Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

* In the last 10 years, billionaires have doubled their wealth, making nearly six times more than the increase in wealth seen by the bottom 50%.

* Since 2020, for every dollar the bottom 90% have gained, billionaires have gained $1.7m.

* 81 Billionaires hold more wealth than 50% of the world combined.

* During the worst of the pandemic, according to the World Bank, the income losses among the poorest 40% of humanity were twice as large as among the richest 20%, and global income inequality has risen for the first time in decades.

See Section 1.1 for the big hitter statistics. Chapter 2 goes into the whys, which corresponds pretty closely to a description of what you could call a cartel operation conducted by the global elite.

...so not only is the pie already insanely skewed, but the companies that these people control are raising profit margins on essential goods and services during a time where those who are already precariously-positioned in our economy are losing out on income opportunities so fast that global progress on income inequality reversed during this time.

This is literally entirely about the extraction being done by the class of people who have executive control over the policies and mechanisms of extraction -- minerals/metals/water/fossil fuels/generally physical extraction, predatory/extractive behaviors in finance, privatization vis a vis a minimization of accountability which acts as a force multiplier for extraction, etc.

These are those who pat themselves and each other on the back for flying on planes powered by kerosene to a centralized location to make non-binding, unenforceable gestures in the loose shape of policy at periodic COP and Davos summits. These are those who pacify and distract the masses with unified narrative-making campaigns to manufacture consent for the status quo -- lies like "recycling is an individual problem" and "privatization and unregulated markets are prosperous economies", as well as redirections and mislabelings like "wouldn't more cops (guns) in school mean children will be safer?" and "through our cameras you can see violent, out-of-state rioters in the streets".

A wealth tax is not an insane idea. It is a gentle brake that allows us to regain enough control of our earth-ship to maneuver around the imminent obstacles. We can talk about more radical steps if you want, I'm all about more active global economic management, but we need to recognize what this system is becoming.

[1] https://webassets.oxfamamerica.org/media/documents/survival-...

Inequality is declining by every measurable metric in the United States.

Edit: To answer the folk naysaying with their ten second Google searches, the income inequality rate has declined between 2007 and 2019(1), helped by a strong wage recovery in the late 2010s. The share of wealth held by the top 10% peaked around 2015 and has declined steadily since. 2022 was a very bad year for equity markets and has hit wealthy households particularly hard.

These are all pretty findable and uncontroversial statistics, but unfortunately one political tribe has invested a lot of capital in the notion inequality is inexorably increasing, so there’s a lot of pundit mileage in contorting these stats.(2) Which is sad, because these stats are good news for anyone who truly cares about inequality.

(1) I’m book-ending at 2019 because pandemic era macro is weird, and will take us some years to understand.

(2) I’m not making a partisan point here - stats are stats, and both political tribes lie endlessly about them when convenient.

When I see a person wearing PJs in public, I think -- actually, I guess I don't really think about it beyond "huh.. PJs in public." You're out there stewing on it, writing about it on the internet, and literally thinking that people wearing things you don't like is stemming from a mindset that's at the root of society's problems.

This casual insight into madness is what keeps the internet exciting.