Billionaires add $1tn to net worth during pandemic as their workers struggle | Hacker News Reader

Billionaires add $1tn to net worth during pandemic as their workers struggle

theguardian.com

Its not just billionaires though. All my friends( couple of year out of college) in the bay area have become multi millionaires over last year from stock growth.

Bunch of them bought second houses in LCOL areas, beach houses, ski condos from liquidating some of their stocks.

This article has it all wrong. Elon Musk added to his net worth due to stock growth which was caused by govt indiscriminately pumping money via stimulus, interest rates ect. Govt actions eg: giving money to ppl who experienced no loss in income has caused this. Investing in stocks was the top use of stimulus money across all income classes per cnbc. So this was caused by govt actions not by amazon exploiting their employees more, they have been doing that forever, that hasn't changed.

I think guardian here is advocating for billionares to "trickle down" their wealth to employees. So giving money directly to ppl also causes "trickle down" ?

A couple years out of college and that rich? They must work for unicorns then right? And when you say “all my friends” how many are we really talking?

FAANG stock comp is top tier even for juniors.

Sorry, 'all' = 4 ppl. I have small circle of friends :D.

Yea all of them work for a FAANG company.

"couple" = 5

The Guardian is trash.

They look at stock value, which its raise is largely from the government printing too much money.

Look at the price the price of grocery. It is sick how fast price has been increasing.

> The Guardian is trash. They look at stock value...

The Guardian did not invent the (extremely common) practice of considering the market value of someone's stock as part of their net worth.

Literally the entire world does it that way, including banks and insurance companies.

You can argue that net worth is different on paper than it is when all assets are liquidated, but that's not useful when trying to figure out how much someone is worth.

I've never understood how so many tech workers see themselves as broadly left-wing, while at the same time gentrifying entire cities, spending their life's work growing and optimizing the fortunes of the wealthiest individuals in the world, and increasing the tools of surveillance on the population and competition between the rest of the workers.

> tech workers see themselves as broadly left-wing

Because tech workers ~50% in the bay area here are immigrants.

Left wing in USA is a coalition of wealthy and poor.

Probably doesn't help when large companies were allowed to stay open and smaller companies were shut or had too many expenses with changes to stay open.

Large companies paid for the right to stay open, so they got what they paid for. If you don’t want a free market, don’t ask for it.

Being able to pay the government to not close you while your competitors are forced to close is not a free market.

I don’t understand why so many people confuse a free market economy and corporate takeover of the government.

It won't stop. Since most non-rich consumers are maxed out on debt (induced to do so by ever-lowering rates), the Fed basically cannot raise rates. If they do, increased costs of debt servicing will crater tens of millions, and also destroy many businesses. This is why the Fed is sending messages to the market that it will allow some "overheating" - it has no choice.

So with rates low and trapped at low levels, these numbers are just going to keep rising. For those who don't have the capital to invest, things will just get worse - they have to carry the burden of inevitable inflation the Fed cannot fight.

... and to prevent the Fed from increasing rates, the US needs to enforce the Petro-Dollar regime whereby all of the world economy runs on the USD.

That explains the incessant saber-rattling.

So many posts like this. Its not like the billionaires have this much money. Its just the perceived value of their companies have going up.

Even though financial systems are not perfect, these billion dollar companies run by these billionaires provide a valued service. Its just the services are more useful during this time

Delivery companies such as Amazon's stock would have gone up since everyone is using it to deliver more goods that ever.

Remote work companies such as Zoom's stock would have gone up since everyone is using it to work from home

I'm sure most of these big companies would have got stimulus money from the government but with out the most people would be unemployed and out of toilet paper

That’s just because most of the QE/money printing from the FED went to equity and real estate inflation, instead of just giving money directly to the citizens (e.g. about $20k per citizen was spent on the stimulus).

What has been the amount of devaluation in USD, post covid?

Is there a ready number we can just plugin to recalculate the value of one's assets?

For example, if I held 100usd worth of a stock in March 2020, what would its worth be in Jan 2021, just due to currency devaluation?

That’s an interesting question, because different assets are inflating at different rates...

Also, we are in a new experiment where every government is trying to devalue at the same time to prop up their covid economies.

Thank you billionaires for creating $1tn of value during these troubled times

or thank you devalued dollar for making these assets worth $1tn more.

Robots can't come enough. Just replace every human with robots and you can make 100x more money. Who cares about the rest right? More money > money

Cantillon effect

what do we think the 2T dollars will do in 2021? can thank uncle sam for this bubble. and then theyll blame capitalism when it pops.

uncle sam's priorities are set by capitalists.

agree. thats why we shouldnt give them more power over our lives by expanding govt power. govt power = corporate power.

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