Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030 • Hacker News Board

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#121

Post by letslightafire » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #79

kccqzy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe read an introduction to eugenics?

I don't see that as a counterargument, more of a strawman. Eugenics is based on the gene pool not on relative levels of wealth (as I understand it). Honestly, if you live in desperate poverty, why would you want to bring a child into the world knowing the amount of suffering that its is likely to live through? Yet the poorest people seem to be the most likely to have the most children. Maybe another way of phrasing t…

Most people who are that poor are not educated enough about reproduction to prevent childbirth due to lack of sexual contraceptives or information about safe-sex. They are born to absolute poverty and know little outside of their little town or country. Sex to them might just be seen as something you do with little to no consequence or something that just comes easily.

What you see as suffering might be seen as normal daily life to them which is terrible. The way most children in richer countries live might seem foreign to them. That being said, infant mortality is also very high in those countries so a chunk of those children born will not make it past 20 years old.

I do believe that as countries get richer the people of the country start having more responsibilities and jobs and those overwhelm the time available to take care of kids.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#122

Post by tempagain567i » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #51

Someone else on HN commented that the poor need to stop reproducing in order to improve equality. At first I found the comment kind of troubling, but the more I think about it the more it seems to make sense. Watching this video kind of backs up the point to a degree, even though the topic is immigration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE Can someone come back with a decent counterargument? I haven't been a…

You have in fact scratched the surface of a very important and fundamental insight about human society. The conclusion that I have come to is that blaming institutions and policies is basically wrong. Blaming circumstances is wrong. It is the people of a society that determine what that society is, full stop. If tomorrow everyone in the united states were made to be good with high intelligence, high morality and so on, all of our problems would disappear. People get caught up on "You can't define what a good person is so you are wrong" or "a person is the result of nature as well as nature." These points are actually irrelevant. Just because you can't define something precisely with modern methods doesn't mean anything. And the way that a person becomes a certain way doesn't matter. The face remains that it is people who do and create everything and therefore the characteristics of those people determine the outcome. So if you don't like something, don't go to a protest. It would be infinitely more impactful to educate and mentor a child you know. But it would be much less noisy and visceral, so not many people do it even if they are aware of how important it is. Anyway, besides giving these poor countries the tools to succeed, there is nothing we can do. Like was pointed out in the video, allowing all the best people to leave and come here only makes the situation worse. Also eugenics is good. Take a moment to actually think about eugenics before disagreeing with me. Most people never get past the hurdle of seeing past the propaganda where eugenics means Nazi concentration camps and forced sterilization. There is more than one way to skin a cat and the benefits of eugenics not only include saving billions from needless suffering at the hands of genetic diseases (ie most diseases directly or indirectly) but also preventing our country and the world from slipping into a dark eventuality that can be recognized immediately after my aforementioned insight: letting the scales of a society slide toward "Petty and stupid" will, like magic, cause any country to fall into a third world state.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#123

Post by smaddox » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

A more accurate title would be "Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all capital by 2030". Wealth is not equivalent to capital. The vast majority of capital is tied up in the market capitalization of corporations, and only a small fraction of the market capitalization corresponds to actual physical wealth. If tomorrow the global stock market took a 10% dip across the board, then nearly 10% of the world's capital would vanish in the blink of an eye, but the worlds material wealth would not change at all.

There's no doubt that there is dramatic capital inequality in the world, but as long as that capital is being put to productive use (generating and distributing wealth) all is well. There's also vast wealth inequality (though, numbers wise, it's not nearly as bad as capital inequality), but as long as the minimum wealth is not desolation, wealth inequality is not a fundamental problem. As humans (or just as animals), we will always crave what we do not have, but if the cost of fixing wealth inequality is transferring capital to those incapable of applying it productively, thereby lowering the worlds total wealth, I do not believe we should bear that cost. Rather than focusing on wealth inequality, we should focus on building solid safety nets and proper incentives.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#124

Post by maxerickson » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 6:38 PM UTC

mentos wrote: post #119

cal5k wrote: post #60

Steven Pinker's new book, Enlightenment Now, has a pretty compelling section on wealth/income inequality. The basic position - and I think the data supports this - is that it really doesn't matter what the top 1% are doing so long as the bottom half are seeing improved living conditions. Furthermore, wealth isn't a static I win/you lose proposition - much of that wealth has been created in recent history. People spen…

I think the biggest mistake people make when counting this wealth is that if it is hoarded and never spent then it might as well not exist and should be viewed as anti-inflationary. What if all the billionaires in the world decided 'let me just hit delete on all of the zeroes in my bank account' what affect would that have on the rest of the world?

The banks are using the zeros to back loans.

Most wealth already isn't hoarded. It's things like amazon.com and jets and buildings and so on.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#125

Post by wonthegame » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 6:39 PM UTC

dmitriy_ko wrote: post #40

Animats wrote: post #15

Communism went away. It's not that communism was better. It's that it was competition. There was, for half a century, a competitive threat - do better than the USSR, or face a revolution. That threat was taken quite seriously in the US for decades. Industrialists (the US economy was mostly manufacturing back then) were careful not to get too greedy or power-hungry. They feared expropriation. Britain nationalized many…

Capitalism is so ingrained now, nobody can even imagine that alternative system could exist. In the minds of most, communism is a synonym of authoritarianism. Communist governments tended to be authoritarian, but it's not clear to me if it's a natural consequence of communism. It's more likely that authoritarianism is a consequence of violent revolutions. Is it possible to combine communism with democracy?

Maybe you mean they tend to be dictatorships that rob the people of their countries wealth.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#126

Post by cal5k » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 6:39 PM UTC

torpfactory wrote: post #92

cal5k wrote: post #60

Steven Pinker's new book, Enlightenment Now, has a pretty compelling section on wealth/income inequality. The basic position - and I think the data supports this - is that it really doesn't matter what the top 1% are doing so long as the bottom half are seeing improved living conditions. Furthermore, wealth isn't a static I win/you lose proposition - much of that wealth has been created in recent history. People spen…

I don’t think it’s sufficient that conditions for the bottom 50% are just improving. In my opinion, humanity has the technology to provide for everyone to have access to clean food and water, modern medical care, and primary education. These should be provided without regard to the ability of the recipients to pay. Wealth inequality definitely gets in the way of this goal, as wealth that might help achieve these goal…

I don't disagree at all. I just don't see how railing against the notion of inequality does anything to address this - the US collects enough in tax revenue to solve these problems already. What it needs is better policy.

I should also mention that I live in Canada which, though flawed in many ways, seems to have struck a better balance.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#127

Post by psyc » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 6:39 PM UTC

tdmule wrote: post #109

defertoreptar wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good argument, and to many it's an argument for wealth redistribution. I prefer to look at it instead as an argument for limiting the powers of government in order to limit its susceptibility to corruption.

Does limiting government limit the powers of the wealthy? It would limit one channel for them to exercise their power, but other channels like corporate control would exist.

I believe we are going to find it increasingly essential to view corporations as a second government that has a particular relationship with the nominal one.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#128

Post by throwaway84742 » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #111

throwaway84742 wrote: post #63

Worldwide, if you make over $32k per year you’re 1%. I suggest folks think carefully about this fact before suggesting hanging the rich or anything else Marxist-Leninist. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/05061...

Top 1% of earning, not necessarily top 1% of wealth. I remember checking my moderately above average European income on a site that showed this. I think I was in or close to the top 1% of earners. But not being on the property ladder I think I was closer to top 6% by wealth. (It was a while ago so my numbers may be a bit out, but I hope you get the idea).

>> Top 1% of earning, not necessarily top 1% of wealth.

When it comes to hanging the rich nobody cares about such details.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#129

Post by starchild_3001 » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

danschumann wrote: post #58

Top 1% of composers are most of all classical music played ( probably over two-thirds ). Of their music, maybe 1% of their songs are the ones that get most of that playing. Celestial bodies also have exponential inequality. Get a little mass, get more gravity, get more mass. Inequality is within nature itself. Actors in hollywood. They release one movie, now they get 50 offers for other movies. They quickly get more…

This was one of the more interesting comments on this thread! Thanks for sharing.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#130

Post by rm999 » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

To put it in perspective: today you are in the global top 1% if you have at least $744,400 in household assets.

You are in the top 10% if you have at least $71,560; top 50% (median) if you have at least $2,220. And the mean wealth is $52,819 per adult.

source: https://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21710771...