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World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

theguardian.com

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Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#21

Post by newmanships »

jumsdogpetter wrote: post #12
kachurovskiy wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rich people tend to have most of their worth in stock. In theory, assuming your stock got more expensive, you get richer without anyone in particular getting poorer.

The theory is naive, dismissive, and wrong. Stock value increases are coming from optimizations within companies that reduce employee benefits and compensation. On the consumer side of things, profits also come from taking advantage of deregulation, lowering the quality and safety of consumer products and services. Executive leadership and investors are pocketing gains made from making everyone else's lives worse. Ge…

Are you saying stock value increases only come from reducing employee benefits and compensation or from lowering the quality and safety of products and services? Seems like that is simply not true across the board. If a company sells say software they could easily grow revenue and profits without changing their product or reducing employee benefits and compensation. Their earnings would be higher and their stock would go up.

Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#22

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mtgx wrote: post #13
ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is possible for everyone's wealth to increase. In the year 1900 Global GDP was 1 Trillion. Today it is 77 Trillion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product In Layman's the Global Pie is growing. The number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen DRASTICALLY over the last 25 years. https://twitter.com/humanprogress/status/913901718823489538 So the people with the smallest piece of the pie are s…

Even if it did increase, most of that increase is just inflation anyway. And it's usually the wealthy that benefit from inflation (at least more than regular people do).

> it's usually the wealthy that benefit from inflation

Inflation is a regressive feature of modern currencies. It transfers wealth from lenders to borrowers and away from investors. The degree to which it does so is a function of the amount of wealth one has.

Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#23

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

mtgx wrote: post #13
ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is possible for everyone's wealth to increase. In the year 1900 Global GDP was 1 Trillion. Today it is 77 Trillion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product In Layman's the Global Pie is growing. The number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen DRASTICALLY over the last 25 years. https://twitter.com/humanprogress/status/913901718823489538 So the people with the smallest piece of the pie are s…

Even if it did increase, most of that increase is just inflation anyway. And it's usually the wealthy that benefit from inflation (at least more than regular people do).

Compare the "regular" person of today to the "regular" person of 50 years ago.

Is it easier or harder to afford basic foodstuffs? Do they eat out (luxury) more or less? If they own a home, is it larger or the same size? Who travels more? Who has better healthcare? Who spends more on entertainment? How much do they spend on the family pet? Who spent more time furthering their education?

All of these are measures of wealth, and the modern "regular" person would be wealthier in every one of these categories. And that's not even factoring in advances in technology that make the quality of life of a person better even if there share of societal wealth goes down.

Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#24

Post by wskinner »

sametmax wrote: post #18
poke111 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The central idea of capitalism is that voluntary exchange enriches both parties. So the answer to your first question is yes.

This assumes the exchange is symmetric, and that enrichment only happens with exchanges. Neither of these are true.

It doesn’t have to be symmetric. If there is $2 consumer and $4 producer surplus, both parties benefit.

And just because enrichment, as you call it, can happen other ways than exchange, does not mean it doesn’t happen via exchange too.

Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#25

Post by viridian »

mtgx wrote: post #13
ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is possible for everyone's wealth to increase. In the year 1900 Global GDP was 1 Trillion. Today it is 77 Trillion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product In Layman's the Global Pie is growing. The number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen DRASTICALLY over the last 25 years. https://twitter.com/humanprogress/status/913901718823489538 So the people with the smallest piece of the pie are s…

Even if it did increase, most of that increase is just inflation anyway. And it's usually the wealthy that benefit from inflation (at least more than regular people do).

The wealthy absolutely do not benefit from inflation, and lose the most money due to it in reality. Inflation depreciates the value of your liquidity, which is why every major company (except apple, it seems) dumps as much currency as possible into appreciable and tax deductible assets. However, that's more difficult for persons, and most of the super wealthy end up holding a plurality of their money on their person. Part of the reason for this is that they have enough money that they can't easily enter the market with a sizable amount of their total funds without moving the market against themselves.

Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#26

Post by [deleted] »

walterbell wrote: post #15
pdkl95 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or. everyone with debt - which is usually a very large portion of the population - had their burden reduced. edit: Ability to pay grows with inflation, by definition. Unless you have a particularly unusual type of debt, the principle is constant and the interest is based on the remaining principle and is therefor a pre-inflation value. Wages grow in absolute terms (even though their purchasing power is otherwise cons…

Along with their ability to repay their debt, so that's a wash.

[deleted]

Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#27

Post by coliveira »

twoodfin wrote: post #2

This article provides paragraph after paragraph of supporting data that the richest have gotten richer, but none that I can see supporting its claim that “billions of poorer people across the world have seen their wealth standstill or decline”.

The issue is simple to understand: as population grows and technology grows even faster, there should be a steady stream of wealth increase. This has been observed as is obvious to everyone. However, if we allow the bulk of this wealth to be controlled by a tiny part of the population, we are creating a huge problem to current and to future generations. A hereditary oligarchy can be terrible to our civilization, and this is what we see forming nowadays. I am not against people participating in the creation of wealth and reaping the rewards, but these differences in wealth need to be leveled over time. Unfortunately, short-sighted politics of the US and other countries are giving more and more power to wealthy people so that they can amass more money without visible contributions to society.

Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#28

Post by Radim »

Curious are the ways in which a world born of binary, "carries over" and manifests the very same patterns in broader social settings, into seemingly unrelated levels of abstraction. Similarity across scales.

Binary winner-take-all, all-or-nothing markets?

There seem to be deeper natural forces at play; the proposed evil divide between the rich and poor just incidental symptom. Surface ripples in a powerful river.

Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#29

Post by ericd »

notyourwork wrote: post #3
twoodfin wrote: post #2

This article provides paragraph after paragraph of supporting data that the richest have gotten richer, but none that I can see supporting its claim that “billions of poorer people across the world have seen their wealth standstill or decline”.

Is it possible for everyone’s wealth to increase? I think they might be assuming this is not possible and there if richest wealth increases by this much it had to come from the rest?

If I fix your bike, and in exchange, you fix my bike, we're both richer in material terms than we were before.

Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#30

Post by danharaj »

poke111 wrote: post #9
notyourwork wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible for everyone’s wealth to increase? I think they might be assuming this is not possible and there if richest wealth increases by this much it had to come from the rest?

The central idea of capitalism is that voluntary exchange enriches both parties. So the answer to your first question is yes.

The central idea of capitalism is the extraction of surplus value via property relations and wage labor.

Voluntary exchange is not capitalism. Voluntary exchange has existed since the dawn of society. Capitalism is a form of production that developed with the industrial revolution. I can't tell if you've fallen for or are employing a sleazy equivocation.

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