Inheriting is becoming nearly as important as working
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No it isn't.
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I agree. Growth (quantitative and qualitative) is slowing down overall, on the whole planet, especially in the "west". And since growth requires human labor input - much more so than simply maintaining things does - demand for human labor is going down. And that can be noticed, by observing how wages (i.e. prices for human labor) are also going down.
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Inheriting is the problem. We need a 90% inheritance tax.
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I think it's the economic system that is designed to funnel money to the 1%.
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I hope my parents spend everything so the US healthcare system gets none of it.
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Or better yet, a simple maximum wealth cap. No one should have more than 1000x the median household income. That's the kind of fortune that even the most highly paid of doctors and lawyers, if they lived as absolute paupers and invested everything, would struggle to reach within their lifetimes. Even if you earned a salary of $1 million/year and lived like you were a broke college student, you would still be very unlikely to reach that level of wealth, even if you earned that salary from age 20 til death. The only way to amass that kind of fortune is through inheritance or through exploiting the labor of others.
We need a maximum wealth cap. 1000x median household income is incredibly generous, but it would still pale in comparison to even a single billion dollars. Currently, 1000x median household income would be a cap of about $80 million. A cap there still provides great incentive to work and innovate, but it prevents anyone from amassing such a fortune that they become a threat to their nation.
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I knew economics was behind the other fields but holy hell they're about 15,000 years late to reach this conclusion.
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And a negative income tax to fairly distribute it.
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More of a lack of system. Wealth concentration isn't some grand master plan centuries in the making, it happens organically and we make systems to fix the problem.
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I think the problem is more that there is a significant amount of research and politics that actively fights that conclusion. Why? "Meritocracy"
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But why is housing becoming unaffordable when materials are cheaper and technology is significantly more efficient?
How come this doesn't apply to any other technology? The computers are better and cheaper, the TVs are, the machine tools are, the cars are etc. etc. The concrete is cheaper, the wood is cheaper, the quality is better, the logistics are faster and work force is more skilled and available.
No matter how you look at housing issue there's no explanation other than policy failure and market manipulation. It just makes no sense, right?
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That would be a UBI, and yes we do.
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There are actually one or two key differences. Negative Income Tax brackets would just be moving the line on the graph over such that people below a certain income would have a negative tax owed and be paid an amount indicated by their bracket. Conversely, UBI would effectively guarantee everyone in every income bracket an extra income barring specific exceptions in the legislature.
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I think it all comes to several factors
- Over regulations, increasing the requirements modern homes should cover, including but not only insulation, electrical installation, fire hazard, etc.
- Building materials after COVID became more expensive.
- A lot of private companies and private individuals are looking at residential properties as a good investment.
- People are flocking to bigger cities in search for better careers, entertain, etc. opportunities
- Governments and local municipalities completely ignoring the problem
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Yeah but this is everywhere around the world basically where many of these point are not the same or reverse even.
It feels like the entire system is fundamentally prone to abuse.
