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8 votes
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Battle for the nation's soul – Norway faces debate about gas and oil wealth
8 votes -
Iceland Foods has lost its ongoing legal battle with the country Iceland over the frozen food retailer's trademark name after the EUIPO dismissed its appeal
7 votes -
Why the super rich are inevitable?
14 votes -
Sam Bankman-Fried: FTX founder arrested in Bahamas
11 votes -
Denmark's largest bank Danske Bank has been fined €470 million over an international money laundering scandal
4 votes -
Altruism and development - It's complicated
3 votes -
Where does all the cardboard come from?
2 votes -
At least $1 billion of client funds missing at failed crypto firm FTX, sources say
23 votes -
Banks devising ways to ID mass shooters before they strike
6 votes -
US grew 2.9% in third quarter, GDP shows, and there’s little sign of recession for now
8 votes -
3pool: The canary in the Tether coalmine
3 votes -
Inflation, part 2: Shelter in Canada and the United States
3 votes -
Mormonism and the rise and fall of mutual aid
3 votes -
A theme park crisis is wrecking South Korea’s bond market
3 votes -
Real inflation cycle theory
4 votes -
I fought the PayPal and I won
8 votes -
Norway-style windfall tax on energy companies could raise £33.3bn extra by 2027, plugging a hole in UK government finances, analysis has found
4 votes -
The crypto story: Where it came from, what it all means, and why it still matters
13 votes -
US GDP accelerated at 2.6% pace in Q3, better than expected as growth turns positive
8 votes -
The case of the disappearing ink—a US tax court mystery
4 votes -
Are billionaires a market failure? And if not market, are they social failure?
I was reading this text from the Washington Post (sorry for the maybe paywall): https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/06/xi-jinping-crackdown-china-economy-change/ The opinion asserts...
I was reading this text from the Washington Post (sorry for the maybe paywall):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/06/xi-jinping-crackdown-china-economy-change/
The opinion asserts that in response to liberalization of Chinese life, driven by capitalistic economic growth, is the reason that Xi Pinjing "cracked down in every sphere imaginable — attacking the private sector, humiliating billionaires, reviving Communist ideology, purging the party of corrupt officials and ramping up nationalism (mostly anti-Western) in both word and deed."
My conspiratorial brain latched on to the humiliating billionaires line, and started thinking about a between the lines message along the lines that billionaires are good and should not be humiliated, a subtle warning-response to the progressive grumblings here in the U.S. that a failure to support capitalism will result in totalitarianism.
Then I started thinking about the questions, are billionaires good for society? I had always held the position that a billionaire is a market failure (in my econ 101 understanding of the term), much like pollution. It is improper hoarding and unfair leveraging of capital into disproportionate and un-earned degree of pesonal privilege.
It is certainly a by-product of euro-american capitalism, whereby the desires and welfare of the many are trodden on by those with the ability to fight and to shape the regulatory machine meant to protect the interests of the common-wealth.
I see a few possibilities. One, is that my understanding of economics is wrong, and producing as many billionaires as possible is the ultimate goal of capitalism and in fact good for everyone, even in theory.
Two, it is indeed as I suspect, a market failure. And the failure here is one of degree, it is not, in fact problematic to have some individuals with significantly greater wealth among us, and is, in fact, beneficial overall, but to have some with so much more than the rest of us (wealth inequaility) is a result of getting in the way of a clean functioning marketplace.
Three, economic theory is working as described, and economic theory/activity is an insufficient foundation for the maintenance and success of a whole society, and we need to find a way to constrain it to its own sphere, so that it provides us with what we need to be healthy and happy, but no more.
I turn to the bright minds of tildes: am I looking at this right?
16 votes -
Iceland offers the best pension provisions, followed by the Netherlands and Denmark, according to a survey by pensions consultants Mercer
5 votes -
Lukashenko imposes ban on price increases in Belarus effective immediately
7 votes -
Norway's digital currency experiment – what is it and how does it work?
6 votes -
UK scraps tax cut for wealthy that sparked market turmoil
11 votes -
Liz Truss's UK growth plan is nothing but a magic potion
11 votes -
UK in turmoil as government's gamble to solve economic woes fuels crisis, instead
9 votes -
openbb terminal is a open source investment research platform (stocks, index funds, crypto etc)
3 votes -
Grab – Asia's Uber – knows customers and drivers so well it can vet them for loans
6 votes -
What is SAP? (And why is it worth $163B USD)
6 votes -
Insurers force change on US police departments long resistant to it
8 votes -
Can software simplify the supply chain? Ryan Petersen thinks so
6 votes -
Podimo, the Denmark-based subscription service for podcasts and audiobooks, secures €58.6 million in funding
3 votes -
US child poverty rate at an all-time low
11 votes -
Siting bank branches
3 votes -
The Ethereum Merge is done, opening a new era for the second-biggest blockchain
23 votes -
A Chinese spy wanted GE’s secrets, but the US got China’s instead
11 votes -
4,000 US Google cafeteria workers quietly unionized during the pandemic
12 votes -
How this Florida town became the sea sponge capital of the world | Big Business
2 votes -
The branch banking model
8 votes -
Klarna has revealed that losses more than tripled in the first half of the year – firm has been hit by a slowdown in consumer spending
8 votes -
The Biden-Harris administration's US student debt relief plan
35 votes -
How Mondragon became the world’s largest co-op
11 votes -
The new US Income-Driven Repayment system could cause some big problems
7 votes -
When it comes to flaunting its defense industry, Stockholm is shy – and it's hurting Swedish companies and handing lucrative contracts to competitors
4 votes -
Rare earths processor Neo Performance Materials has bought exploration rights to mine in Greenland – diversifying supplies of minerals critical for advanced technologies
6 votes -
UK inflation to hit 18.6% next year according to Citi
Archive: https://archive.ph/t0oH2 From the article: UK inflation is on course to hit 18.6 per cent in January — the highest peak in almost half a century — because of soaring wholesale gas prices,...
Archive: https://archive.ph/t0oH2
From the article:
UK inflation is on course to hit 18.6 per cent in January — the highest peak in almost half a century — because of soaring wholesale gas prices, according to a new forecast from Citigroup based on the latest market prices.
The investment bank predicted that the retail energy price cap would be raised to £4,567 in January and then £5,816 in April, compared with the current level of £1,971 a year — shifts it said would lead to inflation “entering the stratosphere”.
[...]
UK and European wholesale natural gas prices are already trading at close to 10 times normal levels and other forecasters have also raised their inflation predictions.
Goldman Sachs and EY said they expected an inflation rate of at least 15 per cent around the start of next year and the Bank of England said this month that inflation would exceed 13 per cent towards the end of the year.
The energy regulator Ofgem will on Friday announce the energy price cap for the period between October and January, which most analysts expect to rise to more than £3,500 for a household with average usage of energy — an increase of 75 per cent on current levels.
12 votes -
Inside the crypto black markets of Argentina
4 votes -
Buy a rural hospital for $100? Investors pick up struggling institutions for pennies
7 votes