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.

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Hey, wanted to level-set with you real quick. Some people in the office have commented that they see you playing ping pong quite a bit. I know you’re just playing on your breaks but It’s really not a good look.

Thanks for the chat.

So is it okay to steal from your slightly richer neighbour? What about stealing from your parents who have more wealth than you and are not sharing it with you? If someone starts a small business should we just ransack it the moment is starts doing well?

What if people on the street rob and steal from you? Does it matter if it’s by violence?

Are people happier in countries where there is more theft? Are the societies more equal?

I guess to go back to my earlier point what I’m trying to get people to think about it is this idea of a categorical imperative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative?wprov=sfti1

In a nut-shell, if you believe stealing is okay under certain circumstance due to some subjective morality you hold, you cannot condemn others holding the same belief based on their own subjective mortality.

For example you believe stealing is okay because the target is a corporation. Maybe someone else believes stealing is okay if it’s from someone outside their cultural group. You say, “hey it’s not right to steal from someone just because of some subjective value that you hold!” But it’s a contradiction because you believe stealing is okay based on your own subjective morality regarding corporations (which are recognized as people under law). Same goes for people that steal from the government, their parents, etc.

This isn’t a slippery slope argument, this is a question of ethics. What I’m saying is stealing is unethical, and not by contrast immoral.

Source?

According to the tax foundation 42% of all tax revenues come from the top 1% and 63% comes from the top 5%.

https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income-tax-data/

If you mean capital gains tax that’s a different story. Should be raised imo.

FYI here’s the tax mix by type: https://taxfoundation.org/publications/sources-government-revenue-united-states/#:~:text=Corporate income taxes accounted,U.S. tax revenue in 2021.&text=Source%3A OECD%2C “Revenue Statistics,taxes and property taxes.

Corporate taxes are low but the majority of filings are done at an individual. Every corporation distributes its income to shareholders by dividends or capital gains which are claimed on individual filings.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/double_taxation.asp#:~:text=Double taxation refers to income,taxed by two different countries.

I haven’t specifically looked at While Foods but I’m guessing the higher-priced premium products cost more at wholesale and therefore don’t produce better margins.

This is just straight up gaslighting.

“We’re not condoning it, we’re just promoting an amusing meme that condones it.”

Briefly was at 4% in 2013 declining to around 2% in 2017 before being acquired by Amazon.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/delisted/WFM/whole-foods-market/net-profit-margin

So what hasn’t been true for decades then?

Your question isn’t a bad question though so I’m gonna answer it in good faith. Basically when regulators look at whether industries are competitive a huge factor they look at is whether firms have pricing power and their market share. There are a couple other things they look too like purchasing power with suppliers.

If you look at a firm like Facebook (META) it has both high margins (>30%)and between Google has 80% market share in online advertising. That’s an industry that is oligopolistic and possibly a case for antitrust measures.

In a nut-shell the question is “how much of the pie is consumer surplus vs producer surplus.”

If you look at grocery you’ll see the market share is really broken up so yeah they’re doing a lot of volume but you have a lot of choice. Volume itself doesn’t really tell us anything about competitiveness.

As you’re thinking about this ask and still disagree ask “what would a good objective measure be for competitiveness?” We need some actual quantifiable metric, so what would your counter-proposal be then?

When is it ethical to steal then id love to hear your thoughts? Can i steal from you?

You say nobody’s encouraging it but have you read the image that is the OP of this post?

Name a grocery store with a higher margin than 3%

So what if i steal from the government because it’s faceless too? Cheat on my taxes etc.

Grocery stores are pretty much the definition of a perfectly competitive industry. The profit margins are always between 1 and 3%. The only reason they raise prices is because they have to.

Fuck the downvoters. This is #trashy. Didn’t realize there were so many teenagers in here. Might go back to Reddit.