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

theguardian.com

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

#131

Post by TekMol »

michaelmrose wrote: post #49
TekMol wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I said new blockchain. A blockchain for the rest of us.

Its profoundly unclear how merely throwing the word blockchain does anything useful for equality. Having a different way to record ownership doesn't change how ownership is distributed. Logically the blockchain would be a good way to record ownership in a more equal society in same fashion as forks and bricks would be useful tools in a new and more equal society.

Imagine you and I cannot afford each others services because all of the money is owned by those greedy 1%.

So like slaves, we sweat away for them. Day in. Day out.

But if we agree on a new currency where you and I own 100000 coins each, we can happily start working for each other.

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

#132

Post by cal5k »

angarg12 wrote: post #103
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…

> People spend less as a percentage of income on food and housing I've lived in several places in the last few years and this couldn't be further away from truth. I spend the same or more % of my income in housing than my parents did, and I get much less for it. They were able to buy a 4 bedroom flat in town working blue collar jobs, and me, with an engineering degree, probably could aspire to a 2 bedroom out of town…

I totally empathize with your situation, but globally the numbers are irrefutable.

That's not to say that many people aren't still struggling - we can always do better, but I think there's reason to be optimistic.

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

#133

Post by cmurf »

amarant wrote: post #31

I mean.. 1% controlling more than half of all wealth sounds bad and all, but according to the article, quality of life has been improving faster than ever for the remaining 99% too.. As long as that second part holds true, I don't really care about the first part to be honest

It's arguably unstable though, regardless of quality of life improving overall. Things can, and have, changed very quickly. And so far the species hasn't adequately predicted the sequence of events leading up to destabilization, and how to avoid the inevitable equalizer: war

The top 1% should worry, but there's something euphoric about being that wealthy, almost like oxygen deprivation.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/scheide...

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

#134

Post by perchard »

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…

> Income/wealth inequality always happens and probably always will - it's trivially easy to show how this happens using game theory even if trade is relatively fair.

Do you have a reference for this? Interested to read more (game theoretic basis specifically).

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

#136

Post by joefourier »

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…

Who would be considered "poor", however? Unemployed individuals, or simply low-earning ones, and in which country? Giving the declining birth rate in first-world countries, reducing reproduction in rich countries would further increase the population imbalance between rich and poor countries.

It must also be asked, is improving equality a goal worth pursuing? You could improve equality by making every single individual dirt-poor. Improving average living standards would be a better in my world-view - and by all metrics, that has been going up since the start of the industrial revolution.

Birth rates almost invariably go down as a society gets richer and more educated - therefore the goal of improving average welfare could be better served by improving the lives of third-worlders directly, which would naturally decrease their birth-rates in the long-term.

Another argument could be that many "poor" individuals have positive economic impact - they are consumers of goods increasing overall economic output, or provide useful labor at a low price, allowing many others to have goods and services they could not otherwise afford.

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

#137

Post by dgudkov »

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…

>Communism went away.

Not really. Plenty of people now pushing for the equality of outcome. Which is a cornerstone of communism.

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

#138

Post by mpweiher »

defertoreptar wrote: post #89
psyc wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It couldn't possibly not matter, because wealth is not only standard of living, but also power. At the highest level, the wealthy are not simply comfortable. They have the power to shape and organize aspects of the economy, supply chain, and the laws. That has to matter in some way beyond having one's material needs met or not.

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.

Actually, government is generally a limiting factor on the power of wealth, just like it is a limiting factor of the power of violence etc. That's kind of why we have governments.

Now of course wealth tries to subvert that, and particularly in the anglo-saxon countries, the US first among them, it has been particularly successful.

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

#139

Post by v_lisivka »

danmaz74 wrote: post #112
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…

Income/wealth inequality always happens and probably always will, but it doesn't NEED to be so big and become bigger and bigger as it's doing since Reagan started the movement to tax the rich less and less.

Riches are not working at all, so it is not important how much taxes they will pay, because all taxes will be paid by workers.

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

#140

Post by cal5k »

Analemma_ wrote: post #93
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…

> is that it really doesn't matter what the top 1% are doing so long as the bottom half are seeing improved living conditions. Which they are not: real wages for the bottom four quintiles have been stagnant since the seventies and the 1% have captured essentially all income gains from productivity growth since then. That is the source of the discontent. > Over a billion people have been lifted out of poverty over the…

> Which they are not: real wages for the bottom four quintiles have been stagnant since the seventies and the 1% have captured essentially all income gains from productivity growth since then. That is the source of the discontent.

I'm talking globally. The American middle class has done uniquely poorly during this period. (I'm not American)

Still - if you can tell me with a straight face that you'd rather be poor in the 70s vs today, I would label you crazy. It's almost impossible to account for the changing quality and abundance of goods - huge advances in medicine, computation, a plethora of high quality goods and services. Life today is qualitatively different than it was 40-50 years ago.

>You're trying to pull a fast one here. The statistic about "a billion people have been lifted out of poverty" has been greatly overblown: it's technically true, but it turns out most of those people are in China

How is that a fast one? A billion people is a billion people. If the fact that they're primarily Chinese bothers you we'll need to have a different discussion.

> "It's only class warfare when we fight back".

Who are we fighting? This is an entirely unhelpful rhetoric.

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