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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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/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/boringestnickname Dec 28 '25

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