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Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds

theguardian.com

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Re: Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds

#111

Post by ajuc »

zjzbab wrote: post #106
ajuc wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every building breaks eventually therefore cities are impossible - that's your reasoning basically :) You can repair and rebuild and then cities and democracy are possible. There's nothing inevitable.

No, my reasoning is small groups can easily control large ones. There are tons of books on the failures of democracy throughout history. Here’s one from obamas summer reading list: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099VYZXPQ I can also dig up the quote from (Socrates I think?) a greek philosopher making the same argument thousands of years ago. Unlimited democracy ends in oligarchy. Look at how easily controlled you are - y…

Why would you think I want "unlimited" democracy? I was specifically arguing for regulation and institutions?

Any system requires maintenance and breaks eventually. Oligarchy and dictatorship too.

Re: Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds

#113

Post by EE84M3i »

nwellnhof wrote: post #37
simianwords wrote: post #12

This 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...

This is really surprising low to me. Does it perhaps exclude mortgages on primary domiciles?

Re: Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds

#114

Post by TFYS »

bdangubic wrote: post #105
quelsolaar wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, "If you have enough, why does it matter if someone else has more" argument doesn't really hold. Yes we can make more TVs and phones so that everyone can get one, but then get to things like centrally located housing, where there is a limited supply. It matters a lot if you want someplace to live, and there are thousands of very rich people trying to out bid one and other for the same space in your city. This is…

not that I disagree with you in principle but it is a bad example. there are a lot more places where rich do not want to live than places where they do so rich outbidding you for housing wouldn't make even a top-100 list of issues. the "If you have enough, why does it matter if someone else has more" is basically "rich get to live in Monaco, you get to live in Elmo, Kansas" with all your needs met

A good location means more opportunities. Someone located in the center of a large expensive city will have a lot more opportunities to make money and meet people who have influence than someone in Elmo. A business set up in Elmo will not make as much money as a business set up in Monaco. This means that the best opportunities are reserved for people who need them the least.

Re: Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds

#115

Post by simianwords »

ajuc wrote: post #110
simianwords wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does redistribution solve material problems with the poor? My post says exactly that it is zero sum - you have to take away investments in big companies and drive it into perhaps unproductive places. It’s not so clear that this is a good thing.

1. It isn't 0-sum (see the effect of Henry Ford paying his workers more for 1 obvious example). 2. But that's irrelevant, because the reason some people are poor is not lack of resources in the whole economy. We have way more stuff than we need even if it was 0-sum 3. Also I wasn't even talking about eliminating poor people, I was talking about ensuring poor people have a say in what the society does.

It is zero sum unless you can prove that redistribution will increase productivity. If you can prove it then it is an obvious thing to do. It actually isn't that obvious otherwise we would see more productivity from western Europe.

>But that's irrelevant, because the reason some people are poor is not lack of resources in the whole economy. We have way more stuff than we need even if it was 0-sum

What do you think is the real problem then?

Re: Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds

#116

Post by bryanlarsen »

adrian_b wrote: post #27

I 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…

I don't think it's self-sufficiency that should be the goal for society here, but self-sufficiency is one of several means to achieve the goal.

I think the goal should be for everybody to have the ability to walk away from an abusive boss, landlord or spouse without jeopardizing their life essentials. Which is a stronger statement than just saying that everybody should be able to afford their life essentials.

Not having a boss or landlord is a great way of achieving this, but it's not the only way. (If you don't have a boss, you do need the freedom to turn away abusive clients or customers)

Another way is ensuring that the essentials are universally available. Universal health care, public housing and a SNAP program that's not itself abusive is another.

Another HN-popular mechanism is UBI.

Another mechanism that helps greatly is ensuring that the essentials are inexpensive. Clothing and food have become cheap, but healthcare and housing have more than absorbed the difference.

Re: Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds

#117

Post by JimmyBuckets »

johntennessee93 wrote: post #13

[flagged]

Who told you this? It's so obviously false.

It doesn't even make sense. I think you meant to say "efficiently" perhaps but even arguing that is an uphill battle - at most you could say that is true for some types of projects.

Re: Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds

#118

Post by happytoexplain »

simianwords wrote: post #12

This 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 would be misleading to suggest that a single person with zero wealth has more wealth than 100k people’s wealth combined.

It wouldn't be misleading. You may have to explain it to somebody who has absolutely no understanding of how finance works, but that doesn't make the statement misleading.

Re: Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds

#119

Post by hollerith »

The main asset most people have is their ability to do useful work for some employer. So for example, if a person has demonstrated a history of steady employment, some bank or finance firm would probably be willing to loan the person the money to buy a car or most of the money to buy a house.

The OP completely ignores this form of wealth.

Re: Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds

#120

Post by myrmidon »

esseph wrote: post #94
myrmidon wrote: post #16

I 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.…

The amount of CO2 emissions a human makes or even an average family makes pales in comparison to the emissions companies create. It was all advertising propaganda to reduce corporate accountability.

This is simply incorrect. CO2 emissions from a single passenger vehicle alone are ~5 tons/year (this is tailpipe missions only), while per capita emissions for EU/US citizens are between 5 and 15 tons/year.

So invididual transport alone (not even counting indirect emissions from vehicle construction, road infrastructure etc.) is already significant.

What fraction of emissions would you blame on corporations alone (which corporations)?

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