If the left killed the 8 and spread out the money so poor have double... the poor would be worse of.
Why would the poor be worse off?
Also, "if the left killed.." ugh. Can we stop with the unintellectual partisan snipes?
Eight billionaires 'as rich as world's poorest half'
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Re: Eight billionaires 'as rich as world's poorest half'
#22I'm richer than the poorest two billion people in the world combined, and I'm an upper-middle-class programmer with some modest savings. Please stop adding up the wealth of the poor: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/04/04/stop-adding...
That was great, thanks for posting it.
However, I think these kinds of shock headlines are still somewhat useful. They help remind me that money doesn't really work the way I imagine it does in everyday life. It also reflects the control that a few individuals have over money, if not wealth/resources.
Re: Eight billionaires 'as rich as world's poorest half'
#23I'm richer than the poorest two billion people in the world combined, and I'm an upper-middle-class programmer with some modest savings. Please stop adding up the wealth of the poor: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/04/04/stop-adding...
that's a really interesting article.. I think the more surprising fact is that 7.5% of the bottom 10% are in the US. That's 50 million US citizens. That's pretty shocking.
Edit: although since we're talking about people who have negative net worth.. perhaps it's only because they're able to borrow so much. I doubt a poor Indian or Nigerian would be able to borrow $100K for college.
Re: Eight billionaires 'as rich as world's poorest half'
#24[deleted]
Re: Eight billionaires 'as rich as world's poorest half'
#25$425bn/3.6bn = $118 avg.
Now, the $425bn are not liquid assets, so we can argue that each of the 3.6bn individuals on the bottom half are worth a lot, lot, more than $120 each (worth in the same sense as measuring the net worth of billionaires). For starters, they own thousands of labor hours. Maybe the problem is that we cannot create enough jobs and it is easier to blame Zuck and friends?
It is a very dangerous idea to seek a fairier distribution of wealth by taking it from the rich. If you doubt it go ask Venezuelans or Cubans if it worked out for them.
Re: Eight billionaires 'as rich as world's poorest half'
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just looked it up and it's actually something like 20% of the US that has a negative net worth. Not half, but my point stands.
I would imagine that if you factored in "home ownership" it's much higher. That is, you don't actually own your home til the mortgage is paid. So that equity is a ruse of sorts.
net worth includes assets... so only if they were underwater on their mortgage.. and with the house prices in the US, I don't imagine there are a lot of people in that situation (at least since the subprime mortgages have all/mostly been foreclosed on by this point).
Re: Eight billionaires 'as rich as world's poorest half'
#27I'm richer than the poorest two billion people in the world combined, and I'm an upper-middle-class programmer with some modest savings. Please stop adding up the wealth of the poor: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/04/04/stop-adding...
that's a really interesting article.. I think the more surprising fact is that 7.5% of the bottom 10% are in the US. That's 50 million US citizens. That's pretty shocking. Edit: although since we're talking about people who have negative net worth.. perhaps it's only because they're able to borrow so much. I doubt a poor Indian or Nigerian would be able to borrow $100K for college.
It would look less shocking once one understand US poorest 5% are equal to India's richest 5%
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/01/americas-poor-indias-ric...
Re: Eight billionaires 'as rich as world's poorest half'
#28I like how these articles like to focus on the yacht and houses that represent at most 1% of their net worths, and don't focus on the 99% of it that is being put to use as investment capital. Also, there's no doubt in my mind that the King of Saudi Arabia and Vladimir Putin have these 8 beat soundly in net worth, too.
Inequality causes society as a whole to increasingly serve the rich at the expense of the poor.
In fact, 'investment capital', unless properly allocated, is indistinguishable from frivolous spending.
If you buy a super-yacht; those hundreds of engineers and technicians who built it for you could instead have spent their time building airplanes for 'regular' people (and made international travel cheaper for everyone).
In the same way, if you invest in a crappy startup (which makes a product that nobody needs), you are taking hundreds of engineers away from building something useful and making them work on something useless.
At first glance, this doesn't seem too bad - After all, if you make a bad investment, the system will punish you by not giving you any ROI, right? So you'd lose your money and will cease to be a nuisance to society.
In reality, however; because of social factors and economies of scale (lots of money in relatively few hands), it's actually possible (and extremely common) for people to make terrible investments and still get a return on it. If you have enough people in the system who know how to talk the talk and are good at manipulating others, then eventually, the waste builds up and becomes a significant burden on all of society (especially the poor).
Soon enough, everyone in the world will be working on some useless trendy start-up to cater to the whims of a few wealthy investors - Nobody will be able to afford to work on a revolutionary HIV vaccine, world-changing education software or automated farming machines.
Re: Eight billionaires 'as rich as world's poorest half'
#29Ok, but unlike the title implies, them being rich isn't what's making those people poor.
Isn't trickle down economics supposed to redistribute portions of that wealth? If you agree that trickle down isn't working because the elite are capturing it for themselves, then you could conclude that them being rich is a contributing factor to these people being poor. No?
As I understand it, the 'trickle' comes in the form of, for example, cheaper food. Which, as a percentage of income, is something that we can see has actually happened. The remainder can be used to capture a portion of the wealth.
The problem comes in actually using that money to capture wealth instead of increasing your expenses elsewhere. The latter of which is very easy to do.
Re: Eight billionaires 'as rich as world's poorest half'
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
that's a really interesting article.. I think the more surprising fact is that 7.5% of the bottom 10% are in the US. That's 50 million US citizens. That's pretty shocking. Edit: although since we're talking about people who have negative net worth.. perhaps it's only because they're able to borrow so much. I doubt a poor Indian or Nigerian would be able to borrow $100K for college.
It would look less shocking once one understand US poorest 5% are equal to India's richest 5% http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/01/americas-poor-indias-ric...
Also interesting.. but it took me a minute to figure out how to sync this info with the article... the article is for net worth, and this is for income. It is surprising how little the top 5% Indians earn.. I actually had to verify it to believe it.