Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

141–150 of 162 posts

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

#141
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're eliding the distinction between people and businesses. There's no reason Amazon the company would have to be smaller simply because the Bezos fortune was distributed among more people. It didn't get 50% smaller or employ 50% fewer people when he got divorced and had to split the marital property.

Fair point. Let’s take McKinsey and her woke charities. She sold Amazon shares and drove it into the charities. The charities are now consuming more. So there has to be equal decrease somewhere else right? People are consuming equally less somewhere else to allow for extra activity in charities. You might think this is a nitpick but this is my main argument. If you redistribute Bezos wealth to poor people, there has…

MacKenzie's charities mainly focus on job training, education, health, and you posit that'll cause an equivalent reduction in spending somewhere else?

Is that really your train of thought?

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

#142

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 would agree here if our political systems weren't vulnerable to capture by wealth. Inequality drives more inequality, it has to be counterbalanced by laws. The majority of human civilisation has been feudal. We recently got democracy for everyone. We are not yet out of reach of our local civilisational attractor.

But the reason that when talking about the 1% they suddenly stop looking globally and only look within countries is that everyone in the UK and US is top-1% worldwide. Equalizing would make the average wage $500, or 375 pounds. And when you start discussing what countries are the problem ... immediately you see there are very few poor democracies. There are some, but not much.

To make matters worse, this year's Nobel prize in Economics went to research showing that the problem is governments, and specifically that a lot of populous countries don't create institutions to improve the welfare of people at all, but rather focused on stealing from the population. This makes it an unfixable problem in those countries. More than that, a lot of these countries' populations don't want to fix it, or even want to make it far worse (like Egypt, or Iran, or Pakistan, or Sudan) for a whole host of reasons.

Oh and most of those governments are "captured by wealth" only in the sense that the current rulers exploit the population for their personal wealth. This is what you see from Afghanistan to Venezuela, but those governments didn't come to power with wealth. Various ideologies brought these governments to power, and the governments steal the wealth of the people, even to an extent that people start dying in pretty large numbers like in Afghanistan. I also find it strange that when discussing capture by wealth no-one ever takes Venezuela as an example, despite how obvious it is that that's the problem there. Nobody discusses how Chavez came to power as a "communist" and died a billionaire.

So if you want to fix poverty, one of the things it looks like you'll have to do is to overthrow the governments ruling, actually more than half of humanity, and convince their populations to stop caring more about religion and other ideologies, like pride, or a mostly imagined enemy (like Pakistan), than about prosperity.

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

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish wealth wasn't treated so abstractly as if it's some kind of universal measure of evil. It is evil, the vast majority of people don't become rich without exploiting other people, and just about everyone in that position then leverages their wealth to exert even more power over people and politics. > technologies and aid originating from the wealthier nations. We run sweatshops in poor countries, exploit their…

It is evil, the vast majority of people don't become rich without exploiting other people, and just about everyone in that position then leverages their wealth to exert even more power over people and politics. Do you have any evidence to back this up? The cutoff for being in the richest 1% globally is about $1 million. What's the evil and exploitation you attribute to the average person with $1mm, who statistically…

Please start by reading the title that contextualizes my comment instead of posting a snotty response that takes things out of context — The number is 0.001%, not 1%.

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

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your overall position but I disagree on the first point. Wealth is ownership, ownership is control of value. Allocating more (not all) value away from SaaS companies and into food security or education is a good thing and would make things better for everyone.

> Allocating more (not all) value away from SaaS companies and into food security or education is a good thing and would make things better for everyone. You are already doing that with your votes, the American government is already investing massive amounts into education and food security. Private investments would never do this, even poor people wouldn't invest in poor ROI endeavors, poor people invest in the same…

It's not about what non-0.001% people invest in, but what they spend on. More evenly distributed wealth would mean more money for people to spend on education, food security, and housing, which in turn would spur increased production of those goods. Below a certain wealth threshold, people aren't putting every additional dollar into "investments" in the financial sense of the word. There's more ROI by sending your kids to college or moving to a better neighborhood.

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

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

single person just born is indeed wealthier than someone in debt is exactly right. based on my Pre-K Math 0 is greater than -X :)

The poorest 1% have more wealth than the poorest 5%. But they would never write that in an article since they have an agenda.

poorest 1% have $10 while poorest 5% have $9? not newsworthy :)

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

#146
post #66

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 mean, not to discount the hard work that your grandparents would have to maintain a self-sustaining life but... it could only work out because they had land available for that. You live in a city and depend on salary because you don't own a parcel of fertile land from which you could be generating enough sustenance for yourself (estimates go from 1/10th to a full acre per person).

An acre is a lot of work.

Many grandparents are too frail to dig enough spuds or work the garden - anecdotally 70s is when limitations often start to really kick in. Grandparents are now trending older?

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

#147
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Almost by definition it isn't the rich competing to live where work opportunities are.

Monaco isn't renowned for its businesses.

But yes, there is an issue with the rich investing in residential property (which good regulations could address).

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

#148
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (w…

It is factually correct.

80% of global CO2 emissions come from 57 companies.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/since-2016-80-perc...

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

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using your logic, a person in debt living in a nice house driving a nice car is worse than a homeless person without any debt. Another example of your logic, any MD with a huge student debt is worse off than pretty much everyone in undeveloped world? Or a person with a business loan but a successful business.

"Using your logic" is almost always an overreach that uncharitably extrapolates and puts words in a person's mouth, and this case is no different.

You used a generalization to attack the format of the message rather than its content.

If I rephrased it to a question about their thoughts how degree holders fit their model then suddenly it would be fine?

Post reply on HN