Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wealth of millionaires surges 10.6% to top $70 trillion for the first time

usatoday.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–29 of 29 posts

Re: Wealth of millionaires surges 10.6% to top $70 trillion for the first time

#21

Post by mnctvanj »

megablooper23 wrote: post #19
debt wrote: post #13

Wealth concentration of this magnitude seems like an extremely inefficient allocation of capital. Dollars get things done and having them concentrated and controlled in a just a few spots seems like the worst way to apply their value. A person of this level of wealth has no problem using the wealth simply for personal gain. The concentration of wealth seems to undermine democracy. Democracy seems to be working out de…

[flagged]

There are certainly public/tax policy sets that could serve both: to help and/or protect those who don't have the opportunity or ability to become an Ayn Rand hero, but also still allow for those that choose to fight down that path. Yes that means that the richer one becomes, the less they take home as a percentage of their gross (more so than current tax policy requires). But it means that there are more than two extremes to the issue.

Re: Wealth of millionaires surges 10.6% to top $70 trillion for the first time

#22

Post by matthewmacleod »

megablooper23 wrote: post #19
debt wrote: post #13

Wealth concentration of this magnitude seems like an extremely inefficient allocation of capital. Dollars get things done and having them concentrated and controlled in a just a few spots seems like the worst way to apply their value. A person of this level of wealth has no problem using the wealth simply for personal gain. The concentration of wealth seems to undermine democracy. Democracy seems to be working out de…

[flagged]

Or maybe instead there are a huge number of views somewhere in the middle. Like, maybe a stable society is one that both rewards individual achievement while trying to maintain a level playing field and providing a basic level of support for everybody in society.

I don’t recognise your mischaracterisation and this sort of thinking is why we are presently so completely fucked.

Re: Wealth of millionaires surges 10.6% to top $70 trillion for the first time

#23

Post by lovich »

megablooper23 wrote: post #19
debt wrote: post #13

Wealth concentration of this magnitude seems like an extremely inefficient allocation of capital. Dollars get things done and having them concentrated and controlled in a just a few spots seems like the worst way to apply their value. A person of this level of wealth has no problem using the wealth simply for personal gain. The concentration of wealth seems to undermine democracy. Democracy seems to be working out de…

[flagged]

The Marxist brigade? Even a pro capitalist should be against increasing wealth inequality.

A healthy market has plenty of competition and competition reduces profits. If the vast majority of wealth gets concentrated into relatively few people then that indicates a lack of competition and leads to inefficiencies.

Every billionaire or mega corp is a market failure

Re: Wealth of millionaires surges 10.6% to top $70 trillion for the first time

#24

Post by Simon_says »

evilduck wrote: post #12
Simon_says wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like 17.

59k is an average household income and average households have 2.5 people, which is likely two incomes (over 60% of households). That becomes closer to something like 33 years, which nudges close to the boundaries of most people's entire working life. edit: national average wage index for 2016 was 48,642, so I guess for a working individual thats about 20 years then.

The only thing I'm getting out of this is that the average person who saves modestly and invests can accumulate significantly more than a million bucks in a normal working career. None of which is relevant to my original point of the worthlessness of this particular metric.

Re: Wealth of millionaires surges 10.6% to top $70 trillion for the first time

#25

Post by s2g »

MR4D wrote: post #11

Given the aging demographic trend over most of the world, both the number of and wealth of millionaires should be increasing. What most people (and this article) tend to ignore is that a 65 year old should be richer than a 25 year old. 40 years of good savings discipline will lead to a nice number. Maybe not a million, but a large sum regardless. Instead, this article wants to focus on the ultra-high net worth (altho…

> Instead we get the opposite.

because young people have less money, less opportunity to get money, and the expensive things are far more expensive.

Re: Wealth of millionaires surges 10.6% to top $70 trillion for the first time

#26

Post by s2g »

debt wrote: post #13

Wealth concentration of this magnitude seems like an extremely inefficient allocation of capital. Dollars get things done and having them concentrated and controlled in a just a few spots seems like the worst way to apply their value. A person of this level of wealth has no problem using the wealth simply for personal gain. The concentration of wealth seems to undermine democracy. Democracy seems to be working out de…

> Democracy seems to be working out decently well

Doesn't seem to be working particularly well in the US.

Re: Wealth of millionaires surges 10.6% to top $70 trillion for the first time

#27

Post by s2g »

lovich wrote: post #23
megablooper23 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The Marxist brigade? Even a pro capitalist should be against increasing wealth inequality. A healthy market has plenty of competition and competition reduces profits. If the vast majority of wealth gets concentrated into relatively few people then that indicates a lack of competition and leads to inefficiencies. Every billionaire or mega corp is a market failure

The "market" inevitably leads to conglomeration and monopolization.

It's the natural state for the bigger entities to devour the smaller weaker ones and grow.

Re: Wealth of millionaires surges 10.6% to top $70 trillion for the first time

#28

Post by debt »

s2g wrote: post #26
debt wrote: post #13

Wealth concentration of this magnitude seems like an extremely inefficient allocation of capital. Dollars get things done and having them concentrated and controlled in a just a few spots seems like the worst way to apply their value. A person of this level of wealth has no problem using the wealth simply for personal gain. The concentration of wealth seems to undermine democracy. Democracy seems to be working out de…

> Democracy seems to be working out decently well Doesn't seem to be working particularly well in the US.

Meh it has a few bugs, definitely currently on an unstable build, but it's a huge enterprise system with hundreds of thousands of lines of code and technical debt but it's still running though after almost 200+ years.

Re: Wealth of millionaires surges 10.6% to top $70 trillion for the first time

#29

Post by lovich »

s2g wrote: post #27
lovich wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Marxist brigade? Even a pro capitalist should be against increasing wealth inequality. A healthy market has plenty of competition and competition reduces profits. If the vast majority of wealth gets concentrated into relatively few people then that indicates a lack of competition and leads to inefficiencies. Every billionaire or mega corp is a market failure

The "market" inevitably leads to conglomeration and monopolization. It's the natural state for the bigger entities to devour the smaller weaker ones and grow.

That's the reality of an in perfect market, but it's not something that anyone other than the owners of the large companies want
Post reply on HN