World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year • Hacker News Board

Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#251

Post by Danihan » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 4:32 PM UTC

losteric wrote: post #224

Danihan wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with much of what you said, yet I just don't see it as all that bad of a situation. I still think there is a lot of upward mobility even in that scenario -- the smarter people I know earn good salaries and have nice lifestyles. Nicer than their parents, in most cases, mainly because consumer technology constantly gets better and cheaper. And there is still opportunity for risk takers to start their own compan…

> the smarter people I know earn good salaries and have nice lifestyles. Nicer than their parents, in most cases, mainly because consumer technology constantly gets better and cheaper. This is because today's booming companies rely on brain power instead of manpower. What does the future hold for people that aren't smart or born into money? As we continue externalizing intelligence to machines, eventually smart peopl…

Underrated post, completely agree. There have been several times when I wasn't doing so well financially and I wondered -- if I'm this smart (not to be cocky, but top 1% at least) and struggling, how are other people making it at all?

The answer is, they take far fewer risks than I do and rarely mess up. And when they do mess up it's years of hard work to recover.

But yeah, there is definitely some social Darwinism currently at play in regards to intelligence.

Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#252

Post by jrs95 » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 5:54 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #235

jrs95 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confusing what people can do with what they actually do. I've known people who make close to the median income and support 4 children, own a home, and still had enough savings to buy them all cars and pay for their college tuition. They have some amount of retirement savings as well, though I don't know how much. I've also known people who make nearly 6 figures and just spend all of their money. A more expensi…

> I've known people who make close to the median income and support 4 children, own a home, and still had enough savings to buy them all cars and pay for their college tuition. You just said, in effect, they had enough savings to spend them later to meet basic expenditures needed in raising children in their income level, which isn't really a sign of ability to accumulate excess capital after maintenance.

Maybe if you just cut that part out of it, yeah

Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#253

Post by danharaj » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 6:02 PM UTC

gbacon wrote: post #145

danharaj wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The central idea of capitalism is the extraction of surplus value via property relations and wage labor. Voluntary exchange is not capitalism. Voluntary exchange has existed since the dawn of society. Capitalism is a form of production that developed with the industrial revolution. I can't tell if you've fallen for or are employing a sleazy equivocation.

To assert the existence of surplus value, one must also declare the baseline. For Marxists, the baseline is the “labor-value.” That the labor theory of value is entirely bunk is trivial to see. If you present to a buyer two indistinguishable instances of the same good but describe how one was meticulously hand-crafted by skilled artisans and the other produced by machines in a factory, in the prospective buyer’s view…

Yours is a very shallow reading of Marx. A common, but nonetheless shallow reading. The only thing I can really do is refer [0], sections 5 and 6 starting on page 35 as an answer to such an interpretation.

> From top to bottom, this is a network built on voluntary exchange with no extraction or exploitation.

I mean, this is just preposterous. Are we going to ignore how capitalism developed with enclosure, forcible transformation of the commons into private property, and colonialism? Do you really want to make the claim that, say the Dutch East India Company's involvement in India was based on voluntary exchange with no extraction or exploitation? Or how about today, when the computers we use to write these messages rely on conflict minerals? Give me a break. Your analysis is ridiculous at face value. My only question is how you could type that out with a straight face.

[0] http://digamo.free.fr/mandelik.pdf

Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#254

Post by vbuwivbiu » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 6:07 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #137

vbuwivbiu wrote: post #133

A small percentage of bank accounts should be randomly swapped each year, and the owners of the swapped accounts become part of a reality TV show to follow how they dealt with their change of fortune

That's called the lottery. A typical lottery winner will be back where they started after a few years.

no I mean the reverse! A random rich person looses all their money

Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#255

Post by traek » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 6:53 PM UTC

andrewjl wrote: post #225

traek wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Economic laws dictate that anyone who wants to purchase a house should be able find one that they can afford Which economic laws dictate that?

Supply and demand

You misunderstand supply and demand. Consumers can be (and are) priced out of the housing market just as they can be priced out of any market.

Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#256

Post by jrjf940 » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 7:54 PM UTC

Danihan wrote: post #130

volgo wrote: post #126

As capitalism matures, it's clear to anyone with a thread of financial literacy that most wealth is created through capital gains rather than salary. We're approaching a state (at least in developed countries) where productivity is so high, that you can literally park your money in 500 of the biggest businesses and you're almost guaranteed a 7% annual return (if you hold stocks for the long term). Using the commonly…

I agree with much of what you said, yet I just don't see it as all that bad of a situation. I still think there is a lot of upward mobility even in that scenario -- the smarter people I know earn good salaries and have nice lifestyles. Nicer than their parents, in most cases, mainly because consumer technology constantly gets better and cheaper. And there is still opportunity for risk takers to start their own compan…

Honestly if you don't know what to feel outraged about you need do some research of your own. There's far to much that needs to be explained to you and a forum isn't the ideal place for an economics lecture. In the future if you're this out of your element just refrain from commenting on economic issues.

Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#257

Post by freyir » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 9:08 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #244

freyir wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does someone having wealth stop anyone else from acquiring theirs? The wealthy person (a) does not need a 9-5 job to subsist and can devote all their time to a launching a business, (b) has a lower tax burden via capital gains, (c) can afford to fail multiple times, (d) can buy their way into a top school if they don't get in on merit, (e) tends to have better family connections, (f) etc. Then the question is t…

"Tech, and the web especially, often approaches a zero-sum game." Why do you think that? Since 2000, how many brand-new companies and brand-new industries have been created, from scratch? Doesn't look very zero-sum to me.

Entire categories are strongly dominated by one or occasionally two deeply-entrenched players. In the US:

Search: Google

Online shopping: Amazon

Cloud: Amazon, Microsoft distant second

Rideshare: Uber, Lyft distant second

Social media and messaging: Facebook, Snapchat

Digital advertising: Google, Facebook

Music (Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Google) and video streaming (Netflix, Hulu, Apple, Google, Amazon) might be most diversified. Cloud (Amazon, Google

Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16024061

Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#258

Post by ptaipale » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 9:23 PM UTC

aalleavitch wrote: post #80

ptaipale wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even controversial, it's wrong. Poverty, particularly extreme poverty, has been decreasing rapidly over the past 25 years. Of course, this doesn't mean that everyone is better; there are always winners and some losers, and there are setbacks here and there, but the big picture is one of great progress. For more, one should read the Human Development Reports: http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/2016_human…

This is true for worldwide poverty. This is not true for US poverty.

Since the parent was commenting a quote about "billions of poorer people across the world have seen their wealth standstill or decline", it is rather obvious that the Guardian was commenting not on US poverty but global poverty.

And was really wrong about it.

Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#259

Post by ptaipale » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 9:27 PM UTC

dclowd9901 wrote: post #240

umeshunni wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly a billion people have been pulled out of poverty in India and China over the last 25 years. Their wages have at least tripled on average in real terms in the last 20 years. So, it's you who's burying your head in the "America first" sand. The middle class in the US had enjoyed the fruits of global inequality resulting from colonialism and WW2 during the second half of the 20th century. As the gap in skills and…

Are you really sitting here and telling me that people merely being brought out of destitution is progress? We have far different views on progress.

I am not entirely sure if you are trolling. People being brought out of destitution is progress, absolutely.

It's the very first and most important step of progress. If people don't have enough to eat, even their brain won't develop properly. The lower layers of Maslow hierarchy are absolutely essential.

After that, more progress is needed, but having food, essential health and physical security is definitely the fundamental thing for any other types of progress, such as education.

Re: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year

#260

Post by ptaipale » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 10:08 PM UTC

CalChris wrote: post #41

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is possible for everyone's wealth to increase. In the year 1900 Global GDP was 1 Trillion. Today it is 77 Trillion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product In Layman's the Global Pie is growing. The number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen DRASTICALLY over the last 25 years. https://twitter.com/humanprogress/status/913901718823489538 So the people with the smallest piece of the pie are s…

> The number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen DRASTICALLY over the last 25 years. This is defined as people living on less than a dollar a day . Yes, it has more than halved in 30 years. Congratulations. I totally see how this progress actually over half a century relates to the world's richest getting an extra trillion in one year. Yep, makes sense to me.

The "dollar" has been adjusted over time, though, and is currently actually USD 1.90.

Your tone sounds sarcastic but I don't see the justification for it. The number of people who are actually hungry and malnourished has gone down significantly, and far more people are vaccinated today then 25 years ago, and far more children can go to school and literacy rates are up.