Challenging the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators

Hardly thousands. 240 000 people die every year in car accidents and no one prohibits cars. Millions died in WW2, but it is not the USSR to blame for it.

How many Indians were killed for the US to prosper?

We are speaking about fhe better system you never tried. No rich, no poor, everyone has a job.

HN tends to be extremely reactionary to posts like this. Perhaps because the tech/startup scene is all about getting rich quick, or perhaps because HN has come to partially reflect the personal views of PG.

There will be a reckoning. The world is 'unsustainably unequal' at the moment. There are huge problems on the horizon - superbugs, climate change, resource depletion, environmental degradation, overpopulation. These problems can only be solved when governments act in the interests of all of humankind. This will not happen when the 1% hold all the money and all the power (which is the same thing).

I hope we can reign in the rentiering, tax-avoiding, propaganda-publishing rich and reclaim democracy before Something Bad happens. Otherwise, when the SHTF, the 1% will deservedly shoulder all the blame. And that will be the reckoning.

"In the example of home rental, making homes available for rent enables families to live in accommodations that they would not be able to purchase. These accommodations are not without cost to the owner: Taxes, utilities, maintenance, security and administration are all associated costs that rent payments offset. What the rentier provides in most cases, is a better quality of life than the family could have if they were forced to own the property they lived in."

In many parts of the UK this just isn't the case any more. There is a serious lack of housing due to many factors (the bigots will tell you it's all the fault of immigration) but the short story is that the competition for rental property is so fierce now that in many places, monthly rent to the private landlord is higher than a monthly mortgage payment would be to buy a similar property.

So why don't people just buy? Well, there is a shortage of houses to buy, and you can't usually get a 100% mortgage. You need to put down a substantial cash deposit towards the purchase price of the house, for example 15, 20 and even 25% in some cases.

So why don't people just save up for a deposit? Well, if you need to spend £250k on a very modest 3-bedroom house, you are looking at anything from £37.5k plus fees.

Housing is so expensive now in relation to average income, that people are effectively priced out of the market forever, unless they win or inherit a lot of money. It is not possible to save that amount in any reasonable time scale.

So why not get a second or third job? Maybe they'll work themselves to death before they need that house? Only joking, people have to work long hours at their main jobs nowadays. The contract may say 37.5 hours per week, and that's what you get paid for, but "You're all professionals..."

> If you buy some shares in M&S or BP on the stock market, the money you pay goes to the previous owner, not the company. You are what Keynes called a ‘functionless investor.’ When such so-called ‘investments’ pay off they extract wealth from the economy without creating anything in return.

This doesn't seem very coherent. How could a company ever sell stock to raise capital, if the people who bought that stock didn't have a functioning market to resell it on?

Obligatory link to Hans Rosling's economic play-by-play of the last 50 years: https://youtu.be/hVimVzgtD6w?t=4m12s