The truth is that we incentivize the Weinsteins of the world because we tell them that it's okay to do these things so long as they have the money and power to silence their victims or beat them in court. Forget Weinstein, this has literally been Trump's mode of operation since the 1980's and all we ever did about it was roll our collect…
The truth is that we incentivize the Weinsteins of the world because we tell them that it's okay to do these things so long as they have the money and power to silence their victims or beat them in court. Forget Weinstein, this has literally been Trump's mode of operation since the 1980's and all we ever did about it was roll our collective eyes until that one time he came down that golden escalator.
If you don't punish excessive wealth, you encourage the concentration of it by showing men in each generation *exactly* how much they can get away with if they can afford the right lawyers and big cash settlements to victims that are like pocket change for these guys. Much in the same way that American cities deal with bad cop problems by paying off the families of innocent victims killed by police, we deal with the victims of rape and sexual harassment by having their abusers pay them off and then we call that justice. Well, if money can absolve even the most vile sins, then why not just become rich and then do whatever the fuck you want to do within the limits of the two-tier system? We're telling them exactly what they can get away with over and over and over again. We let them accrue wealth to insane amounts for said legal protections to pay off victims with, and then we get collectively upset when they keep doing it all over again? Like, PEOPLE, you can't fix the rich men problem without getting rid of the exorbitant amounts of wealth just like you can't fix the gun problem without getting rid of the exorbitant amount of guns.
Keep licking the boots of the rich folks. I promise, it's going to fix all of these problems just like you want it to.
Amazing that the "primitive" 19th century farmers and rural folks as well as city folks knew had bad it was to concentrate wealth in the hands of wealthy - Rockefellers, Carnegies, etc. Yet our so-called enlightened peoples are handing the rich whatever they want, including our lives and souls.
18th century too. There's a reason the state capitols of the original colonies were often far from their industrial centers. Albany, Harrisburg, Trenton, Annapolis, etc. Don't put the politicians right next to the richest people in their state.
As the Chinese communists discovered, when the opportunity to work to better your situation is removed, people don't work. Communes produced their government-required quota, and no more, because there was no motivation to work any harder. Probably the number -one motivator is the opportunity to work toward a better life to pass on to the kids and grand kids.
Exactly how much should people be allowed to accumulate and pass on? How much is enough? If you go to a website like Bigger Pockets, according to them it is impossible to have enough. The website encourages people to build bigger and bigger real estate portfolios. Trump's tax law doubled the amount from $5.5 million to $11 million before even a dollar of estate tax kick in. This doubling will expire 2025 and drop back to $5.5 million. The vast majority of American are not licking anybody's boots and have zero to do with either civil or criminal penalties/pay-offs..
Money does not absolve sin. However, in many cases, restitution is the only practical relief for the victim.
As an aside, I totally disagree with the contingency practice of lawyers taking a third of the judgement amount for themselves while leaving a pittance for the victims, especially in class action suits wherein after the award is divvied up to all members of the class, each individual member of the class, irrespective of the often much higher amount of damages actually suffered by the individual.
I do not think the rich should be punished or scapegoated. Hasn't MAGA taught all of America the societal destructiveness of scapegoating any group. However, the rich should not be allowed various tax loopholes to hide money and avoid taxes. Even though the obscenely wealthy pay 90% of all income tax collected, as a percentage of their income, they boast they pay little to no income tax regardless of tax brackets. We need broad financial policies to prevent the relentless redistribution from the bottom to the top, not punishment., and not destruction of motivation.
By today's standards, nobody needs to have a net worth in excess of $2 million (all assets) to support even a large and well-blessed family. If you need two houses, half a million in stocks, and all of your kids to go through the best schools in the country, chances are you're over-doing it at the expense of everyone else. Live within the means of normalcy. Getting excessive and going decadent is a drain on all of society and it depletes our culture. I'm sure you'll be here to defend families with more than $2M though. Tell me how people need a shot at getting three homes in order to work hard, as if hard work should be reduced to the excessive spoils one can rake in. Trust me, plenty of working class people would be satisfied busting their asses at whatever for far less than these spoiled rich kids apparently drool over. But go ahead, defend greed in culture and the inequality it drives as a great thing.
Only about 6.25% of American households have a net worth of $2,000,000. Not a lot people with the money to make the whole society decadent according to your own standard. A lot of retirement calculators are worthless because 1) they fail to include inflation in their estimates. 2) they overestimate the percentage of annual yield on retirement savings, and 3) they fail to account for the large increase in medical expenses as retirees age. $2,000,000 is likely what you will need in retirement savings to live modestly until age 95. Among all adults, median retirement savings are $65,000, according to the Federal Reserve’s most recent data from 2019. The Fed estimated that by retirement, that number would grow to an average of $255,200. It is not that our society is decadent. The problem is that for a country that claims to be the richest on earth, most of its residents will retire without enough for even a modest retirement.
6.25% is 20.6M people. And again, when you look at the top 10%, that number isn't too far off. It was my highball number to give room to be honest, and I'd rather cap it at $1.5M net worth. That get us closer to 10%?
If you simply put your savings into index funds your money will grow on average 10% year over year, which is more than enough to beat inflation. Index funds also have an insanely low managing fee because they are automated, so you're not chopping off 0.9% for the fund manager who probably doesn't even beat the market. If your job matches up to 5% put away 7-10% of your pay check into their 401k and then take whatever else you can put into short term savings plus some money for index funds each money. Between that and making sure you get into home ownership as early as possible, and hopefully you buy somewhere smart, people would live comfortably without going overboard. Do that, don't drive a ridiculous car, and don't live for excess and you'll probably be fine. People who need more than $1.5M for they household these days are living in excess. If they didn't, the cost of living would be a lot more affordable. Sprinkle that 10% of Americans (some 33M people) across every major metro in the country and ask yourself what it does to the cost of living for everyone else. There's a reason the most expensive coastal cities are bleeding middle class residents into other states, and part of that is because of the cost of living going up do to the most decadent households in said cities.
The point is the rest of society, that is 90- 93.75%, by your standard, are not the decadent rich.
Yes, of course, the best plan is to put your savings in a broad index fund, such as SP500. Avoid the boutique "index" funds that have sprung up. And yes historically if you simply leave it it alone, your savings should average 10%. However, even if you do all that individual results vary. If your working life happened to comprise the years from say 1968-2008, and you were invested in a broad market fund the whole time, your growth for the whole period was 11% or 0.3% year over year. I dealt with a large crowd of dismayed retirees in 2008 who (perhaps ill-advisedly in an effort to stem the bleeding) cashed in their broad market funds, and found they still had to pay tax--the deferred income tax on the principal and capital gains tax on that 11% gain.
You never know what segment of the full historical time frame your experience will fall in. That segment may be very different from the historical statistics. Furthermore, many economists say future yields have already been dragged in the present and may well depress historical yields for some time. Since 1965, homeownership rates have averaged only 66%. The "same as rent" part (property tax, insurance, utilities, maintenance) you pay even if you own your typical 3/2 house free and clear increases every year, and is roughly tracks comparably to average rent for a one-bedroom apartment.
You make a number of assumptions that can basically be summarized as if all the stars align, a $1.5million net worth at retirement might suffice. Contingency planning calls for making sure there is a cushion in case all the stars do not align. If all you have in $1.5million after a working life of 40 years, you don't have that much a certainly not enough to spend your retirement years living "decadently." However, admittedly you are likely to be better off than most Americans.
The expensive coastal cities are not bleeding middle class residents to other states. The vast majority move to another community in the same state. The poster child, California, had 83,000 net of exits and entrants, or just 0.2% of California's population. You are making a claim you have not supported about the so called decadence of the rich. Being in the upper 10% in net worth does not necessarily make a household decadent according to the usual definition of decadent, not Douthat's idiosyncratic definition.
In fact, the usual definition of decadence would include smoking weed, and what you characterized as free sex. Money definitely makes a decadent lifestyle easier to afford, that's all. It does not mean that having money equals living a decadent lifestyle.
The truth is that we incentivize the Weinsteins of the world because we tell them that it's okay to do these things so long as they have the money and power to silence their victims or beat them in court. Forget Weinstein, this has literally been Trump's mode of operation since the 1980's and all we ever did about it was roll our collective eyes until that one time he came down that golden escalator.
If you don't punish excessive wealth, you encourage the concentration of it by showing men in each generation *exactly* how much they can get away with if they can afford the right lawyers and big cash settlements to victims that are like pocket change for these guys. Much in the same way that American cities deal with bad cop problems by paying off the families of innocent victims killed by police, we deal with the victims of rape and sexual harassment by having their abusers pay them off and then we call that justice. Well, if money can absolve even the most vile sins, then why not just become rich and then do whatever the fuck you want to do within the limits of the two-tier system? We're telling them exactly what they can get away with over and over and over again. We let them accrue wealth to insane amounts for said legal protections to pay off victims with, and then we get collectively upset when they keep doing it all over again? Like, PEOPLE, you can't fix the rich men problem without getting rid of the exorbitant amounts of wealth just like you can't fix the gun problem without getting rid of the exorbitant amount of guns.
Keep licking the boots of the rich folks. I promise, it's going to fix all of these problems just like you want it to.
Amazing that the "primitive" 19th century farmers and rural folks as well as city folks knew had bad it was to concentrate wealth in the hands of wealthy - Rockefellers, Carnegies, etc. Yet our so-called enlightened peoples are handing the rich whatever they want, including our lives and souls.
18th century too. There's a reason the state capitols of the original colonies were often far from their industrial centers. Albany, Harrisburg, Trenton, Annapolis, etc. Don't put the politicians right next to the richest people in their state.
As the Chinese communists discovered, when the opportunity to work to better your situation is removed, people don't work. Communes produced their government-required quota, and no more, because there was no motivation to work any harder. Probably the number -one motivator is the opportunity to work toward a better life to pass on to the kids and grand kids.
Exactly how much should people be allowed to accumulate and pass on? How much is enough? If you go to a website like Bigger Pockets, according to them it is impossible to have enough. The website encourages people to build bigger and bigger real estate portfolios. Trump's tax law doubled the amount from $5.5 million to $11 million before even a dollar of estate tax kick in. This doubling will expire 2025 and drop back to $5.5 million. The vast majority of American are not licking anybody's boots and have zero to do with either civil or criminal penalties/pay-offs..
Money does not absolve sin. However, in many cases, restitution is the only practical relief for the victim.
As an aside, I totally disagree with the contingency practice of lawyers taking a third of the judgement amount for themselves while leaving a pittance for the victims, especially in class action suits wherein after the award is divvied up to all members of the class, each individual member of the class, irrespective of the often much higher amount of damages actually suffered by the individual.
I do not think the rich should be punished or scapegoated. Hasn't MAGA taught all of America the societal destructiveness of scapegoating any group. However, the rich should not be allowed various tax loopholes to hide money and avoid taxes. Even though the obscenely wealthy pay 90% of all income tax collected, as a percentage of their income, they boast they pay little to no income tax regardless of tax brackets. We need broad financial policies to prevent the relentless redistribution from the bottom to the top, not punishment., and not destruction of motivation.
By today's standards, nobody needs to have a net worth in excess of $2 million (all assets) to support even a large and well-blessed family. If you need two houses, half a million in stocks, and all of your kids to go through the best schools in the country, chances are you're over-doing it at the expense of everyone else. Live within the means of normalcy. Getting excessive and going decadent is a drain on all of society and it depletes our culture. I'm sure you'll be here to defend families with more than $2M though. Tell me how people need a shot at getting three homes in order to work hard, as if hard work should be reduced to the excessive spoils one can rake in. Trust me, plenty of working class people would be satisfied busting their asses at whatever for far less than these spoiled rich kids apparently drool over. But go ahead, defend greed in culture and the inequality it drives as a great thing.
You have completely misrepresented my views.
Only about 6.25% of American households have a net worth of $2,000,000. Not a lot people with the money to make the whole society decadent according to your own standard. A lot of retirement calculators are worthless because 1) they fail to include inflation in their estimates. 2) they overestimate the percentage of annual yield on retirement savings, and 3) they fail to account for the large increase in medical expenses as retirees age. $2,000,000 is likely what you will need in retirement savings to live modestly until age 95. Among all adults, median retirement savings are $65,000, according to the Federal Reserve’s most recent data from 2019. The Fed estimated that by retirement, that number would grow to an average of $255,200. It is not that our society is decadent. The problem is that for a country that claims to be the richest on earth, most of its residents will retire without enough for even a modest retirement.
6.25% is 20.6M people. And again, when you look at the top 10%, that number isn't too far off. It was my highball number to give room to be honest, and I'd rather cap it at $1.5M net worth. That get us closer to 10%?
If you simply put your savings into index funds your money will grow on average 10% year over year, which is more than enough to beat inflation. Index funds also have an insanely low managing fee because they are automated, so you're not chopping off 0.9% for the fund manager who probably doesn't even beat the market. If your job matches up to 5% put away 7-10% of your pay check into their 401k and then take whatever else you can put into short term savings plus some money for index funds each money. Between that and making sure you get into home ownership as early as possible, and hopefully you buy somewhere smart, people would live comfortably without going overboard. Do that, don't drive a ridiculous car, and don't live for excess and you'll probably be fine. People who need more than $1.5M for they household these days are living in excess. If they didn't, the cost of living would be a lot more affordable. Sprinkle that 10% of Americans (some 33M people) across every major metro in the country and ask yourself what it does to the cost of living for everyone else. There's a reason the most expensive coastal cities are bleeding middle class residents into other states, and part of that is because of the cost of living going up do to the most decadent households in said cities.
The point is the rest of society, that is 90- 93.75%, by your standard, are not the decadent rich.
Yes, of course, the best plan is to put your savings in a broad index fund, such as SP500. Avoid the boutique "index" funds that have sprung up. And yes historically if you simply leave it it alone, your savings should average 10%. However, even if you do all that individual results vary. If your working life happened to comprise the years from say 1968-2008, and you were invested in a broad market fund the whole time, your growth for the whole period was 11% or 0.3% year over year. I dealt with a large crowd of dismayed retirees in 2008 who (perhaps ill-advisedly in an effort to stem the bleeding) cashed in their broad market funds, and found they still had to pay tax--the deferred income tax on the principal and capital gains tax on that 11% gain.
You never know what segment of the full historical time frame your experience will fall in. That segment may be very different from the historical statistics. Furthermore, many economists say future yields have already been dragged in the present and may well depress historical yields for some time. Since 1965, homeownership rates have averaged only 66%. The "same as rent" part (property tax, insurance, utilities, maintenance) you pay even if you own your typical 3/2 house free and clear increases every year, and is roughly tracks comparably to average rent for a one-bedroom apartment.
You make a number of assumptions that can basically be summarized as if all the stars align, a $1.5million net worth at retirement might suffice. Contingency planning calls for making sure there is a cushion in case all the stars do not align. If all you have in $1.5million after a working life of 40 years, you don't have that much a certainly not enough to spend your retirement years living "decadently." However, admittedly you are likely to be better off than most Americans.
The expensive coastal cities are not bleeding middle class residents to other states. The vast majority move to another community in the same state. The poster child, California, had 83,000 net of exits and entrants, or just 0.2% of California's population. You are making a claim you have not supported about the so called decadence of the rich. Being in the upper 10% in net worth does not necessarily make a household decadent according to the usual definition of decadent, not Douthat's idiosyncratic definition.
In fact, the usual definition of decadence would include smoking weed, and what you characterized as free sex. Money definitely makes a decadent lifestyle easier to afford, that's all. It does not mean that having money equals living a decadent lifestyle.