You utter fuckwit.

(not you, Morhaus, the dude in the video).

What exactly do you think happens to the people and funds holding those shorts? They have to pay the difference. They are contractually obligated to pay up -- period.

Everyone involved in the short was probably broke long before GME even hit $50. But, as we all learned from Goodfellas, "Fuck you, pay me!"

They're broke and on the hook for shit-tons of money. Guess where they're going to get that money? By selling solid assets. They're gonna dump everything they have to make up for the short loss. Who's holding the shares that're about to start tanking? The funds 401ks are invested in because they have to hold solid, reliable assets. The same funds people are relying on for their futures. These are the people who'll REALLY get fucked by this. If you've got a long enough timeline, hopefully, you'll get your money back (although at a loss of compounded value). If you're 65 and looking at your golden years through a lens of 20%+ returns, you're about to find out what happens when an irrational market decides to return to sanity.

Those are the first order effects. The second order effects range from the merely worrying to the outright fucking terrifying. There's a reason Goldman sent out its little missive last night after Mark Cuban pulled his stunt. This isn't just playing with fire, this is sitting in a room full of gasoline while Skippy, The Face-Ripper Ape On Meth, goes berserk with a blowtorch. God help us if this triggers some latent long-tail event.

The good news is that the idiocy of the crowds has apparently decided to dump GME in favor of silver. GME tanking will be bad, but mostly to people who should pay the price for dabbling magic they didn't understand. GME dumping will be good if you're worried about 2008 repeating itself, only without the whole "not letting AIG" fail thing.

People do not understand how fragile and insanely-interconnected the markets are, and how easily the whole goddamn thing could be brought down. We never solved the problems of 2008, we just dumped money on them; we never solved the underlying issues that lead to the Temper Tantrum of December 2018; and we sure the fuck didn't fix the fundamental issue that almost brought the whole show down on September 17 of 2019. And all this was before Covid. There's a reason I went all-in on bonds back in August and that Warren Buffet is sitting on a mountain of cash, and this is pretty much it.

So yeah, congrats to the little guy and all that shit, but don't think for a second that people at the top are going to be the ones who pay.

"The veracity of the statement has no bearing on the fact that you dismissed/questioned it first"

<Sigh> Pedantry is tiresome. Tell your friends.

My original statement had to do with my belief that wealth inequality is not a bad thing. It had little to do with OP's assertion that he foolishly sees current wealth inequality as "staggering".

"Forgive us if we take the words of economists, historians, reality, and our own senses over a random person's opinion. "

You are free to heed whoever pleases you. If you crave my
forgiveness, consider yourself forgiven.

"If that's not excessive, I have to wonder what could be in your opinion. "

I too have to wonder what "excessive" wealth inequality actually looks like. I don't think I have ever seen a large scale example. So, I'll just pull a number out of the air: under most distribution models, I would say that I consider a Gini coefficient of, say, .9 to be "excessive".

"My wife, head of her department for 10 years, working 45-50 hour weeks, makes $30k a year working like a dog....Warren Buffet makes >10000 times that much doing absolutely nothing...not excessive?!"

I thought we were talking about wealth distribution, not income distribution. Anyhow, to answer your question, the answer is "No", I do not consider that to be "excessive".

The veracity of the statement has no bearing on the fact that you dismissed/questioned it first, and now agree. Your position changed....and so has your argument now from 'staggering wealth inequality isn't a bad thing" to ' wealth inequality isn't staggering'.
Forgive us if we take the words of economists, historians, reality, and our own senses over a random person's opinion.

Wiki- in 2014 the top wealthiest 1% possess 40% of the nation's wealth; the bottom 80% own 7%; similarly, but later, the media reported, the "richest 1 percent in the United States now own more additional income than the bottom 90 percent".[8] The gap between the top 10% and the middle class is over 1,000%; that increases another 1,000% for the top 1%. The average employee "needs to work more than a month to earn what the CEO earns in one hour"
If that's not excessive, I have to wonder what could be in your opinion. My wife, head of her department for 10 years, working 45-50 hour weeks, makes $30k a year working like a dog (at a job that is life and death for her customers, platelet donation, her department keeps our only local blood bank open as the only money making department, she doesn't make fries.)...Warren Buffet makes >10000 times that much doing absolutely nothing...not excessive?! Also, because he only pays taxes on what he spends, he pays less in taxes than we do.
Thpp!....Ack!

No. Bill Philips is one of the nicest people I have ever met. Tom Cech is a nice guy. I can name dozens of super famous scientists that I have met that were very nice. Warren Buffet is very nice, according to an acquaintance.

Assholes are not great because they are assholes. Some assholes are great because they happen to be intensely curious and they have a clear vision of how they can change the world.

Based on my experience, it is not a requisite for making a difference in the world.

It is funny. My advisor and I had this discussion after he read the Steve Jobs biography. My wife thinks Steve Jobs was great because he was an asshole. I disagree.

Wow, AC is so bitter. It seems that he's oblivious to the scale of inequity and its exponential growth in recent years. If he would really examine the balance of equality in the "good old days," he would realize that it was much more equitable.

Goods used to be American made and today's globalization has seen manufacturing almost disappear and replaced by outsourcing and child labour. From a purely business standpoint, this makes sense. There is no law against foreign investment, so it's not economical to be patriotic.

And here we are today, with the balance so skewed that it makes sense to pay a few hundred million to buy a senator, republican or a judge. A few years down the road, you'll be paid back by sidestepping that environmental restriction or class-action lawsuit or anything else that might hurt your business.

And if you're an investment banker or bis securities trader, you provide very little to society other than a higher tax rate that you can comfortably afford. But even then, you can weasel your way out of most of that with creative deductions and perfectly legal loopholes. Remember what Warren Buffet said about his cleaning lady? Do you think he was talking out of his ass?

I don't even want to argue with this logic - it hurts my head to even think of a response to this digital puke. You win the internet, QM! You're a winner!

>> ^quantumushroom:

<snip>

Warren Buffoon has one gift IMO: predicting the stock market. Otherwise he seems rather oblivious about how economics work. Poor fellow.


>> ^MonkeySpank:
Well QM, my friend.
If we follow your "success" logic, Bill Gates should be the president of the US, and Warren Buffet should be V.P. Are you OK with that?

>> ^quantumushroom:
Yeah, he did a poor job clarifying his personal beliefs, versus beliefs about what government should or shouldn't be allowed to do.
Of course, compared to the Kenyawaiian narcissist, Cain is a genius many times over, with actual business and life experience.

I would be OK with it if Gates had ideas I liked as well as the charisma necessary for the job. To answer your unasked question: wealth does not equal wisdom, nor impart the gift of leadership.

Warren Buffoon has one gift IMO: predicting the stock market. Otherwise he seems rather oblivious about how economics work. Poor fellow.





>> ^MonkeySpank:

Well QM, my friend.
If we follow your "success" logic, Bill Gates should be the president of the US, and Warren Buffet should be V.P. Are you OK with that?

>> ^quantumushroom:
Yeah, he did a poor job clarifying his personal beliefs, versus beliefs about what government should or shouldn't be allowed to do.
Of course, compared to the Kenyawaiian narcissist, Cain is a genius many times over, with actual business and life experience.

Well QM, my friend.
If we follow your "success" logic, Bill Gates should be the president of the US, and Warren Buffet should be V.P. Are you OK with that?


>> ^quantumushroom:

Yeah, he did a poor job clarifying his personal beliefs, versus beliefs about what government should or shouldn't be allowed to do.
Of course, compared to the Kenyawaiian narcissist, Cain is a genius many times over, with actual business and life experience.

@ShakaUVM: "How? If all the poor suddenly earned $60k a year in constant dollars and could afford all the health care, food, and whatever else they wanted, do you think there's going to be "social consequences" because Warren Buffet and his friends made an extra billion that year? No, there wouldn't be."

Most people won't get mad if one person is richer than them and can have golden toilets and they have "whatever else they want" (which is ridiculous - we're imagining a place where people have all they want?). Though, to be fair, some will. Some people will be (and are) mad that someone is making a billion dollars, especially if they don't do much work.

More generally, imagine the opposite ridiculous analogy. Imagine a situation where nobody can afford food. Later, 40% of the population (say, ones with blue eyes) can afford food while everyone else gets only a modest increase in income. Do you think the green eyes are going to be happy because, oh well, they're making as much as they did before? Of course not. They're going to see themselves as getting poorer while the blue eyes are getting richer, and they're going to be mad and want to steal food.

There's factors involved in how this plays out - very important ones are:

1. How significant are the amenities one class gets that the other doesn't (obviously food, housing, electricity are going to make more of a pinch than "rich people drive nicer cars").
2. Does the division of wealth feel arbitrary and permanent? Do people feel like they might one day move into the richer class? Do they feel the rich have "earned" their position?
3. How does the population break down? Is there small percentages of outliers, or is there a clear division between haves and have-nots?

So yeah, it's not simple (and wouldn't happen in magic world where people have everything they want and where prices for goods didn't change relative to each other), but it's not a non-existent problem. I don't think the US is close to serious social problems, but with a little prodding it could be and "revolution" isn't the first step. There's also "tipping points" that may come up. For example, if poor people begin to generally feel like a "good education" (the kind that gets a job, which at times raises in price much faster than CPI) is only possible for rich people, that's going to be bad. Right now there's a sense that anyone can work hard and progress - if that feeling evaporates you're going to get more labor unrest and support for radical populist politicians.

Don't think that could happen? Look at history.

@raverman: "The inequality of distribution of wealth has to be fixed INSIDE the corporations remuneration for effort."

If I found a corporation, and never go public, why should you have any right to the profits of the corporation, other than the normal payment of taxes?

What, will you forcefully nationalize my corporation and take it away from me, to give it to the workers? There's a name for that.

@jmzero: "As such, it's perfectly possible to think of the "poor getting poorer" if their relative income isn't growing as fast as others' incomes... the gap in income can still have social consequences."

How? If all the poor suddenly earned $60k a year in constant dollars and could afford all the health care, food, and whatever else they wanted, do you think there's going to be "social consequences" because Warren Buffet and his friends made an extra billion that year?

No, there wouldn't be.

You have to both look at the percentage of the pie each income quintile is taking, but also the size of the pie. Economics is not a zero-sum game, which is a mistake most of the people make when talking about income inequality.

>> ^EMPIRE:
oh... so the crash is an opportunity for assholes like this to make a buck.


What he says is that anyone can make money during a crash; and this is true. The problem is that when markets plummet, people see no end in sight. So they panic sell and then turn paper losses into real losses and further precipitate the downturn. I've seen it happen so many times it boggles my mind.

I think Warren Buffet said it best: people will buy anything on sale except for stocks.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Exactly. He's shorting the market and hoping to influence it through this. He's getting good bang for his buck due to the virality of this video too.

Still, when the stock market crashes - I think ooohh, Wallstreet is having a clearance sale! Warren Buffet's axiom holds true: Be afraid when people are greedy. Be greedy when people are afraid.

(not that I have a single red cent directly invested in the stock market, just saying)

>> ^EMPIRE:

oh... so the crash is an opportunity for assholes like this to make a buck. He actually said he dreams of another recession. WHAT a HUGE fucking piece of shit. It's horrible people like this asshole who created this mess.

I checked your statement, Warren Buffett Salary is a fixed $100,000/year. It's been that salary forever. He should be paying very little taxes at that bracket compared to his actual income.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^quantumushroom:
The 'factory owner' paid for all those tax-paid services (military, police, fire protection, roads) at a higher rate than the average taxpayer.
No, he didn't. Capital gains taxes are lower than income taxes.
For average taxpayers, payroll tax is the biggest share of their tax burden, followed by sales tax, followed by income tax.
For the wealthy, their tax burden is mostly split between income tax and capital gains, and since capital gains is significantly lower than income tax, they do their best to rearrange their income so it comes in as capital gains.
That's how Warren Buffet's secretary winds up paying a higher effective rate than Warren Buffet.

>> ^quantumushroom:

The 'factory owner' paid for all those tax-paid services (military, police, fire protection, roads) at a higher rate than the average taxpayer.

No, he didn't. Capital gains taxes are lower than income taxes.

For average taxpayers, payroll tax is the biggest share of their tax burden, followed by sales tax, followed by income tax.

For the wealthy, their tax burden is mostly split between income tax and capital gains, and since capital gains is significantly lower than income tax, they do their best to rearrange their income so it comes in as capital gains.

That's how Warren Buffet's secretary winds up paying a higher effective rate than Warren Buffet.

>> ^LukinStone:

Why is it morally justified to impose a higher tax rate on the more highly paid? I'm already paying twenty people's worth.. Why should it be more?
It's moral because "you" can still afford gold plated rocket cars with a higher tax rate.
Or, if you believe in Jebus, there's that whole thing about a camel going through the eye of a needle.

If you make that much more money you are doing it at the expense of the people who make less! Is that moral? What makes your life so much more valuable than someone else's life?


You are standing on the backs of many others but you don't want to strengthen the base of the pyramid, you want to make the top heavier while weakening the base. That kind of thinking will end badly for everyone.

-Karl