crossbody

What happens if large cohort of Boomers retires and stop working, instead living on their savings? Labor share of income drops. If you remove this effect, the labor share of income is flat - confirmed by last week's analysis in The Economist.

True, makes total sense for kids

Sounds like a fun project.

Honest question: why would one switch from a much more capable "carry everywhere" smartphone camera to this? Especially since phone is truly carry always & everywhere and that computational processing squeezes out insane amount of photo quality from already excellent phone cameras.

It doesn't negate the influence gain, however the Putin and Trump examples show that this influence is often (very) limited and short lived, not "tremendous"

How massive relative to everything else in the economy that is not zero sum? 1%?

Also, disagree on options and futures market. They do provide important economoc function of price discovery and insurance against risk

Can't see that far... All seems flat to me

Yes, people are getting wealthier in real terms, including the poor. Especially if you quantify it the right way: absolute consumption/expenditures, not relative % from median income (relative count will always show there are poor people even if they would appear insanely "rich" to a poor person from 100 years ago or from Afghanistan).

On lived experience: my lived experience tells me the Earth is flat.

How much bending is actually happening vs just hypotheticals thought? Elon Musk donated a lot and then suddenly Big Beautiful Bill hit Tesla very hard. Doesn't sound like he got a favor paid back. Also, not that we should emulate Russia (not at all) but since 2000s there any oligarch trying to do anything political goes to jail or "falls out of their window". So possible in principle to remove the influence (I don't approve of the method though).

Sure, HTF is zero sum. I just think that focus on it is excessive. 99.9% of businesses are not. Regret would be nice to include in consideration but I doubt one can reliably measure it in practice

I just see political influence as separate issue. Make sure they cannot lobby/donate (prison if they do) and problem solved.

Why being tangiable so important? E.g. a billionare made it on physical music CD cs one made it on music streaming? As long as it's legal, why prioritize physical form?

And I agree that _some_ redistribution is necessary for a healthy society. But the cost of slowing growth must be weighted agaist it. And populist calls for "no billionaires" etc are going to be bad for all, including the poor, in the end

"seems" as based on vibes? Beware of nostalgia bias!

It is true that middle class has been shrinking. What is often overlooked though ks that the majority of that middle class moved on to the upper class, so not bad at all and aligns with "growing pie"

Exactly, and thankfully those have been made based on natural experiments like the ones I shared. And the consensus among serious modern economists (not those making money on selling popular books) is that redistribution negatively affects economic growth with all else being equal