“How Invisible Capital Gains Drive Extreme U.S. Wealth Concentration: Evidence from Balance-Sheet-Complete Haig-Simons Accounting” Steve Roth @ Wealth Economics A dominant economic fact of the past half century is the extreme and increasing concentration of U.S. wealth into the hands of ever-fewer people, families, and dynasties, and the corporations (including banks, insurers, major media companies, […]

Mortgage Payments and the Vibecession: Homeowners’ “Cost of Living” Mortgage payments are most owner-occupiers’ biggest monthly cash outlay. And they’re way up. Steve Roth — Wealth Economics I came across a pretty eye-popping economic fact recently: The typical payment on a new mortgage for an average American residence has ~doubled since 2019.1 It was $913 in Dec. 2019; […]

– by Steve Roth Originally posted at Wealth Economics If you think human well-being matters, yeah. If there’s one armchair economic truism that I give high credence to, it’s declining marginal utility. The first ice-cream cone you eat on a hot sunny day delivers a lot of utility. The second, significantly less so. (With ice-cream cones, you pretty […]

Short answer: yeah. The long answer is . . . longer. – by Steve Roth Originally posted at Wealth Economics There are a lot of pathways and mechanisms in the US and worldwide that deliver wealth to assetholders, and that have perennially concentrated that wealth (hence power) into the hands of dynasties over millennia — notably over […]

– by Steve Roth Originally posted at Wealth Economics Economists have widely ignored it, even while dubbing it the “preferred” measure of income. “The greatest trick capital-gainsincome ever managed was convincingthe world that it doesn’t exist.”—Carlos Mucha (inventor of the Platinum Coin) This post draws on a far lengthier and more detailed paper — including support for […]

Are these people crazy? Steve Roth Wealth Economics This BlueSky bleet really raised my eyebrows. Check out the whole thread. I think my gentle readers will guess that I share these sentiments. But the thing that raised my eyebrows was the explicit suggestion that we should lower national productivity. Many economists would see that as economic insanity […]

Louis Brandeis says it all. Or did he? by Steve Roth Originally posted at Wealth Economics I do so love diligent lifelong scholars (“experts,” in today’s deprecatory usage) sharing with us their excruciatingly detailed research into areas in which I have a deeply curious interest, but where I lack the wherewithal or energy to properly […]

Which of Piketty’s “Rich Get Richer” Theories Matters More? – by Steve Roth Wealth Economics For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. —Matthew 25:29, Revised Standard Version Steve Randy Waldman reminded me recently of this […]

Trade Balances: It’s the Spending, Stupid by Steve Roth Wealth Economics This post is dedicated to my sister, who (bless her heart) really follows the financial press and etc. and tries to understand things. She called me up kind of flummoxed by all this tariff/trade talk recently, and now IMO has a super-good basic understand […]

– by Steve Roth Originally posted at Wealth Economics “Capital” is polysemous; it has multiple meanings. People, notably including economists (who should know better), constantly muddle those meanings together even within a single sentence, so that nobody including the speakers and writers themselves knows, or can know, what the speaker is saying. It’s a centuries-old dumpster fire — conceptual and […]