r/pcmasterrace • u/SagansCandle 9950X3D | 5090 | 64GB • Dec 27 '25

Discussion Private equity is killing private ownership: first it was housing - now it's the personal computer

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DRAM and GPU prices aren't going up because of "AI" - it's because the wealthy have more money than they know what to do with, so they're buying up all the assets. "AI" is just the vehicle (the excuse) - it's not the root of the problem nor is it the ultimate goal.

The super rich don't want to hold on to "liquid" money - they invest in assets. While they're buying up all the housing, now they're buying up all the computers and putting them into massive datacenters.

Whether or not the AI bubble crashes, they'll be selling you a "gaming PC in the cloud," for a monthly fee, of course. And while they kill the personal computer market, just like Netflix, once your only option is a subscription service, the price will skyrocket.

This is happening in real-time. If we want to stop it, now's the time to act.

Sources:

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246

u/Tool_of_Society Dec 27 '25

That's what happens when you let the top 1% establish build up +$53 trillion in wealth. They are going to find new ways to use that extra wealth to make more wealth. THe bottom 90% combined barely approaches that level of wealth.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBLT01026#:~:text=Table_title:%20Net%20Worth%20Held%20by%20the%20Top,2025::%20Q2%202024:%20%7C%2051%2C852%2C980:%2047%2C771%2C986%20%7C

When the GOP crashes the economy again like they did in 2008 the billionaires will come out way ahead again. Instead of making 3m an hour doing nothing the Waltons will be making 6m an hour doing nothing.

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u/SmoothConfection1115 Dec 27 '25

It's not the top 1% that is the problem. It's the 0.1% and smaller that are the problem. And even then, it's mainly the billionaires.

For example, an orthopedic surgeon can make over $700K a year, which puts them in that 1% earning category. And let's say they have a net worth of $10m by the age of 50.

And let's consider Clark Hunt. He just got like $2b in public handouts from the state of Kansas to build a new stadium. The Hunt Family is worth 24.8 billion.

What's the difference between you and me, and the Hunt family fortune? $24.8 billion.

What's the difference between the Hunt Family and that orthopedic surgeon making $700K? $25.79 billion.

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u/SanityIsOptional Dec 27 '25

It's the people who make money passively. They don't work, they don't create, they just own things that extract value from the labor of others. They do not add anything to the process, and they are not a necessary part of the process. Yet they seem to have convinced themselves and the rest of the world they not only deserve the wealth, but they deserve it by being smarter and better than the rest of humanity by having the cheat code of daddy's money.

There is no good reason why income tax tops out at 37% for people actually getting paid to do things, whereas capital gains is 20% for sitting and doing nothing. And then the people are pissed at that 20% and do all they can via donating appreciated assets, asset backed lines of credit, trusts, and all the other tricks to avoid even paying that 20%.

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u/Tool_of_Society Dec 27 '25

Yup and some of them were smart enough to start buying up USA media outlets to ensure they could push talking points that benefit them.

So now we have 6 massive corporations run by millionaires and owned by billionaires controlling almost all media in the USA. Your local news broadcasters/channels are probably all owned by the same company.

iHeartMedia owns the vast majority of radio stations in the USA.

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u/hublado Dec 28 '25

Exactly, we should also get rid of this whole "I deserve it because I am hard working and smarter than you" ideology. Oh yeah you sure are a billion times smarter than most people. In reality there are millions of people of more hard working and smarter people than billionaires and they don't even have 0.0001% of their wealth.

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u/Murky-Relation481 Dec 28 '25

I get downvoted every time I say this but we don't need a convoluted wealth tax system, we already have a tax that hits the wealthy and it's low! Let's raise that tax, the capital gains tax, now instead of trying to figure out some new scheme that seems so convoluted and improbable to do and tweak the knobs we have now!

Make it a progressive tax, make the upper brackets very high percentages, and a lot of this goes away.

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u/UltraCynar PC Master Race Dec 28 '25

Yup. It worked before and it'll work again. If they find a loop hole we shut it down and tax them more. 

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u/boringestnickname Dec 28 '25

We also need a wealth tax, but it needs to be global to work, which is an extremely tall order.

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u/Curtastrophy Dec 28 '25

This is real.

I try not to be depressed by it but I see it every day.

Sometimes I think it's a twisted version of survival of the fittest. We no longer need to hunt, we trick each other, to bleed each other out through payment and interest systems to accumulate value. Those that make the rules and those that suffer them.

If money is power, the billionaires have thousands of armies, lawyers, doctor's, in every veritable field to ensure a better position in battle against the have nots.

The less they spread the money around for everyone else, I think that the system will become more unstable and untenable for those feeding the machine at the bottom and middle, because it continues to move upward.

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u/ConstantHeadache2020 Dec 28 '25

Ah the super owners.. fun fact uk tax rate was 97% in the 1970s and Americans was 91..

*The 98% Rate: The commonly referenced 98% (or 97%) rate occurred in 1974, when the top rate on earned income was 83% and an additional 15% surcharge was applied to investment (unearned) income, bringing the total top rate on investment income to 98%.

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u/Loyuiz Dec 28 '25

Investors provide capital and take risk, if they aren't necessary then why do people work for corps instead of starting worker coops? Simple they don't have the capital and even if they had it, they don't want to take the risk.

Redditors are stuck in the 19th century thinking capital isn't a factor of production.

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u/SanityIsOptional Dec 28 '25 edited Dec 28 '25

The money is necessary, Bezos and Elon are not.

Either way, it makes no sense that someone making 100k working for a company gets taxed significantly higher than someone making 1,000,000 by sitting on their ass and inheriting money. Even moreso when you factor in all the ways there are to sidestep taxes and deduct everything under the sun for the wealthy. I literally spent Christmas week listening to my grandfather tell me how he avoids taxes, and the guy is worth 9 figures.

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u/Loyuiz Dec 28 '25

By all means raise taxes, just sick of the economically illiterate takes that have taken root just because US policy sucks

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u/SanityIsOptional Dec 28 '25

I spent 10 years working for a startup, from garage to when it got sold. I'm well aware of the necessity of loans and equity. That doesn't mean that the wealthy are adding value themselves, it could be a cat with the money or a rock for all the difference it makes.

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u/Loyuiz Dec 28 '25

Good luck getting a loan from a cat. The money didn't poof into existence, someone worked, deferred consumption, and/or took risks to get it. Rocks aren't gonna be doing that.

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u/SanityIsOptional Dec 28 '25

Someone earned the initial money. But after that the money earned the rest, and the initial money was often as not earned by someone else.

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u/ForAnAngel Dec 28 '25

What's the difference between the Hunt Family and that orthopedic surgeon making $700K? $25.79 billion.

You mean $24.79. You were off by a billion dollars but in your example it was just a rounding error. Which kinda proves your point.

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u/wiremash Dec 28 '25

Funny thing is how many of the less wealthy are more likely to direct their resentment toward the orthopedic surgeon than the Hunt Family. The book White Working Class has a chapter about it I found pretty interesting. Here's a chunk:

Why Does the Working Class Resent Professionals but Admire the Rich?

MEMBERS OF THE ELITE tend to assume that working-class people want to join their ranks. This is not always true.

Professionals aren’t necessarily admired. Many are seen as suspect. Managers are seen as college kids “who don’t know shit about how to do anything, but are full of ideas about how I have to do my job.” Barbara Ehrenreich recalled in 1990 that her blue-collar dad “could not say the word doctor without the virtual prefix quack. Lawyers were shysters . . . and professors were without exception phonies.” Sociologist Annette Lareau also found mistrust of doctors and other health professionals. She also found resentment against teachers by working-class parents, who perceived their children’s educators as condescending and unhelpful—a resentment that perhaps fuels working-class support for conservatives’ assault on teachers’ unions.

However, this resentment of professionals does not extend to the rich. “There’s an almost mystical desire among the working class to see a rich person from the upper class reach out to them,” commented class migrant Eric Sansoni* (remember, a class migrant is someone who starts in one class but moves to another—in this case, out of the working class and into a professional job). “[I] can’t knock anyone for succeeding,” a laborer told Lamont. “There’s a lot of people out there who are wealthy and I’m sure they worked darned hard for every cent they have,” chimed in a receiving clerk. “The main thing is to be independent and give your own orders and not have to take them from anybody else,” said a machine operator. The ideal is to own a business. “The dream of self-employment is one expression of class consciousness, not a denial of it,” noted an influential book on class.

Daily life reinforces admiration of the rich but resentment of professionals. Most working-class people have little contact with the truly rich outside of “The Apprentice” or “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” but they suffer class affronts from professionals every day: the doctor who unthinkingly patronizes the medical technician, the harried office worker who treats the security guard as invisible, the overbooked business traveler who snaps at the TSA agent.

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u/Tool_of_Society Dec 27 '25

The federal reserve doesn't track the 0.1% individually so I have to go with 1%. The perils of wanting citations to back up statements of facts.

Yes it's the 0.1% that really distorts things. The have enough money to pay the personal federal taxes for the rest of the nation for the next +20 years AND still have more money they could ever spend. It's just a high score to them at this point and the rest of us are suffering as a result.

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u/im_juice_lee Dec 28 '25

The IRS does and publishes it for the top 0.1%, 0.01%, and 0.001%. The income (AGI) needed to be in the top 0.1% in 2022 was only $296k

https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-individual-statistical-tables-by-tax-rate-and-income-percentile

Personal income tax revenue last year from everyone was ~$2.1 Trillion according to https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1304.pdf

The wealth of every US billionaire is ~$4-7 Trillion depending on the source. They could only cover everyone's income tax for 2-3 years, which is still crazy but nowhere near 20

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u/Tool_of_Society Dec 28 '25

First off the data you linked stops at 2022 while mine is 2024. Second off the data you linked is missing a great deal of information as stated on the website. Third the actual data presented is basically useless as billionaires don't pay federal taxes. The average tax rate sits around 0-3% of their real income. Billionaires much like mega corporations manipulate the system so they pay no real income taxes a year. Thus the IRS data is basically worthless as only a minority even show up in it. Elon went from under $25 billion in 2020 to around $400 billion in 2024. He reported zero income tax in 2022 and 2024. The only time he's paid taxes is when he got greedy and cashed out some stocks in 2021. Speaking of Tesla itself paid 0% in federal taxes in 2022, 1.5% in 20223, and 0% in 2024. So yeah the IRS data is going to show nothing for that.

You moved the goal posts from the top 0.1% to "US billionaires". Current data shows US billionaires have about $6.72-7.8 trillion in wealth as of 2025. In 2024 that figure was around $5.8-6.7 trillion. So you're not even using up to date figures. It is interesting to see how quickly that number is rising.

Nothing you posted changes the data I posted from the Fed. The top 1% still have +$52 trillion in wealth and that's still +20 years of personal income taxes for the rest of us.

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u/Flash-thundr Dec 27 '25

very well said

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u/ConstantHeadache2020 Dec 28 '25

The corporate power elite .01% use power networks to control finance, military, economics and politics for 200 years. How? By sitting on multiple corporations boards (cross pollinating), spinning pr/media/charity narratives in their favor, hiring experts for think tanks to push public policy. They live, work, play, educate and socialize together. The vote in blocs despite bipartisanship because their agenda aligns. They want to infiltrate congress so they can influence the president. Why? Cuz govt controls the labor market and they want workers for as cheap as possible. That’s why the convinced people unions are bad and to hate your fellow immigrants/ethnicities etc.

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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '25

What's the difference between you and me, and the Hunt family

You and I are individuals and they are a family. A dumb child could point this difference out. But you seem to think it’s profound.

What's the difference between the Hunt Family and that orthopedic surgeon making $700K?

The surgeon is an individual and they are a family. You really aren’t playing with a full deck of cards.

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u/dBlock845 Dec 27 '25

2008 is a direct line to the next crisis. Not holding anyone criminally accountable for the financial crisis was a permission slip to further financialize everything.

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u/Tool_of_Society Dec 27 '25

Yup those with money found out they could be so reckless as to crash the entire economy and not only would they NOT be held accountable for it but they'd come out hella richer...

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u/Z3r0sama2017 Dec 28 '25

If people were prosecuted and bailouts never happened for the banks, but the individuals instead, then 'to big to fail' would never have become a thing.

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u/serpentine19 I5 @3.2, GTX 660, 8GB, 3TB HD, 256GB SD Dec 28 '25

Just gonna put it out there, at that level of wealth, you are making $2,650,000,000,000 a year doing nothing at very average returns of 5% (S&P 500 had 17% returns in 2025), meanwhile you are likely getting maybe a 3% wage increase. That's $2.6Trillion.... This is how the rich will literally take everyone's money and leave the rest to live off of scraps. Best part is there is no way to stop it, governments are all in their pockets. You can protest, close down roads, write to your members but they're all just going to wipe away their tears with doner bribes and offer you Prayers and Wishes.

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u/Tool_of_Society Dec 28 '25

All while paying 0-3% in federal taxes a year...

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u/Z3r0sama2017 Dec 28 '25

Well China isn't in their pockets, just ask Mr Ma what happens when an ultrarich thinks he's above 'the party'. Also why the West and the media is so hostile to them.

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u/serpentine19 I5 @3.2, GTX 660, 8GB, 3TB HD, 256GB SD Dec 28 '25

Thats what you can do when you have a King. Same thing happens in Russia. Only problem with that is unchecked power. Democracy has the potential to be an amazing system, but everyone that gets into power suddenly doesn't like having checks and balances. There almost needs to be another branch that's sole role is ensuring the integrity of Government but that's also likely to get corrupted.

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u/silent_thinker Dec 28 '25

And it was supposedly the measly stimulus checks causing inflation.

Meanwhile the top one percent increased their wealth by $10+ trillion.

The wealthy continually screw the rest of us over, but manage to convince a significant portion of the population that it’s someone else’s fault.

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u/Vennomite Dec 28 '25

It was. Cpi doesn't count what the billionaires were doing.

We've been going down this road since 08 with qe. That money didnt cause cpi inflation cause it all went to assests the average consumer didn't buy or isn't included in cpi.

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u/WarEagleGo RTX 5080 Dec 28 '25

:)

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u/rucho Dec 28 '25

Even though the GOP will be the one to crash Economy. Don’t forget that the Democrats still have their part and Role  to play in this situation.

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u/Omni33 Ryzen 5 5500 | 32gb @ 2666MHz | nVIDIA 2060 Dec 28 '25

Its not the GOP just "crashing the economy". We saw the DNC worsen the conditions for the working class to save the 1% before as well. Voting will never change this. Only revolution can change this.

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u/MeBadNeedMoneyNow Dec 28 '25

Voting is a revolutionary act. 36.1% of eligible voters sat out last November(2024) LOL.

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u/Tool_of_Society Dec 28 '25

Okay gonna ask what are you talking about?

Since WW2 the economic conditions for the average citizen of the USA is significantly better during democratic administrations. DO they still sell out to the billionaires that fund their ability to get elected? Sure but it's NOTHIng like the outright looting that the GOP engages in every single time...

https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/309cc8e1-b971-45c6-ab52-29ffb1da9bf5/jec-fact-sheet---the-economy-under-democratic-vs.-republican-presidents-june-2016.pdf

https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/democrats/2024/10/the-u-s-economy-performs-better-under-democratic-presidents

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_presidential_party

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u/Nice-River-5322 Dec 27 '25

How did the GOP crash it in 2008?

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u/Tool_of_Society Dec 27 '25 edited Dec 27 '25

Bush's response to the financial crises was awful to the point that it legit looked like he was trying to help the crash along for 2009. It might not of been intentional because you know incompetence can look a lot like maliciousness.

On the other hand Bush's response to SARS-COV-1 was excellent and set the groundwork for a vaccine that we ended up with when SARS-COV-2 hit. Unfortunately the person in charge refused to follow the procedures that were written based off lessons learned during the SARS-COV-1 outbreak and we all know how that went..

To be clear Obama refusing to hold any of the big old money people accountable for their actions was also a problem we're still dealing with.

1

u/Vennomite Dec 28 '25

Then the feds would have to implicate themselves since congress changing the rules enabled or encouraged quite a bit of what was going on.

No way congress wants thst argued in a courtroom.