This.
People like to say Capitalism won the cold war, but in reality it was the welfare state with its massive redistribution and limits on concentration of power that won.
The current economic and social model isn't even desirable enough to prevent people from fantasizing Putin's Russia, it would have stood no chance against the USSR in the 50s.
Not everything that count can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. Metrics like these are meaningless when the working class' living condition keeps deteriorating.
> What data do you use to distinguish the "current economic system"?
Pick your favorite:
- wealth concentration (what share of wealth does the top, say 0.1% for instance but pick whatever you like best, of wealth distribution)
- media concentration
- number of years of average income spent in a political campaign
- effective tax rates on the wealthiest people
> Notably of course, assuming the variations of the US system even mattered, the USSR collapsed after the 80ies
The soviet union collapsed from their own issues (which were numerous, and growing), that doesn't change anything to my argument comparing today's West with peak USSR.
1) what is working class? 2) what proof do you have that its "living condition keeps deteriorating"? By all metrics - including disposable income after housing etc - its living conditions keep improving.
And problems like housing are caused by parts of the "current system" that are the most non capitalist - zoning and other local regulation, in particular, the result of the 70ies revolution towards safetyism and more direct democracy. When Moseses and Leavitts made all the decisions with their concentrated government OR commercial power, housing was plentiful. When FDA was approve-by-default medicine was cheap (although obviously that is not the only factor). Etc.
The things on the list either just have nothing to do with living conditions or welfare state, or if they do to an extent have little to do with the "current system"
EDIt: or just plain wrong; https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/top-1-percent-tax...
Thanks, now I have no need to give you the benefit of the doubt because I know for sure that you aren't arguing in good faith.
Hence I'm not going to waste any more time in this discussion.
Nice cope out though. At least I provided some data and not just fact free vibes.
Without realizing that the “data” contradicts your point despite only starting in the second Reagan term (hence entirely missing the point).
If you want to get actual data, see Saez and Zucman.
- about the post war welfare state versus the current system. I provided the data going back well before Reagan to show this is simply false. Unless of course by current system you mean 3x bloated welfare state.
- that working class living standards are deteriorating. You provided no data for that. That's by the way why I'm confused as to what you mean by working class, if there was some proof perhaps I could have inferred by there isn't any.
Inequality apriory has nothing to do with living standards. It does have a lot to do with vibes...
But still, for taxes, here's data back to 79, before Reagan. Do you have better? If not how do you know? https://www.concordcoalition.org/deep-dives/issue-brief/hist...
I agree wealth inequality is increasing but I don't think it's a real problem and disagree with all the rest. I wonder what percentage of wealth differential are productive or artificially scarce assets going up in price due to the money printing, eg like housing after covid binge
No you didn't. “Welfare state” isn't “social security paid with US debts”…
Claiming you back your argument with data is a bit awkward when you admit don't even understand the basic concepts.
But hey, you do you.
In one thing you are right; long long time ago, when I had too much free time, I spent some of it arguing with creationists. Compared to that, arguing with modern leftists is a waste of time - the latter are so much less connected to reality.
What shape should this collective have and what should be its rules are legitimate questions, but denying its existence is akin to believing in flat earth or intelligent design actually.
As of the time frame relevant to the discussion, welfare state still grows nearly non stop, living standards for most are improving nearly non stop, and the tax burden on the rich is, at least, not decreasing much. I'm still right and you are still saying nothing but vibes, vague insults and platitudes. And data unrelated to specific claims, I guess. Like nearly all modern left/rightists, and bottom-tier creationists back in the aughts.
Calling anyone a “collectivist” as you did is akin to calling someone an “evolutionist” or a “round-earther”. Like it or not, but we're all the product of collective structures. And if you're not a “collectivist” then you are just the kind of science denial type you despite.
> As of the time frame relevant to the discussion, welfare state still grows nearly non stop
No it didn't. Just quoting social security spendings isn't going to change the fact that the welfare state framework has been replaced by a new one during the 80s.
> living standards for most are improving nearly non stop
If, as CPI does, you value mobile phones the same way you value healthcare and housing, then yes. Otherwise it unfortunately did not (hence Trump or Mamdani)
> I'm still right and you are still saying nothing but vibes, vague insults and platitudes
You've been the only one insulting the other in this discussion. And I unfortunately can't say you've reached above platitudes level either.
> Like nearly all modern left/rightist
Funny how anyone not agreeing with you must be either a socialist or a MAGA. At least your inability to perceive nuances in political opinions is coherent with your inability to understand the nuances of the economy and society you live in.
You certainly like to write, but you should read more.
Good day.
Housing, again is easy to disprove for the relevant timeframe - price to income ratios were not much higher than in the past before covid (after trump 1 and way after Reagan or Clinton). The size of the houses was steadily increasing too, indicating increased demand for bigger houses due to increased incomes and living standards. But the vibes among recent college grads wanting a house in SF specifically is certainly pretty gloomy.
Yet another unsubstantiated claim that is wrong:
https://www.schroders.com/en-gb/uk/individual/insights/what-...
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=n9xI
https://www.igedd.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/IMG/jpg/prix...
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/australia/house-price-index-seas...
The US are kind of an outlier because price recessed between the financial crisis and Covid, but it has then caught up with the broader western trend. And keep in mind that the “price to average income” ratio doesn't tell you anything about the situation of the lowest incomes, which have declined relatively to the mean.
> The size of the houses was steadily increasing too
Like with mobile phones or cars, a house twice as good and twice as expensive is still twice as expensive.
> indicating increased demand for bigger houses due to increased incomes and living standards
Unsubstantiated claim, and also wrongly assuming homogeneous growth of the house size (if 10% of your housing supply double in size, while the other stay still, the average size increase by more than 10% but this tells you nothing about the housing stock as a whole).
> But the vibes among recent college grads wanting a house in SF specifically is certainly pretty gloomy.
Not just SF, and not just recent college grads, that's the thing. Even social classes that used to be preserved from the housing cost increase are now affected as well.
Ratio was very similar in 1965 and 1995, for example and not much higher than previously after the housing bubble. So, not much to do with deregulation and welfare state in the 80ies or whatever.
Then this has median house size over time https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/a...
Median house is not affected by average issues you indicate, and it increases steadily over time including when price to income is falling or staying low.
Also, since housing costs for most people are substantially affected by interest rates, the pre covid period would look even better.
Where is the data for the poorest, and what does the poorest mean, 1%, 10%, 0.1%?
Of course, housing prices, especially local, are mostly due to underbuilding, and underbuilding is to a large extent caused by zoning, and environmental/etc review. Nothing to do with "current system", unless by current system you mean too much government and too much democratic input over other people's property :)
Oh btw here's hard to use long term doc.https://www.bls.gov/opub/100-years-of-u-s-consumer-spending....
Spending on housing was 29.5% in 1960, 30.8% in 1973, 32.8% in 2001, as far as it goes.
> and not much higher than previously after the housing bubble
Except that you cannot discount the “bubbles” when they represent a significant fraction of the recent period. And as mentioned before, the relative housing cost decline during the 2010s is a US peculiarity that didn't happen elsewhere in the West.
> Median house is not affected by average issues you indicate, and it increases steadily over time including when price to income is falling or staying low.
That's a nice counterpoint to your original argument, thank you.
> Of course, housing prices, especially local, are mostly due to underbuilding, and underbuilding is to a large extent caused by zoning, and environmental/etc review
That's a comfortable myth. I wonder why housing cost hasn't fallen to zero in Detroit as the “law of supply and demand” say it should have.
> and too much democratic input
“Market gud, democracy bad and I am very smart”, I see …
(Also, if you scroll up a little, you'll see that my argument wasn't just about housing but more globally about basic necessities like housing and healthcare becoming less accessible, negating the apparent “standard of living” improvement. And while the US has been an exception in the 2010 with respect to housing costs, it unfortunately also has been an exception in terms of healthcare cost).
In the US, you gave me a short term data and I just gave you a longer term view than gives a fuller picture, as you've tried to discount my taxes data before (even though that data included relevant tax reform years).
Moreover I gave you BLS consumption data. Spending on housing went from 29 to 32% from 1960 to 2000, with no obvious changes in trend. While the median house is 1.5-2x big and quality and safety regulations became more strict. Oh and household sizes decreased iirc. Housing may be becoming less accessible since covid, sure. Any 1980ies welfare state etc changes don't have much to do with that.
Then, Detroit in fact has a massive number of abandoned houses, so yes prices did effectively go to zero. Presumably if they could be sold to anyone they would be, but they are not worth owning https://detroitmi.gov/news/deputy-mayor-detroit-land-bank-au...
Thanks for providing me with this great argument for supply and demand, I will use it in future ;)
"Market gud, democracy bad and I am very smart”, I see"
Vibes, vibes. There's tons of data on this, from micro data to between city comparison. There's even more data on costs, delays and cancellations for larger projects due to reviews and lawsuits. There's a reason California is currently trying to preempt local zoning to encourage more housing, and municipalities are trying to find loopholes around it. That is not data but you can just go on nextdoor and find a bunch of people outraged that developers upzoning their neighbor lot dared to remove 2 trees without a public hearing. If I was choosing between this and Robert Moses with no compromise possible, the latter is definitely a lesser evil than democratic input, and I say it as someone who doesn't usually like the government.
On healthcare you can check this: https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/why-conventional-wisdom-o...
Which incidentally also dispelled my previous belief that it was doctor salaries, that is while closer to reality than blaming the insurance (that is a small fraction of the difference between the US and other countries, provider costs being the main issue and insurance being a sin eater), is still mostly wrong. Frankly at this point I'm half supportive of Medicare for all. It won't improve much but at least people will have stfu about evil corporations in this area.
Americans are just very rich. Hence as percentage spent on necessities decreases, percentage spent on other things must increase. Bigger houses too, a little bit; however labor intensive industries with infinite extra spending potential like healthcare, education are "the best positioned" to suck up the increased disposable incomes
You're not familiar with US realities either, but nonetheless my original comment was about the whole West (which has faced the same neoliberal switch, in roughly the same time frame, with roughly the same social consequences even though the details differ a bit).
> Then, Detroit in fact has a massive number of abandoned houses, so yes prices did effectively go to zero. Presumably if they could be sold to anyone they would be, but they are not worth owning https://detroitmi.gov/news/deputy-mayor-detroit-land-bank-au...
> Thanks for providing me with this great argument for supply and demand, I will use it in future ;)
This is a fascinating way of misconstruing the reality to fit in your ideological views.
People did not stop paying rents in Detroit during the period, the effective cost of housing never reached zero, in fact people were still spending 30% of their income in housing[1] despite the houses themselves being practically worthless. That's a great example of market failure, because the market price kept hovering way above the actual market value of the goods (which is what they ended up abandoned in the first place, they were never on sale for $100 each or even $10k, they were just kept empty until they got destroyed due to lack of maintenance).
Yet you still find a way to twist that evidence into a confirmation of your beliefs.
This is genuinely fascinating. The only comparable thing I've seen is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrGgxAK9Z5A (though in fairness the guy seems to have quite a bit more self-awareness than you do).
[1] https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/news-release/2017/consum...
I think it is you who is suffering from ideological blindness, especially since you keep changing and confusing your timelines and definitions.
I sent you BLS data on housing as percentage of income for the entire 20th century. And census data on median house size. Spending on housing went up from 29 to 32 percent from 1960 to 2000, more or less linerarly, more than offset by other essentials in the same paper and for much more house. When was that mythical impact of the neoliberal turn? Last time we were talking about taxing the rich or whatever, I sent you the flat-ish 1% tax burden data since 1979, you didn't like it as it didn't have earlier data. Was the negative impact from the neoliberal turn before 1979, or after 2000? Is it in the room with us right now? ;)
As for discussing the US or not, I am not familiar with non US problems so I cannot really comment. However, the vibe seems to be that US is the most neoliberal major country (if you disagree lmk, and under what definition). So, the effects of neoliberal turn would be stronger. They are indeed, perhaps, in that US is quite a bit more rich by most metrics. As for negatives, they should also be worse in the US then right?
The they does the heavy lifting here: it's the city council that does sell that for this price. And it had to intervene because the private market never reached its own equilibrium.
> They have also done thousands of demolitions of the houses that nobody would have at any price. The reason they were not sold is not because of market failure, it is because there was no viable buyer. With property taxes and maintenance obligationss their market price was negative.
The market value was negative, but the market price never was.
> The market price of a marginal house in Detroit is/was recently below 0. Supply and demand.
Yet people of Detroit kept spending 30% of their income in housing, and you don't see the paradox.
> I sent you BLS data on housing as percentage of income for the entire 20th century. And census data on median house size. Spending on housing went up from 29 to 32 percent from 1960 to 2000
Which is still a 10% increase, and again we're talking about a topic for which the US compares favorably to the rest of the West. If you take housing + healthcare as I mentioned at the beginning (and I could have mentioned education as well) then the US is indeed in the same situation as the greater Western world.
> more than offset by other essentials in the same paper and for much more house
A house twice as big and twice as expensive is still twice as expensive. (And it's also twice as remote from work areas…)
> Last time we were talking about taxing the rich or whatever, I sent you the flat-ish 1% tax burden data since 1979, you didn't like it as it didn't have earlier data.
You sent me data from 1986 onwards so yeah it falls a bit short on context, and even there your data contradicts your point as I noticed (and you just avoided the question to move on another subject).
> Is it in the room with us right now? ;)
You are part of the negative impact of the neoliberal turn actually, with markets becoming a religion symmetrical to Marxism and the in-between being called “collectivism” and put in the “far-left” basket.
> . Would you agree that US is more neoliberal than Europe when you talk about neoliberal turn?
Is the sea bluer than the sky? It doesn't make sense to say one country is “more neoliberal”, the policies adopted vary a lot between countries depending on internal political balance. For instance the UK still has the NHS despite the turn but has dismantled its standing army to reduce government spendings, when the US is still spending relatively close to cold war level in its military spendings.
> In other cases, since I dunno much about Europe other than high level
That's why you should read more!
>>I cannot comment on their unique neoliberal negatives. Perhaps those are bad and they should do what US did instead.
No country can do the same exact policies as its neighbors for multiple reasons (internal politics, culture, economic structures) and no country in Europe could have had the Silicon Valley for instance. But I don't think any European country envy the US right now (they have silicon valley envy, but that's it).
Detroit in particular had a large number of non-mortgage, tax delinquencies - why didn't owners choose to sell at market "value" and instead walked away? Either they were all dastardly neoliberals trying to lose money but spite Detroit, or perhaps the market value was negative so there was no viable buyer? I guess it's technically somewhat of a "market failure" that it's cheaper to walk away than to pay someone to take the house off your hands (negative price). The reason is non-market though, it's more like, there are no debtors prisons anymore so nobody can force you to pay local taxes.
Regardless you made a specific statement - if supply/demand worked, price of the houses in Detroit would have gone to zero. And, sure enough, it has in fact gone to near zero, and factually below zero given house has additional (non-market) negative cash flows.
The rest:
"Which is still a 10% increase" "A house twice as big and twice as expensive is still twice as expensive." Hmm? What about the house that is 10% more expensive over time but x1.5-2 bigger? Also why is it that /median/ houses are x1.5-2 bigger (while the household size is decreasing, too), is it dastardly developers intentionally trying to screw affordability, or is it because a /median/ household wants and can afford a bigger house cause the median household is more rich?
For healthcare I already sent a link above. The closest correlate of healthcare spending across countries and over time is disposable income. You can spend millions of dollars to keep grandma alive for an extra 6 months, which is, apparently, what rich people do (e.g. https://mdinteractive.com/mips_cost_measures/2025-mips-cost-...). Could we spend it better? Probably. I think free market with insurance that works like actual insurance (like existing cancer insurance) would be better, but let's do medicare for all, sure, it's not going to be much worse than current system. But spend it we will, until we become poor.
For taxes, I sent you a data since 1979 after that. The data shows Reagan's reforms and later reforms had basically no effect on 1% tax burden relative to other groups.
As for European issues specifically, the only reason would be to find out what policies the US should avoid, since Europe is relatively poor, but I've never thought neoliberalism is their problem. More welfare state, more taxes on workers (https://taxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/OECDLab...), more regulation (in most countries), harder to build housing (in some countries like UK?). Too little neoliberalism. I don't expect to find any neoliberal policies "worse" than the US ones, so it's not worth my time, but do give a hint, maybe I will.
In the US though, the only problems with neoliberalism are either hyperlocal and affect a very small percentage of the population, or that it didn't go far enough. If neoliberal turn didn't end before, for example, reforming unsustainable welfare state to be smaller; or undoing environmental regulation; US would have been in much better shape right now, with less need for interest groups to fight over a smaller pie.
It hasn't. It remained steady at 30% consumer spending.
“Why would consumers spend 30% of their income in something that is available for free on the market?” is the paradox you been avoiding all along.
The answer is simple, these “free houses” never actually went on the market because humans aren't rational and they think a house's value is at least roughly equal to the price they paid for it, which means they will refuse to sell for less, no matter if they lose money in the process. Ask any real estate agent.
Supply and demand almost never work for assets unless there's a significant liquidity pressure.
I'm not going to respond to anything else because you will again take that as an opportunity to escape the paradox.
The welfare state increased 3x since post war time so that one is plain wrong. It was not clear if the 2nd part was "its" or separate . What is the metric for concentration of /power/? Rather than wealth. If anything the recent developments are the result of more direct democracy. Candidates like trump would have never been allowed by concentrated media and party machines mid century
High marginal taxes and high inheritance taxes do not affect the rich - they eliminate competition for them.
I do agree on antitrust and antimonopoly though.
There isn't anywhere an index or lookup table of all legal rights a particular person has to wealth (or, in truth, to "things", since anything can be worth something and contribute to wealth). There are things they may have a right to that they don't even know about.
The cannot own houses, factories, monopolistic contracts o media. It makes harder to influence politics ( in a legal way).
The housing issue is specially important because city space is limited and the demand is very inelastic
People can own houses, factories, &c, in indirect ways, or in other jurisdictions, and these are all basically legal and make it hard to say what, exactly, people own.
The easiest people to tax are people whose inflows are simple wage income, who own a house and a car in their own country, and don't have a business. In other words, ordinary people. They make up a bulk of the financial activity in a country and the bulk of the tax revenues (most of the time).
It is easy to imagine that the way to capture greater tax revenue from wealthy people is simply to scale this system up -- tax the wealthy people more on their income, their expensive car, &c. However, wealthy people are also wealthy in structurally different ways from ordinary people.
This is, I think, another example of people's intuitions about tracking wealth just not being very robust.
Who is actually affected? Those less powerful. Progressive tax system hits the middle class (actual middle class, la petite bourgeoisie, not the modern bullshit redefinition of the term) hardest, making it harder for them to make it rich and compete with actual rich people.
As the effect, rich protect inheritance by trusts and avoid taxes by not having income (plenty of tricks available with borrowing), while people like doctors, lawyers, small business owners fund the state and hit hard limits on what can they make.
Don't believe me? Check how much of the tax income comes from top brackets. You may be surprised. Pro tip: system is very skewed to the top.
Shouldn't everyone pay their fair share of taxes? Warren Buffett and others seem to think that they should.
The problem is that the top paying those taxes are not the rich people.
Super-wealthy can take the time to figure out ways to have no income.
And if you do inheritance taxes and similar things, you get more “universities” and other non-profit “finagling”.
IKEA is an example.
It's like with corporations. Corporations love complex legal systems, as they are the only ones with money to deal with them. Simplification actually benefits smaller enterprises.
If complexity is the problem then close the loopholes that let people get out of this.
America was not supposed to be a country of monarchs and wealthy dynasties, and high inheritance taxes helped towards that goal.
Cash is such a poor investment that the word "investment" typically means trying to find something more productive than holding cash. Neither do alternatives to cash have a reliable history of benefitting the poor. In the US there's been lots of attempts at local currencies; they tend to fail naturally without government interference. Recently, cryptographic alternatives to cash have mostly served to benefit crypto barons and scammers.
There ought to be a better balance, and the US found it in the period between the end of WWII and the 1970s. High marginal taxes on extreme wealth, high inheritance taxes and zealous antitrust and anti-monopoly enforcement all kept people's wealth and power disparity somewhat in check.