I guess if you think about it that way then everything is luck and we live in a deterministic world where none of your choices matter. That still wouldn’t support the argument in the OP meme though.

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Capital is more like stored labour. The first ever capital was just a starp stick or spear. Someone spent labour and it resulted in a more productive way to hunt animals. This almost immediately would’ve resulted in inequality as the spear hunter caught more game. It’s not that the capital was taking anything from the labourer, it’s actually that capital and labour work really well together and humans are more productive with capital.

You’re also taking a snapshot of the most regulated industry in the US. Building high rises is illegal in huge swaths of urban areas. Before we say the free market isn’t providing an answer cab we actually try it? I’m talking removing exclusionary zoning, speeding up the permit process and reducing the power of local action committees, and reforming the broken heritage process that’s used by rich people to keep their areas from densifying.

Curious why you made the distinction about real personal income when it is also rising. I agree wealth inequality is rising but not that it is coming at the expense of real personal incomes.

The long-term trend is that the average person’s income is rising but we’ve seen recent declines due to high inflation. Can you expand on your line of thinking? I’m not sure I follow your reasoning.

Most households living below the poverty line have at least one unemployed person, so giving people jobs is pulling them out of poverty. Whether or not they are treated fairly at work and are satisfied with their working conditions is another story.

My parents never could’ve either but $500k household net worth only puts you in the top 20% of households so it’s not like they were exceptionally wealthy and we don’t know if they borrowed to invest or what exactly their specific situation was. Miguel Bezos was a Cuban refugee and then worked as an engineer for Exxon and Jackie Bezos was a secretary so i mean this is pretty middle class IMO.

That doesn’t mean that all billionaires clawed their way to the top as i mentioned above, or that we shouldn’t make progressive changes to the tax code. It’s just important that we separate truth from fiction to make educated decisions.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schulz grew up in a Brooklyn Housing project, George Soros survived the holocaust and worked waiting tables, David Murdock of Dole Foods was homeless. There’s tons of examples.

Here’s a fun article that ranks the whole Fortune 400 list. 80% of them inherited their wealth or at least grew up middle class.

Jeff Bezos actually scores high on the list because his Mom had him when he was 17, he flipped burgers in high school and by and large did not grow up rich.

What do you think he’s saying here?

You didn’t read the article you linked. In it Walter Block states that slavery violates the non-aggression-principle and is not permissible under libertarianism.

This is not at all a debate in libertarianism. Libertarians recognize the role of a limited small government to protect individual rights. Like please pull up one example of this debate going on in a libertarian space.

Libertarians don’t believe murder should be legal and crazy shit like that. Libertarians believe in a guaranteed freedoms like freedom of speech, economic liberalism and are often social progressives who believe in gay marriage and drug legalization.

The bill of rights was brought to you by libertarians.

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Goddamn those time-travelling Venezuelans.

So where are you going in Australia?

“No idea mate. Figure I’ll sort it out when i get there.”

Then no.

What size of feather?

Well the labour theory of value is where ‘surplus value’ comes from and is the theoretical underpinning of a lot of your argument.

Why didn’t we work together? Maybe we were on different sides of the planet or didn’t enjoy working together for many reasons. The point wasn’t that we weren’t working together. This was a hypothetical scenario to demonstrate that in this specific scenario the excess profits were the result of deploying capital. Even in communist societies part of the output that is generated is not wholly due to labour but due to the allocation of capital by the communist regime. For example in the USSR the mechanization of labour resulted in standard of living increases because labour without capital is of very low value. Capital without labour is also of very low value. A factory without workers would not work very well at all either. It’s the combined utilization of all the factors of production (Total factor productivity) that determines how much income can be generated in the economy. The larger the TFP the higher the wages. Economies with free markets have higher total favor productivity as the individual production decisions are dispersed among many business owners and workers rather than centralized in the hands of a bureaucratic elite.

Well let’s say you and I start off on a new planet and we both have $10,000 to spend and the aliens of this planet will buy whatever we produce. You and I decide to compete with each other for business in the hole-digging business. You buy a new spade, and also some furnishings for your house and a new TV. I on the other hand stretch my budget and buy a backho and sacrifice some personal luxuries at home.

The going rate for a new hole is $100. We get down to business but despite you working 15 hour days, you’re only able to dig one hole but I am able to produce 4 holes in one day while only working 8 hours. This means I make $100,000 a year while you only make $25,000 a year.

In this hypothetical scenario why am I making more money than you? What is the source of the inequality?

It can’t be that i am exploiting people because we are individual workers in business for ourselves. What’s happening is that some of my profits are yes a result of my labour, but part of the profits that I receive are a return on the capital that i invested in the back-ho.

Listen, i am not trying to say the world is a fair place. There’s a whole colonial system that was set up and abused, inherited wealth and a history of real legal oppression that still persists today. I’d even say that the rich don’t pay enough in taxes and we should push up the capital gains tax rate and close loopholes. But what I won’t say is that the labour theory of value makes any sense at all. It’s pretty discredited among economists and only exists in Marxist literature (which predates the marginal revolution where a lot of our understanding about economics comes from).

Even developing countries or even communist countries need to throw out the labour theory of value in order to maximize their economic output. For example in the Solow-Swan growth model, one of the predictions is that capital is more effectively utilized with labour that doesn’t currently have a lot of capital. Think about this, all output is a mix of capital and labour. If you are a person without a shovel the small amount of money that a shovel costs would make a huge difference in your output. Think about that! Using a neoclassical model you can demonstrate value in redistribution of wealth. Why would you cling to old outdated economics models when the new ones can still prove your point?

The labour share of income is 70% which is the majority of the money a business makes.