I think also we cannot measure wealth in GDP or even by salary. Someone who earns $2k e.g. in vietnam and lives in Danang will have better quality of life than someone who earns $4k and lives in SF.
Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds
31–40 of 162 posts
Re: Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds
#32I think a very problematic aspect of this is self-perception. People that see (growing) wealth inequality as a problem rarely perceive themselves as part of it, but e.g. anyone complaining about the "top 1%" on this forum is pretty likely to be part of the "problem" themselves, globally speaking. I think that for a lot of issues "people richer than us" are mostly a convenient scapegoat to shift the blame upstream, e.…
> you are pretty likely to be in the upper percentiles of emission culpability Since you are talking about culpability specifically, what exactly can they do about it? Or, more to the point, what have they done so that it it is their fault ?
Vote political parties into power that put a price on emissions and honestly work on reducing it.
The big problem is that this is not gonna be free. When fossils are used, it's obviously because they are the most economical option. As soon as you price in actual externalities (=> climate change), energy is going to get more expensive, and people don't like this. Almost everyone claims to be concerned about climate change, but a lot of people are neither willing to pay more for gas or power, nor do they want to risk making local industry less competitive.
The sad truth is that almost any cost for environmental sustainability/emission reduction is already too much for a lot of people.
Re: Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds
#33This is misleading. It counts debt as negative. This means a person who has zero wealth and zero debt will have more wealth than bottom 5% of people cumulatively (their wealth cancels out due to debt). It would be misleading to suggest that a single person with zero wealth has more wealth than 100k people’s wealth combined. But that’s what this headline and report are doing.
It's not misleading, in fact it's how accounting/balance sheets work.
A new born baby with zero asset and zero liability has thus a net financial worth of 0, which is obviously more than someone indebted.
Re: Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds
#34Rich people having too much wealth is not necessarily that bad a thing because most of the investment is in productive companies. It’s not like they are using their wealth on frivolous consumption. Which means redistribution would only change who controls the investment and not the actual consumption patterns of people. Implication is that poor people will consume the same as before after redistribution with perhaps…
The problem is oligarchy not inefficiencies.
In the absence of regulation, with these levels of inequality - democracy becomes a facade. Whatever the few oligarchs want - happens, no matter if people like it or not.
And yes, redistribution is one solution, and it does work. You just have to repeat it regularly.
There are also other solutions - like strong regulations on influencing public opinion/legislation with "lobbying", propaganda, media ownership and ethical journalism etc.
For one example - USA has neither regulation nor redistribution - so it became an oligarchy.
Re: Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds
#35Rich people having too much wealth is not necessarily that bad a thing because most of the investment is in productive companies. It’s not like they are using their wealth on frivolous consumption. Which means redistribution would only change who controls the investment and not the actual consumption patterns of people. Implication is that poor people will consume the same as before after redistribution with perhaps…
No one is saying the rich shouldn’t exist. But there is a point where so much accumulated wealth is counter productive. The fact trillionaires will exist is mind boggling.
Eventually everything from vehicles to housing will be rented to us as a way to extract the little wealth that’s left. Or layered subscription services. These aren’t great corporate ideas they are extractions of wealth.
Re: Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds
#36This is misleading. It counts debt as negative. This means a person who has zero wealth and zero debt will have more wealth than bottom 5% of people cumulatively (their wealth cancels out due to debt). It would be misleading to suggest that a single person with zero wealth has more wealth than 100k people’s wealth combined. But that’s what this headline and report are doing.
It's not misleading, in fact it's how accounting/balance sheets work. A new born baby with zero asset and zero liability has thus a net financial worth of 0, which is obviously more than someone indebted.
A headline like “new born baby has more wealth than bottom 1 million people cumulatively” is not a misleading tittle?
Re: Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds
#37This is misleading. It counts debt as negative. This means a person who has zero wealth and zero debt will have more wealth than bottom 5% of people cumulatively (their wealth cancels out due to debt). It would be misleading to suggest that a single person with zero wealth has more wealth than 100k people’s wealth combined. But that’s what this headline and report are doing.
It's even more than the bottom 5% if you only look at the US. 13 million or 10.4% of US households have negative net worth according to [1]. I've seen articles claiming that the bottom 15-25% of US Americans have negative net worth. So I am richer than all these households combined. Technically true, but completely misleading.
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/13-million-american-household...
Re: Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds
#38I would not care at all if 1 ppm of the world population would hold 100 times the wealth of the poorest half of the world population, if all of the poorest half would have nonetheless the means to produce their minimum necessities in energy, food, clothes etc., independently of others, so that their survival for the next months or weeks or even days would not be completely dependent on the benevolence of the rich to…
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Re: Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds
#39> a report that argues global inequality has reached such extremes that urgent action has become essential.
This is always stated like if that was an obvious fact that somehow "action is needed" against the richest, but is it?
Does it matter that a few individuals are multi-billionaires (usually because of the notional value of shares they own)? I would say that it does not. What matters is how the majority and the poorest are faring, which is orthogonal.
Re: Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds
#40Rich people having too much wealth is not necessarily that bad a thing because most of the investment is in productive companies. It’s not like they are using their wealth on frivolous consumption. Which means redistribution would only change who controls the investment and not the actual consumption patterns of people. Implication is that poor people will consume the same as before after redistribution with perhaps…
No one is saying the rich shouldn’t exist. But there is a point where so much accumulated wealth is counter productive. The fact trillionaires will exist is mind boggling. Eventually everything from vehicles to housing will be rented to us as a way to extract the little wealth that’s left. Or layered subscription services. These aren’t great corporate ideas they are extractions of wealth.
That’s not what has been happening though. Home ownership has been the same over last 60 years since inequality has increased.