conspiracy theories too (e.g. Russiagate, not that that one did them any good...).
Every single one of the DNC supporters implicitly backed fascism and Nazi-style genocide in Gaza by lending their support to the same DNC that backed it (even if they did not agree with it).
Again, plutocracy at work.
They paved the way for the equally depraved MAGA fascism that supplanted them. Trying to pin it instead on a bunch of powerless progressives, some of whom voted for "not more of the same shit" plumbs the very deepest wells of moral depravity. It is deeply shameful.
> I'm also curious if there's a selection pressure in play where the more cruel wealthy people in the Nordic countries move to the US
That's an interesting thought! It would make sense that the people who care less about others and more about themselves would find it easier and more beneficial to leave. I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on the wealth, personality traits and political views of the people who leave.
>How do you even "consume" wealth, assuming the wealth is more significant than a few millions in the bank.
"A few millions in the bank" for hundreds of thousands or million of people would already make a nordic country the king of lesser inequality - unless (as the parent says, don't know it's true) it's tied up in company assets (and perhaps they use them as company perks even in one-person companies, to avoid the tax, thus masking better equality at the individual level).
I suppose the person means that you have to pay about 50% in taxes to take out the capital/profit from the company before you can use it as a private person.
This type of comparison needs to add corporate income tax (20%) in order to be an apples to apples comparison,so 27.5. It's still a stark difference in taxation, and I know of no other country that does what Finland does for dividend taxation. In fact for earned income,things look even uglier when you add in tax-like social security contributions.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Finnish companies are also an outlier in paying extremely high dividends.
In Norway it's 37.8%. Though you do get "skjermingsrente" (about the same rate as the central bank rate) on the amount you originally invested (ie.: not on any untaxed gains you've had).
Doesn't mean it isn't done. The Lego family was caught flying their private jet all over the world so they sold it and now have exclusive renting rights to a plane in a hangar operated by another company.
There is a strict separation between business and personal consumption.
If the Lego family uses business jets to go on vacation, then they need to 1) pay market rate for using the jets and 2) pay full income taxes, VAT etc.
Anyhow, when you are rich enough this tripling in cost does not really matter - but it does reflect in the income equality statistics.
There’s that study that found Italian families who were wealthy during the renaissance are still wealthy.
Sweden had a very powerful monarchy (the dominant Baltic power at one point) and an aristocracy but never a revolution. I’d expect a lot of wealth inequality based on inherited wealth.
A number of articles and at least one well-known study have been published highlighting the fact that the ranks of the wealthiest landowning families in Britain are nearly unchanged since Norman times — e.g. https://www.medievalists.net/2014/11/englands-1-remained-sin...
Sweden's wealth inequality was initiated by Thirty Years' War and The Deluge and then only accumulated not impacted by any violent revolution or brutal invasion.
The Deluge didn't cause wealth inequality in Sweden. Some military leaders were, during Swedish wars, rewarded with increased land holdings, but these were later reduced. Sweden's wealth was also created late. Sweden was a poor country until the early 1900eds.
One thing to note is that the idealized Sweden and many benefits remain because we had a much lower wealth inequality 30 years ago but (mainly) right-wing governments have been very "successful" at removing the barriers that kept the wealth inequality low.
- Inheritance tax was abolished in 2005
- Wealth taxation was abolished in 2007
- "income tax reduction" was initiated in 2007
Meanwhile our schools have gotten larger classes and worse results, especially the income tax reduction was insidious since it was a nationally mandated tax reduction that mainly hits the tax revenue of cities and regions (ie, political entities that had no part in the laws that lowered their tax revenue).
Basically, Sweden has been speed-running into re-making our society into a mini-US and even surpassed the US in some regards.
Sweden 2025 isn't the same as in 1985, and policies enacted around 2005 are the ones that are really starting to hit with their secondary effects today (Iirc Denmark has had fairly many right-wing governments over this period as well).
I did notice once that IKEA's governance scheme looked like an unusually sophisticated anti-tax structure. It now makes sense why the Swedes would be really interested in dodging taxes.
SAAB is publicly traded, however a majority(or nearly) of voting shares are held more or less directly by the Wallenberg family, they have investment/"power companies" as well as their family foundation(s) and control quite a few major companies here.
I live in Denmark. I am Danish. Too many people nurse fantasies of the Nordics as some kind of socialist utopia.
The fact is Denmark grows more corrupt by the day. They keep pushing the retirement age so I will be working until I'm 72. Healthcare quality has been dropping for more than 40 years now. The wealthy own the majority of land. We are currently home to a government that is leading the EU in its push for a surveillance mandate that is frankly terrifying in its scope. That same government pushed through the most garbage mega-project I have personally ever witnessed—that we the taxpayers are supposed to fund—despite voter outcry. Digital tenders get sold in backroom deals to a single company that is so ethically bankrupt they've been called out numerous times for workplace violations by our unions.
We're all fucked in the global slide toward authoritarianism and the wealthy's capture of the world economy. And while they get fat supping on our labor we're at each other's throats for who can be crowned the greatest victim.
It's unlikely you will have any retirement except your own savings, as the unfunded pension funds start to collapse globally. Maybe Danish is different but you can check from local sources.
I think it will be ok due to two factors. One even if funds go bust care of old people is basically done by young people chipping in and helping and that can go on. Two, regarding aging populations, against that we'll have AI and robots doing stuff before most people retire.
>One even if funds go bust care of old people is basically done by young people chipping in and helping and that can go on.
If you mean "young people" in general, the fertility rate ensures they'll be less and less, and thus a heavier and heavier burdern to chip in for older people.
If you mean young people that are family, an increased (over 30%) number of old people won't have children or will have estranged children, and no help.
As for "AI and robots" don't bet on those either. It takes people to maintain an economy and an infrastructure that makes and deploys robots at any significant scale, and those will be scarce, and the demographic hit will make both productivity and consumption contract too. Societies increasingly can't even fix potholes and basic public services.
You don't have to extrapolate that much improvement for them to start having an impact and I imagine factories in China will churn them out like they do most other tech.
Whether or not there are enough young people does not matter.
The plan was to have fully funded pensions, bootstrapping them after the start. You cannot have infinite growth any case, as eventually we run out of space and resources. It must come to end at some decade.
However funding pensions full was never executed. It was too easy for politicians not to pass taxes, social benefit costs and such to do this, because boomers would have complained decades ago when they were still in the fullest earning potential.
So it does matter. Contracting economy, aging population, worse social dynamisc, political and institutional inertia, productivity drops, etc. Robots aren't going to offset but a tiny part of this.
And between payroll taxes and the fact that stocks, 401ks, etc depend on economic growth, things will turn real shitty...
> Two, regarding aging populations, against that we'll have AI and robots doing stuff before most people retire.
We also have immigration against that. Lots of people in their late 10s or early 20s ready to start contributing to the economy. But most western countries have to much right wing populism going on to realize that that's a solution and work on proper integration efforts. Easier to pull the criminal foreigners card and collect votes at the next election.
I've been heavily saving for retirement from the day I started working, and approaching FIRE before 40 (living in the Nordics). I've been telling some close friends that even if they don't aim for early retirement, they need to at least have a backup option for regular retirement, but they can't seem to sympathize enough with their 70 year old self who is forced to keep working. And who is going to hire a 70 year old human in 30 years? What economic value could they possibly provide in 2055?
Everyone here needs to make money and save everything they can right now. If you're not saving 50%+ of your income you AGMI
I can tell from Germany, maybe some will hire, because unless they can replace workers with robots, like it is happening in some supermarkets, they will get whatever they can.
It doesn't come up often, but I have seen a decent amount of 70+ people doing what they can, as cashiers, kiosks, hospitals, doctor offices, bus drivers,...or in general any job where youth isn't into applying for learning on the job, or even so where demand isn't getting fulfilled.
> I can tell from Germany, maybe some will hire, because unless they can replace workers with robots, like it is happening in some supermarkets, they will get whatever they can.
No, they will do what they have done in the last 20 years which is import people from the middle-east or northern Africa to do the jobs and pay them the lowest wage possible.
My wife works in healthcare in Sweden and more than 50% of the people who work on the hospital wards/in age care these days are either newly arrived migrants or descendants of recent migrants.
Unfortunately most of these people are under-qualified, barely speak Swedish but they are cheap.
That puts a lot of pressure to keep the wages of everyone down because they keep bringing more and more people from abroad. This isn't even a fix because as soon as they get their permanent residencies or citizenship (for the ones who do not have it), these people move on to something else because the jobs are just awful with long hours on your feet and being treated like a servant by the patients/residents.
Unfortunately that is why many European countries are going back to a reality I thought it was gone, back when I was a kid, being the first generation being born after carnation revolution.
This is not going to work forever. Eventually conditions can get bad enough that upper middle class MENA people won't prefer a lower class European position.
>I can tell from Germany, maybe some will hire, because unless they can replace workers with robots, like it is happening in some supermarkets, they will get whatever they can.
What's more likely going forward is that they'll downscale their operations in a contracting economy, than hire 70 years olds or needing robots for the same jobs. And if it needs be, they'll get immigrants for most jobs.
I said a good overview. Many experts have given their analysis on why Lynetteholmen sucks including environmental scientists [1]. The very fact that the environmental assessments were done piecemeal [2] plainly demonstrates the politicians responsible for this mega-project disaster knew exactly how bad it was.
Supporting Ukraine against Moscovite aggression is important for all of Europe. Otherwise next they will come for other countries in Europe, as proven by them many times before.
This is extremely little money compare to the alternative.
Irish person here. We feel it is important to support the international rule of law. Big countries should not be allowed to invade and take their smaller neighbours. Due to our history we are very sensitive to imperialism.
But you should be aware that russian foreign policy is not decided in the television. TV propaganda serves internal purposes. And there is a policy and strategy on Kremlin, not just crazy evil Putin trying to destroy the world of Good.
Contrary to hysteric media narrative, decision makers in Kremlin are not mad, crazy or whatever, and believing this brings more harm than good. Russia isn't strong enough to seriously threaten Western Europe, and they are aware of it. Moreover, they have not much to gain by trying to conquer Lisbon versus monstrous costs they would need to bear, even if we ignore the fact they wouldn't be able to not only reach Lisbon, but Berlin as well. Europe is no longer a center of the world, regardless if we like it or not.
That doesn't mean Russia cannot harm interests of countries of Western Europe, carry out sabotage acts, sow and fuel internal strife etc. They can, and they do. But it is not an existential threat.
Whats the endgame of the "Russia isn't quite as bad/powerful/ambitious as you think, just let them take Ukraine" posture though?
Where do the Baltics and Poland stand in such a scenario? And in 5-20 years when they've encroached there, what of Germany? Do we let them just slowly digest Eastern Europe all over again?
Eh, I always forget it is kinda pointless to discuss politics here.
Never stated that they should just take Ukraine, or they are not "as bad". And please spare me lectures about lingering doom of the Easter Europe - I live in Poland, 20 km from the Ukrainian border. I am aware of stakes, especially considering idiocy of my government.
What I objected to is a proposition that "Europe" is some political monolith, and all countries here are equally threatened by Russia. Some European countries are under serious threat (mine among them), others are less threatened, and some are not threatened in any serious manner.
Lack of understanding this causes people to be constantly surprised that things look as they look.
I am more surprised by the reaction of Hungary than Portugal's reaction. They gave even been invaded by Soviets.
The other commenter from Ireland had a good point about rule based world order. And Ukraine has received a lot of help in particular from Canada but also from Australia.
But not enough to actually help them win the war, and why? Because stakes are not high enough for Canada or Australia. The same is true for countries I listed before. Poland for example is different - stakes are very high, but we are governed by morons and worms.
Obviously many countries see it beneficial to prevent Russia from reaching its goals, because that's how international politics work, especially when everything became global, but it doesn't mean they are threatened by it or they would be invaded if Ukraine falls.
The hope that punishing Russia for breaking rules would in any way prevent others from trying the same in the future is naive. For rules to be respected in a particular moment of history, there has to be a force that is able to effectively enforce those rules in that particular moment of history. Without it any punishment that happened in past will not matter.
As for Hungary - Orban is very good player. inb4 no, I wouldn't like to live in Hungary, but that doesn't prevent me from appreciating political skill.
I actually don't understand what you are trying to say in any of your posts. There are lots of words, nitpicks about saying "all of Europe" when some countries are less affected than others, "I am from Poland" "out government are morons" without saying how. "Canada themselves does not give Ukraine enough to win the war" "Orban is a good player".
You are saying lots of things but there is no coherency, no strategy, no alternatives.
> there's essentially zero correlation between income inequality & wealth inequality
Out of curiosity, how is this measured, and is it due to mega rich people not having taxable incomes? Do you have a source for this? Certainly there must be some correlation between making money have having it…
> Just kind of an underdiscussed piece, especially as many people like to issue catastrophic warnings about how wealth inequality destroys a society- then quickly change the subject when you note that the Nordics are more unequal than America
Ask someone from the Nordics about housing prices. Do you think they’ll change the subject?
The link you shared has data from 2021, which looks completely different than what you shared - and Sweden comes at 12th, but all the other nordic countries are buried way down in the ranking. It's frankly very hard to believe that the nordic countries are more unequal than America when it comes to income, wealth, well-being or pretty much any statistic you can think of.
There is a asterisk in the table that says that the numbers are a mix between wealth inequality and income inequality. I think it makes it very volatile and hard to interpret.
> Fun fact, but there's essentially zero correlation between income inequality & wealth inequality- and the Nordics have some of the highest wealth inequality in the world.
If there's so little correlation between income inequality and wealth inequality, why are we even supposed to care about wealth inequality? That wealth is essentially frozen in place. It's hopefully being invested in sensible ways, but no one sensible is going to spend it down anytime soon. The thing with wealth is that once you spend it, it's gone for good - so wealth accumulation, especially on any kind of multi-generational scale, tends to be associated with remarkable frugality.
This take seems to take "wealth" in a Disney Scrooge McDuck cartoon way - having "money". That is not what the truly wealthy have though. Their wealth expressed in terms of money is an abstraction. What they really have is control over real assets. I deliberately say "control", because that is what counts, and ownership is not even that important, often many times indirect, sometimes not even that.
The most direct money-equivalent is passive money generating assets like papers with a direct money value, instead of a real world asset. The important stuff is in the real world though, even those papers rely on that.
Owning a money generating real world asset like a successful company is not the same as having some bank account worth half a billion. The disadvantage, the company can go broke. The advantage though is that it generates a stream of money for as long as you manage to keep the business running successfully.
Here is the point where many "let's redistribute wealth" - something I'm certainly not against - fail: How would you redistribute ownership of companies? I don't see a good outcome of handing control over a company from few hands to many hands. They'll turn into manager-led enterprises and will have less entrepreneurship. Everything becomes a public company, and then wealth will re-concentrate into few hands over time anyway, because only few people are really into this kind of thing and thinking.
Instead, there needs to be someway to make it possible for many more people to get reliable incomes, instead of having a lot of control over the economy and the streams of money among few. Getting a bunch of money of assets will not help most people, only for a short time, until those few who love that kind of thing require most assets over time.
The prevailing view among the elites seems to be though that the economy needs most people dependent and mostly broke, to force them into the workplaces of the corporations at - for them - low enough cost (salaries).
The solution can't be though to break up either the firms or even just the ownership. Ownership by committee is unlikely to be successful. The large corps, when they even have a really well-distributed ownership, and not just a few core owners and a large tail of mini-owners with no real power, are not a model that all companies and organizations can or should follow.
> What they really have is control over real assets. I deliberately say "control", because that is what counts, and ownership is not even that important, often many times indirect, sometimes not even that.
Control is fungible to a large extent. If a company is badly run, someone can launch a takeover bid and get that control for themselves. All that matters is that they're generally expected to do better at running the company, so that it's more likely to generate money in the long run and less likely to do broke.
It also matters that they have access to the money to do the takeover. That can happen in many ways but generally requires they have at least a few percent of it themselves, which for most companies and most people is way out of reach.
(Also with a privately owned company there's not really any means to do this in a hostile manner)
Low correlation (if that’s even true) isn’t a reason not to care about wealth inequality, that’s silly. It might be a reason we should focus more on wealth inequality than income inequality, but it’s pretty naive to frame wealth as “frozen” with the only options being spend, save, or invest. The definition of capitalism is that wealth begets more wealth; capital is the fuel and the leverage to claim profits. One might call that “invest”, but that’s misleading and you’ve downplayed it. There’s a broad array of ways for the wealthy to leverage wealth in order to collect more. You can use it to start companies. You can use it to buy other people’s companies. You can borrow against it to get loans for money you can spend without paying taxes. You can influence politics and business in many ways to lean conditions to favor your own investments and thwart others. That’s just to name a few, there are lots more. Having wealth without “spending” it still buys incomes, influence, power, and more wealth.
Given that having wealth earns money and accumulates wealth faster than not having wealth, believing that multi-generational wealth is somehow frugal is pretty funny to me. Sure spending looks “frugal” when your spending is offset by a passive income, when you have so much money you can opulently buy anything you want in the world and it doesn’t even put a dent in your interest income. The mega rich sometimes put their purchases (planes, yachts, mansions) to work earning money. They have a large set of options that they use in practice for enjoying their wealth while paying dramatically lower taxes. Other words that could replace your used of frugal are ‘incentivized’, ‘unfair’, and ‘greedy’. The multi-generational billionaires certainly are not living like paupers nor pinching pennies.
Some confounding factors against comparing income inequality and wealth inequality are that rich people tend to report very low incomes, which is well known and part of the way they get around taxes. For the middle class who is not going to pass on multi-generational wealth, in countries where taxes are high and the social safety net is large, it might make sense to not accumulate. For the middle classes, income is what you care about before you retire, and wealth is what you care about after retiring. If post-retirement living is covered, and if inheritance taxes are high, it might well make the most sense to spend income & share money with family before retiring.
> ...You can borrow against it to get loans for money you can spend without paying taxes. ...
Are you assuming that loans don't need to be paid back at some point? What you're listing is ways of either investing wealth (that is, using it productively to make more wealth - which is far from easy or free of risk) or spending it down. Some ways of spending wealth down may be tax-advantaged in some locales, but this is offset by the fact that taxing income places an extra tax burden on the time-based and precautionary value of that same accumulated wealth. I.e. wealth that's being invested in a risky, long-term venture is in fact quite heavily taxed.
The rough tax avoidance strategy here is to take out loans with your assets as collateral, and keep rolling those loans forward until you die, at which point they can be paid off and then onto your heirs with relatively little tax. This doesn't give you access to all of your wealth as cash (since the collateral is risky so you need to put up some amount more than you're borrowing), but what you do get you get without paying anywhere near as much tax, the interest on such loans is very low, and you still keep control of whatever asset you're borrowing against and whatever gains/income it might produce.
> Are you assuming that loans don’t need to be paid back at some point?
No, what I said is you don’t have to pay taxes on those loans. Obviously a loan is paid back. The tax avoidance scheme here is that a loan is not income and you can use held stock (that hasn’t been taxed) as collateral for short term loans.
> this is offset by the fact that taxing income places an extra tax burden on the time-based and precautionary value of that same accumulated wealth.
Not sure what you’re referring to. Again, the mega rich often don’t have significant “incomes” from a taxation point of view, regardless of how much money they make or spend.
Adam Tooze's grandfather was one of the most notorious Soviet moles/traitors in British history, so I guess I don't find it surprising that he's found a new Communist regime to hang his hat on. (For anyone saying 'he can't choose his family'- Tooze famously dedicated his first book in effusive praise for his grandfather)
