Myths of the 1 Percent: What’s Putting People at the Top • Hacker News Board

Re: Myths of the 1 Percent: What’s Putting People at the Top

#41

Post by batbomb » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 2:07 AM UTC

slavik81 wrote: post #34

ryandrake wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only numbers 8 through 10 are what any reasonable person might consider even remotely "self made" and lumping "middle-class background" and "upper-class background" into 8 (so that Mark Zuckerberg could be considered 8 instead of 7) is a stretch. Any credible list of "self-made this" or "successful entrepreneur that" should include a disclosure of parental wealth.

That's true, though I like that it presents "self-made" as a scale rather than something binary. It allows acknowledging differences that would have been glossed over on a binary scale. There are big differences between how Laurene Jobs (1), Charles Koch (5), Bill Gates (8) and Oprah Winfrey (10) became as wealthy as they are, and it reflects that.

The Laurene Jobs (1) is a bit dumb since she was raising the family, but whatever.

Re: Myths of the 1 Percent: What’s Putting People at the Top

#42

Post by llamataboot » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 2:09 AM UTC

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #39

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even within the 1%, the income distribution is highly skewed, i.e. those 400 people are responsible for a very sizable total of the overall wealth within the 1%.

i'd be curious to know around what portion the 400 people are responsible for

"With a combined worth of $2.34 trillion, the Forbes 400 own more wealth than the bottom 61 percent of the country combined, a staggering 194 million people. The median American family has a net worth of $81,000. The Forbes 400 own more wealth than 36 million of these typical American families."

http://www.ips-dc.org/billionaire-bonanza/

Re: Myths of the 1 Percent: What’s Putting People at the Top

#43

Post by 200x0 » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 2:11 AM UTC

lovich wrote: post #37

200x0 wrote: post #30

Funny to see you people discussing petty caviar-allowance inequality so fervently within your own arbitrary Western borders yet never giving much mindshare to the rampant "developing" country exploitation that is the very source of your general prosperity. I'm a citizen of third-world country that is being sucked dry by the West for its resources and getting its people shackled to the ground by direct support for the…

I see what you mean and it is bad. Until we have nations merge however, there's nothing we can do even when the system is working at it's theoretical perfection. Our people live in demarcated areas with separate rule sets. When it comes to the rich vs poor in Western society we are ostensibly equal and many people are upset because reality doesn't reflect that. When it comes to the US vs say Burkino Faso, what would…

1. Exploitative actions taken by individuals and companies are nothing compared to the ones taken by your governments. Europe is running cheap education improvement programs here as we speak, and other such show-tell crap, but they also sign exploitative deals and house corrupt blood money of my dictator in your banking systems - giving him free-pass to do as he likes, as long as the deals are signed and people are silenced. It's realpolitik all the way down.

2. We do want interference, interference against your current interference.

3. Just let us establish our own instutitions, stop helping and making deals with criminals, stop putting on the mask of being humanitarian and then exploiting the living shit out of us.

4. Work visas - please make them available for the skilled and offer us some channel for escape. We are majorly landlocked because our passports don't even grant us a tourist visas to anywhere other than bumhole Somalia or Afghanistan.

I could go on for ages but you people have so vastly different view on these issues I don't even feel like it would be worth my time.

Re: Myths of the 1 Percent: What’s Putting People at the Top

#44

Post by llamataboot » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 2:13 AM UTC

200x0 wrote: post #30

Funny to see you people discussing petty caviar-allowance inequality so fervently within your own arbitrary Western borders yet never giving much mindshare to the rampant "developing" country exploitation that is the very source of your general prosperity. I'm a citizen of third-world country that is being sucked dry by the West for its resources and getting its people shackled to the ground by direct support for the…

@leashless has a very good talk about this. His thesis is basically that even when Westerners talk about economic collapse they are talking about living in the same conditions that the people that grow your coffee currently live in, and refers to "militarized islands of prosperity" that came out colonialism, etc. A great talk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkQCy-UrLYw

Re: Myths of the 1 Percent: What’s Putting People at the Top

#45

Post by bittercynic » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 2:13 AM UTC

heylook wrote: post #29

Retra wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump and Brexit are the result of people with too much money making terrible decisions for the rest of us. They're not evidence that rich people should have more power. But incidentally, someone's ability to make a lot of money (or worse: inherit it) doesn't imply that they have any preferential ability to spend it in a way that benefits society. And when someone has the unchecked power to spend massive sums of mone…

> Bill Gates rented a yacht for $5M/week. How is this not a clear waste? Those $5M don't just get lit on fire. They transfer to some other set of people who can then decide what to do with it, and then onto some other set of people. Maybe the yacht's owner donates all proceeds to feed starving children.

It is still a waste in the sense that productive people spent their time building and maintaining a boat for the benefit of a few rich guys. It would represent reduced waste if the money was instead spent to hire those productive people to build infrastructure for their own communities.

Not trying to argue that luxury goods are pure evil, but there is a degree of selfishness in having luxury goods for yourself when there are people who lack the basics.

Re: Myths of the 1 Percent: What’s Putting People at the Top

#46

Post by twoodfin » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 2:16 AM UTC

cperciva wrote: post #18

In the United States, the richest 1 percent have seen their share of national income roughly double since 1980, to 20 percent in 2014 from 11 percent. Not true. The highest income 1% have seen their share of national income roughly double. But the highest income 1% is not the richest 1%.

The wording also (deliberately?) suggests that "they" in 1980 is the same as "they" in 2014, which of course is far afield of the truth.

Americans enter and fall out of the 1% all the time. Some significant fraction of 1%'ers are there for the one and only year they sell their home, for example.

Re: Myths of the 1 Percent: What’s Putting People at the Top

#47

Post by bespoke_engnr » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 2:18 AM UTC

200x0 wrote: post #30

Funny to see you people discussing petty caviar-allowance inequality so fervently within your own arbitrary Western borders yet never giving much mindshare to the rampant "developing" country exploitation that is the very source of your general prosperity. I'm a citizen of third-world country that is being sucked dry by the West for its resources and getting its people shackled to the ground by direct support for the…

You're absolutely right. I'm sorry. What can I do?

Re: Myths of the 1 Percent: What’s Putting People at the Top

#48

Post by abrichr » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 2:19 AM UTC

alexasmyths wrote: post #2

What I find interesting is that it is in the 'professions'. I would have thought it was massively wealthy equity owners/holders, hedge fund managers etc.. But yes - if we are paying doctors $1M/year then this will happen. At a nearby hospital in Canada, technology improvements have allowed doctors to diagnose using x-rays a lot faster ... but the Unions have kept pay scale the same. The doctor at the Orangevill hospi…

> The doctor at the Orangevill hospital earns over a million dollars a year, and he works from home. Swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe - done.

What kind of doctor is this, radiologist? I'm not aware of any mobile apps in use clinically, but a radiologist's job is to look at images on a computer screen. It doesn't matter where they do it from. Very little of it is automated.

> One would think a private system would be more efficient ... but it's probably just as bad in the US.

Canada is one of three countries in the world in which the government has a monopoly on healthcare payment. The other two are Cuba and North Korea.

The United States has the least efficient healthcare system in the G20. Canada's is second least efficient. All of the others have two tier systems.

Re: Myths of the 1 Percent: What’s Putting People at the Top

#49

Post by humanrebar » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 2:20 AM UTC

dcre wrote: post #16

balance_factor wrote: post #9

It's interesting what words are not in the article. Words like heir, inheritance, profit, interest, rentier. The word rent is there, but assumed as a tenant, not landlord. I assume the Forbes 400 richest are in the 1%. How did the Koch brothers get their $100 billion? Where did the Waltons get their $140 billion? Where did the Mars family get their $75 billion? The article makes it sound like these people became rich…

Everything you say is absolutely right about the very richest 0.01% -- unearned rents and inheritances are a big problem. But there are very few such people, and what really drives the top-line inequality numbers is the redistribution of income upward to the 5% or the 1%.

> ...unearned rents and inheritances are a big problem

The Walton fortune was earned... by Sam Walton. If he wasn't allowed to leave it to his family, what does property even mean?

Re: Myths of the 1 Percent: What’s Putting People at the Top

#50

Post by sidlls » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 2:33 AM UTC

slavik81 wrote: post #34

ryandrake wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only numbers 8 through 10 are what any reasonable person might consider even remotely "self made" and lumping "middle-class background" and "upper-class background" into 8 (so that Mark Zuckerberg could be considered 8 instead of 7) is a stretch. Any credible list of "self-made this" or "successful entrepreneur that" should include a disclosure of parental wealth.

That's true, though I like that it presents "self-made" as a scale rather than something binary. It allows acknowledging differences that would have been glossed over on a binary scale. There are big differences between how Laurene Jobs (1), Charles Koch (5), Bill Gates (8) and Oprah Winfrey (10) became as wealthy as they are, and it reflects that.

The fact that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg aren't 5 or lower means this scale is not credible. Both of these individuals had access to substantial capital and social connections, well above any meaningful definition of "middle-class", to jumpstart their businesses.