Top 1% now owns more of the wealth than the remaining 99% • Hacker News Board

Re: Top 1% now owns more of the wealth than the remaining 99%

#11

Post by manigandham » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 4:46 PM UTC

dollar wrote: post #3

Who cares about socialist propaganda like this? There is no evidence that "equality" in the distribution of wealth is good for middle class and low income persons. For example, if the distribution were more equal on a relative basis, but all brackets had less money than before, is that supposed to be an improvement?

I don't think it's ever been about perfect equality. That would never work. Rather it's more about having less inequality.

There will still be a hierarchy and it's not a bad thing but we need to reduce the leverage and power being concentrated in a few hands that have the potential to change everyone else's lives (for better or worse).

I'm a big supporter of capitalism and believe in everyone being able to do what they want and to succeed to whatever levels they can, but we need to have checks and balances when it comes to how wealth can affect the rest of society.

Re: Top 1% now owns more of the wealth than the remaining 99%

#12

Post by tveita » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 4:51 PM UTC

dollar wrote: post #3

Who cares about socialist propaganda like this? There is no evidence that "equality" in the distribution of wealth is good for middle class and low income persons. For example, if the distribution were more equal on a relative basis, but all brackets had less money than before, is that supposed to be an improvement?

People who work hard and contribute to the economy but still live paycheck to paycheck due to stagnant wages care.

It's an extraordinary proposition that sifting more money to the top instead of paying people fair wages would somehow help the economy.

Turning your example on the head: what if making the distribution more equal would in the long term give all brackets more money, even the very rich ones? Would you then support distributing the wealth for the common good?

Re: Top 1% now owns more of the wealth than the remaining 99%

#13

Post by mikeash » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 4:52 PM UTC

> The report defines wealth as the value of assets including property and stock market investments, but excludes debt.

How does this make the slightest bit of sense? Counting property but ignoring debt is going to exaggerate the wealth of many Americans by an order of magnitude, for example. Beyond that, one person's debt is another person's investment, so you're double counting all that money.

Re: Top 1% now owns more of the wealth than the remaining 99%

#14

Post by elcct » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 4:55 PM UTC

Mimick wrote: post #7

dollar wrote: post #3

Who cares about socialist propaganda like this? There is no evidence that "equality" in the distribution of wealth is good for middle class and low income persons. For example, if the distribution were more equal on a relative basis, but all brackets had less money than before, is that supposed to be an improvement?

It's fine for some to own nothing in order to have bigger economy on the whole world? Who are we competing with Mars? What a billionaire need more than billion for anything? You comment just funny since it's the perfect billionaire's first world problem.

Who are you to decide who needs what?

Re: Top 1% now owns more of the wealth than the remaining 99%

#15

Post by randomsearch » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 4:55 PM UTC

dollar wrote: post #3

Who cares about socialist propaganda like this? There is no evidence that "equality" in the distribution of wealth is good for middle class and low income persons. For example, if the distribution were more equal on a relative basis, but all brackets had less money than before, is that supposed to be an improvement?

> There is no evidence that "equality" in the distribution of wealth is good for middle class and low income persons.

There is a vast amount of evidence. For example, much of it is cited in the famous book "The Spirit Level".

Re: Top 1% now owns more of the wealth than the remaining 99%

#16

Post by tyadon » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 4:58 PM UTC

I really hate to break it to you guys: It's always been like this. Maybe not quite THIS extreme, but a very small group of wealthy white men have run the United States since the beginning.

Re: Top 1% now owns more of the wealth than the remaining 99%

#17

Post by prostoalex » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 4:58 PM UTC

tveita wrote: post #12

dollar wrote: post #3

Who cares about socialist propaganda like this? There is no evidence that "equality" in the distribution of wealth is good for middle class and low income persons. For example, if the distribution were more equal on a relative basis, but all brackets had less money than before, is that supposed to be an improvement?

People who work hard and contribute to the economy but still live paycheck to paycheck due to stagnant wages care. It's an extraordinary proposition that sifting more money to the top instead of paying people fair wages would somehow help the economy. Turning your example on the head: what if making the distribution more equal would in the long term give all brackets more money, even the very rich ones? Would you the…

Well, according to this report, if you have two families both earning exactly the same (by contributing to the economy in the same manner), but one has $50,000 in the bank, while another has used that $50,000 to put a down payment on a house (perhaps by assuming a $200,000 mortgage), the wealth disparity between the two is enormous.

Debt (when used prudently) is a useful financial instrument and an enabler. In low-rate environment are we really that surprised it's being used extensively?

Re: Top 1% now owns more of the wealth than the remaining 99%

#18

Post by refurb » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:02 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #13

> The report defines wealth as the value of assets including property and stock market investments, but excludes debt. How does this make the slightest bit of sense? Counting property but ignoring debt is going to exaggerate the wealth of many Americans by an order of magnitude, for example. Beyond that, one person's debt is another person's investment, so you're double counting all that money.

Good catch. So if I "own" a $1M house, but have a $800K mortgage, they ignore the debt and say that I have $1M in wealth? Ridiculous.

Re: Top 1% now owns more of the wealth than the remaining 99%

#19

Post by personomas » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:02 PM UTC

dollar wrote: post #3

Who cares about socialist propaganda like this? There is no evidence that "equality" in the distribution of wealth is good for middle class and low income persons. For example, if the distribution were more equal on a relative basis, but all brackets had less money than before, is that supposed to be an improvement?

Large wealth inequality causes greed, and where there's greed there's corruption.

Furthermore, rich people are powerful and influential. As a result, rules and regulations and choices and decisions are made for them first, then maybe the poor. When it should be the other way around, also known as the [1] option for the poor. Yes, this negatively effects society.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Option_for_the_poor.

Re: Top 1% now owns more of the wealth than the remaining 99%

#20

Post by mikeash » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:05 PM UTC

dollar wrote: post #3

Who cares about socialist propaganda like this? There is no evidence that "equality" in the distribution of wealth is good for middle class and low income persons. For example, if the distribution were more equal on a relative basis, but all brackets had less money than before, is that supposed to be an improvement?

Wealth means power.

Let's take an extreme case: every person in the world has their wealth increased by 10% over what they have today, except for one person who has his wealth increased by $1 quadrillion.

Everybody is better off, right? Except that wealthy person is going to rule the world, and stack the deck to help himself, and there's nothing that says he's only going to do it in such a way that everybody else keeps increasing their wealth too, or even keeps their wealth at all.

We can see this at work in the US where the political process has become pretty corrupted, to the point that half the politicians act like wealthy people in the US suffer under a tremendously high tax burden when they actually pay less as a percentage than the average person, and the other half pays lip service to getting the wealthy to pay more but only proposes weak measures that never go anywhere, and where systematic lawbreaking in the financial sector that led to a gigantic financial crises went completely unpunished, except for the one guy who made the mistake of ripping off wealthy people.