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Top 1% Control 39% of World's Wealth

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Re: Top 1% Control 39% of World's Wealth

#21

Post by blazespin »

This is a red herring. Rather than control of wealth, we should be concerned with control of consumption. Poor people make lousy capital allocators (they don't have the right education, they don't have access to industry contacts, and they don't have a history of successful investing).

We constantly talk about redistributing income, taxing the high income earners. We have to stop this. We have to start taxing the high consumers, we need a progressive consumption tax. If someone makes a very high income, but saves it all rather than buys that flashy (frankly, worthless) car - then they should be allowed to keep all of that.

Re: Top 1% Control 39% of World's Wealth

#22

Post by dylangs1030 »

marknutter wrote: post #16
dylangs1030 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article wasn't deriding wealth in tune with the usual tone of that headline. But you're right, it shouldn't bother you. Friends of mine react with disgust that someone can make $200k or much, much more as a programmer, consultant, startup entrepreneur (particularly in the last case). "Who needs all that money? What are you going to do with it all?" These are typically people who wouldn't mind having that much mon…

It's hard to see headlines like this and not think it's deriding the wealthy. It could have been put in a much more innocuous way, like "99% of the world's population controls 61% of the world's wealth". That just doesn't seem to have the same punch, though.

No, it doesn't, because 99 people in a room controlling 61 pieces of a pie aren't as influential as 1 man controlling 39 pieces of pie.

He has very real, formidable power. The least influential of the 99 will dislike that. They all have to share their 61 pieces - in practice, a significant fraction have no pieces of pie.

Analogy aside, the way this model of wealth plays out is that the 1% are typically the only outlier, and the other 99% don't all control the remaining wealth in the same way - they don't have a disproportionate amount to their own percentile, or a number larger than themselves.

But disproportionate amounts of money is potentially good - think of what billionaires can do if they are so inclined.

Re: Top 1% Control 39% of World's Wealth

#23

Post by sophacles »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #10
sophacles wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but it is bounded by how much exists at given time. Further, had you bothered to read the article, they explicitly talk about the growth of wealth in the word. I hate commenters like this - don't read the article, think they know something about what it says.

It's true that the tone of the article wasn't stabbing at the rich and wealthy, but I think the commenter's point is still valid. The headline utilizes a highly politically charged statement model - "The top 1% control $LIMITED_COMMODITY"

I didn't get that. Besides, the thing you are disingenuously failing to understand is that while wealth grows and is not a finite thing on long time scales, the growth is slow enough that controlling 40% of the currently existing wealth, and a sudden surge to say 10% total wealth increase in the next year (a big jump) going only to people not in the top 1%, would still leave those people with a huge disproportion of wealth ownership. It takes a huge amount of mental gymnastics to pretend this is is something that could change any moment because wealth is not fixed amount resource.

Re: Top 1% Control 39% of World's Wealth

#24

Post by Sven7 »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #5
dtrizzle wrote: post #2

I hate headlines like this. Wealth is not finite.

The sensationalism surrounding this is really kind of sad. It also drives a knife through the intellectual aptitudes of my circle of friends. People don't really understand game theory or sociological models well enough to understand that this sort of wealth distribution makes sense, when you look at data. The biggest impediment to this, in my experience, is that people expect reality to intuitively make sense, and o…

please, no game theory or social modeling necessary...

Talking about nature, on the Serengeti you see a handful of lion and thousands of zebra. In the ocean you see a couple of whales and millions of fish. Now who doesn't want to see thousands of lions or whales? But it hasn't happened. ever. in nature. So its safe to assume we aren't going to do any better. All we can try to do is ensure everyone has an equal shot at becoming a lion if they so choose. Most people are perfectly happy being Zebra imho.

Re: Top 1% Control 39% of World's Wealth

#25

Post by jbooth »

Sven7 wrote: post #24
dylangs1030 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sensationalism surrounding this is really kind of sad. It also drives a knife through the intellectual aptitudes of my circle of friends. People don't really understand game theory or sociological models well enough to understand that this sort of wealth distribution makes sense, when you look at data. The biggest impediment to this, in my experience, is that people expect reality to intuitively make sense, and o…

please, no game theory or social modeling necessary... Talking about nature, on the Serengeti you see a handful of lion and thousands of zebra. In the ocean you see a couple of whales and millions of fish. Now who doesn't want to see thousands of lions or whales? But it hasn't happened. ever. in nature. So its safe to assume we aren't going to do any better. All we can try to do is ensure everyone has an equal shot a…

If the lions eat too much, zebra population declines and lions begin starving.

This is bad for both the zebras and lions.

Re: Top 1% Control 39% of World's Wealth

#26

Post by Joeboy »

blazespin wrote: post #21

This is a red herring. Rather than control of wealth, we should be concerned with control of consumption. Poor people make lousy capital allocators (they don't have the right education, they don't have access to industry contacts, and they don't have a history of successful investing). We constantly talk about redistributing income, taxing the high income earners. We have to stop this. We have to start taxing the hig…

> Poor people make lousy capital allocators

Do they? My intuition would be that giving a thousand people a thousand bucks each would mostly have better results than giving one person a million bucks. Occasionally the rich come up with a Gates Foundation or whatever, but there's an opportunity cost to handing billions of dollars to billg too.

Re: Top 1% Control 39% of World's Wealth

#27

Post by gte910h »

blazespin wrote: post #21

This is a red herring. Rather than control of wealth, we should be concerned with control of consumption. Poor people make lousy capital allocators (they don't have the right education, they don't have access to industry contacts, and they don't have a history of successful investing). We constantly talk about redistributing income, taxing the high income earners. We have to stop this. We have to start taxing the hig…

What? Are you insane.

Consumption drives the economy. Hoarding slows it down. Why as a society would we want to punish consumption!

Re: Top 1% Control 39% of World's Wealth

#28

Post by Sven7 »

jbooth wrote: post #25
Sven7 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

please, no game theory or social modeling necessary... Talking about nature, on the Serengeti you see a handful of lion and thousands of zebra. In the ocean you see a couple of whales and millions of fish. Now who doesn't want to see thousands of lions or whales? But it hasn't happened. ever. in nature. So its safe to assume we aren't going to do any better. All we can try to do is ensure everyone has an equal shot a…

If the lions eat too much, zebra population declines and lions begin starving. This is bad for both the zebras and lions.

You can tell the lions that all you want, but lions will be lions, or as Alan Greenspan said our assumption that its in ones self interest to do the right thing has a little flaw. When push comes to shove, self interest always ends up being for ones self not the collective.

It is going to be a long time, requiring a whole lot of mental evolution for there ever to be trust between the lion and the zebra. Only when that trust exists can the search for a solution begin.

Re: Top 1% Control 39% of World's Wealth

#29

Post by owenjones »

Sven7 wrote: post #28
jbooth wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the lions eat too much, zebra population declines and lions begin starving. This is bad for both the zebras and lions.

You can tell the lions that all you want, but lions will be lions, or as Alan Greenspan said our assumption that its in ones self interest to do the right thing has a little flaw. When push comes to shove, self interest always ends up being for ones self not the collective. It is going to be a long time, requiring a whole lot of mental evolution for there ever to be trust between the lion and the zebra. Only when tha…

You're right, it's definitely the zebras who get eaten's fault for not building trust with the lions...
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