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%

#31

Post by fsloth » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:13 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 are some statistical studies that show that in completely free market most of the wealth gets accrued on a few individuals. I.e. the population generates the wealth but only a few gain maximum benefits for a statistical fluke and no specific high performance input of their own. The question is - do we want to modify the free rules with income balancing or not. It's not about in the larger context about should a few pay money from their own pockets for the many - with the statistical view it all never was theirs in the first place. Economies which redistribute all wealth are probably quite inefficient. Economiea which do not redistribute are quite unfair. There's a sweet spot between these two extremes.

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

#32

Post by mikeash » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:14 PM UTC

breischl wrote: post #24

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.

I think the Guardian article meant that they had subtracted debt from assets, but they stated it in a confusing way. The original report states: Once debts have been subtracted, a person needs only USD 3,210 to be among the wealthiest half of world citizens in mid-2015. However, USD 68,800 is required to be a member of the top 10% of global wealth holders, and USD 759,900 to belong to the top 1%. Which is more clearl…

Yes, I believe you're correct. Holy crap is that a terrible way to put it. I wouldn't call "excluding debt" confusing, but just outright wrong. Unless this is one of those dialect things that means something different to the Brits?

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

#33

Post by e12e » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:14 PM UTC

msoad wrote: post #28

Not very related but if you're using Chrome install this plug-in to get a clean "AMP" version of Guardian and many more websites: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/%E2%9A%A1%EF%B8%8F...

If anyone else was wondering, that's "Accelarted Mobile Pages": https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml

Does seem odd me to point that out on a Guardian link - it's never struck me as particularly slow (on mobile or otherwise).

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

#34

Post by 13thLetter » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:15 PM UTC

prostoalex wrote: post #21

According to census.gov http://blogs.census.gov/2013/03/21/household-wealth-and-debt... at least in the US "changes in overall median net worth observed over the past decade have been driven primarily by changes in one of its major components – equity that American households hold in their homes". The recipe for greater wealth equality is to subsidize mortgages and restrict new construction, so that everybody's house…

> The recipe for greater wealth equality is to subsidize mortgages and restrict new construction, so that everybody's house values move up a notch, which makes everyone feel a little bit better about themselves.

I assume this suggestion was made "A Modest Proposal"-style, right?

Those are the policies we've been following, and they cause great harm. It's already nearly impossible to buy a home in many American cities if you're not upper middle class at a minimum, and even then you're paying an unsustainable portion of your income. Restricting construction further and subsidizing mortgages (so that home prices simply float up to their current value + subsidy) will put homes even farther out of reach.

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

#35

Post by nilkn » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:17 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #18

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.

Even if that's their methodology, I don't think it's that ridiculous. It's not like just anyone can go get an $800k mortgage. On top of that, you would stand to personally profit on any gains the home might see in the real estate market.

To offer a slightly extreme example, I'd consider a recently minted surgeon with $300k in loans, a mortgage, and a $500k base salary to be considerably wealthier than the debt-free small-town auto mechanic making $35k.

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

#36

Post by gjm11 » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:17 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #32

breischl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Guardian article meant that they had subtracted debt from assets, but they stated it in a confusing way. The original report states: Once debts have been subtracted, a person needs only USD 3,210 to be among the wealthiest half of world citizens in mid-2015. However, USD 68,800 is required to be a member of the top 10% of global wealth holders, and USD 759,900 to belong to the top 1%. Which is more clearl…

Yes, I believe you're correct. Holy crap is that a terrible way to put it. I wouldn't call "excluding debt" confusing, but just outright wrong. Unless this is one of those dialect things that means something different to the Brits?

Brit here. I wouldn't read "... but excludes debt" as meaning "... but subtracts debt from people's wealth when doing statistics", no. I'd guess I'm about as surprised to see it being used that way as an otherwise-similar non-Brit.

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

#37

Post by OJFord » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:18 PM UTC

I don't think this is particularly surprising or interesting on a global scale. Not least because of the difficulty in data collection that could lead to different conclusions the next time someone tries.

Wealth distribution within a country is an interesting thing to look at, but I think at the global level it's not nearly as compelling as, say, wealth distribution among countries.

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

#38

Post by lumberjack » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:18 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.

It makes a lot of sense actually.

Poor people are not allowed to go into all that much debt. If you have somebody who is $2M in debt, chances are they are wealthy and were only allowed to accumulate all that much debt because of their influence and reputation or some other kind of leverage.

The average graduate who is $40K to $50K is not actually poorer than the homeless beggar who is in the green. They don't live as poor of a life and they have the potential to earn for more.

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

#39

Post by 13thLetter » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:18 PM UTC

wavefunction wrote: post #23

elcct wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are you to decide who needs what?

The point is that we should all be deciding what we all need. To your point, who are the very wealthy to decide who needs what all on their lonesome?

I just decided you don't need your car. Could you have it boxed up and shipped over to me? Thanks.

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

#40

Post by vlehto » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:21 PM UTC

randomsearch wrote: post #15

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".

It only shows lots of correlations.

The real problem might just as well be obesity, teenage births, imprisonment, educational performance or drug use.

If inequality is just one of the symptoms and not the real devil, then eradicating inequality would probably be rather destructive. Just like eradicating drug use seems to be destructive, because the underlying cause is mental problems.