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Oxfam: World's 8 richest as wealthy as half humanity

reuters.com

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Re: Oxfam: World's 8 richest as wealthy as half humanity

#21

Post by RyanHamilton »

theRhino wrote: post #10
mrweasel wrote: post #8

It's a little one sided, both in the Reuters piece, and in the media in general. Most journalist and politicians seems focused on the wealthy, but forget that the vast majority of people aren't poor because Mark Zuckerberg is rich. Sure, the wealthy needs to pay their taxes, just like everyone else, but it's not going to magically pull 2 billion people out of poverty.

absolutely right - wealth distribution isn't a zero-sum game

I think it may be a zero sum game.

This universe and planet has finite resources. There is only so much iron/steel to build cars, rare earth metals to build electronics.. Fundamentally that's a zero sum game?

Sure in the recent short term, we've got lucky that population was small relative to planet size and we got significantly better each year at extracting resources. Even if we get lucky again and find a way to extract resources from space and energy from some amazing new tech. At some point that too levels off, especially as population keeps increasing exponentially, but energy capture/generation does not. Then we are back to zero sum game.

Historically most tribes/kings etc got rich at the expense of the workers/slaves they exploited. Wealth distribution has and long term mostly will be zero sum, or so it seems to me?

Re: Oxfam: World's 8 richest as wealthy as half humanity

#22

Post by domfletcher »

theRhino wrote: post #6

note that half of that lot have given pretty much all their wealth to charity. There is an argument that their ability to deploy that wealth to good effect is far greater than that of the american govt? In away - its a very positive message

"I (/my company) should be allowed to avoid my taxes because the government will just waste the money" Is a pretty antidemocratic sentiment. You may think it's inefficient but you're a constituency of one and you don't get to make that call for everyone in the country.

Re: Oxfam: World's 8 richest as wealthy as half humanity

#23

Post by imglorp »

theRhino wrote: post #6

note that half of that lot have given pretty much all their wealth to charity. There is an argument that their ability to deploy that wealth to good effect is far greater than that of the american govt? In away - its a very positive message

What's more, that half are focusing their philanthropy carefully where they can make an impact on humanity.

The (Buffet and) Gates foundation, for example, have reported new malaria cases are down 25 pct globally.

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Health/Mala...

Re: Oxfam: World's 8 richest as wealthy as half humanity

#25

Post by treuherz »

Oxfam released a similar stat last year, and the BBC's More or Less team didn't think much of it. The wealth numbers they're using aren't necessarily well-behaved when they're totted up the way Oxfam has done, as there are a lot of cases where wealth as-measured isn't an intuitive measure of "richness". For example, a new graduate with tens of thousands in loan debt will still have a chance at better long-term income than someone with neither the qualification nor the loan who has higher numeric worth.

That said, it's harder to find examples where the a high wealth implies a low buying power, so this doesn't necessarily contradict the crux of the piece. Either way, it's worth being skeptical of misapplied statistics.

Sources: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26613682 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03fj84x

Re: Oxfam: World's 8 richest as wealthy as half humanity

#26

Post by imglorp »

collin_u_out wrote: post #13

It's amazing how little they actually have to spend to make people think they are philanthropic, and not just greedy assholes.

I was surprised to see Zuck and Larry on the Giving Pledge list, not that they gave, to your point, but at least they've promised to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge

Re: Oxfam: World's 8 richest as wealthy as half humanity

#27

Post by karol »

The real issue is here is how much assets with finite supply and cruicial to human existence (e.g. food and water supply, real estate, cruicial technology) can be brought under control of few individuals with such wealth. For example if someone buys the majority of land, there will not be an easy way out even if the monetary wealth distribution will change.

I am wondering why isn't it more often discussed that wealth yields assets that yields even more wealth, because this is how capitalism is set up. This means that the situation cannot be easily improved because wealthy individuals have supeior knowledge and assets to enrich themselves further.

Re: Oxfam: World's 8 richest as wealthy as half humanity

#28

Post by aluhut »

OskarS wrote: post #15

This is an incredibly misleading statistic because they use NET wealth, which means that they subtract your debt from your wealth. That means that if you have more debt than wealth (not necessarily a bad thing), you have negative wealth. This is the case for roughly 40% of the world's population. This means that, by the same metric used in this headline, your average groundhog or newborn baby has more "wealth" than t…

> This means that, by the same metric used in this headline, your average groundhog or newborn baby has more "wealth" than the poorest 2.85 billion people in the world.

But isn't that true? If you are not born into a family that will give you a huge dept and a second mortgage on the house, you are better of.

Re: Oxfam: World's 8 richest as wealthy as half humanity

#29

Post by tajen »

cromwellian wrote: post #16

These measures I don't think are a good way to measure, because I think there's a difference between someone who's very wealthy on paper because of high stock prices, and someone whose's wealth because they got a disproportionate share of income. The latter represents money diverted in the here and now to someone else, and the former represents money that can be diverted in the future. Of course, you can ask Elizabet…

Agreed. It's still an indicator, although it shouldn't be taken alone. The yearly energy consumption of a person is another that is often recognized as relevant, especially since the duration of our species is now determined by our glasshouse gas emissions.

Re: Oxfam: World's 8 richest as wealthy as half humanity

#30

Post by maxerickson »

karol wrote: post #27

The real issue is here is how much assets with finite supply and cruicial to human existence (e.g. food and water supply, real estate, cruicial technology) can be brought under control of few individuals with such wealth. For example if someone buys the majority of land, there will not be an easy way out even if the monetary wealth distribution will change. I am wondering why isn't it more often discussed that wealth…

It's been frequently discussed, even more since the publication of Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

(which is thematically centered on wealth concentration)

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