Wealth Shown to Scale

>we don't spend much time going into the weeds of how that number came into being

Because number of shares owned x current market price on an actively traded public corporation just isn't all that complicated. Where are the weeds?

Using $ as a measure of wealth whether liquid or not is absolutely normal in all sorts of contexts. I struggle to see why anyone would object

>absorb all that wealth instantly.

I asked before why anybody would want to spend $180 billion in a single day. You seem to have tacitly assumed that he would but I'm uncertain why. Or, alternatively, why this unreal hypothetical matters in this context.

Bill Gates is in the slow process of liquidating his entire MSFT fortune and spending it/rebalancing it, proving that being rich on that level is no impediment to actually using your wealth. Bezos is doing the same with a billion sold here and there to build rockets too. Where are the weeds?

I work in super wealthy people's homes mostly Procter & Gamble executives general electric executives a few celebrities. We're working on this wine cellar right now for a inventor of some wood glue called gorilla I think they also make cell phone glass, 5000 wine bottles. To start with the wine cellar and the deck above it cost about a million when the wine company came in the start filling the racks I couldn't afford one bottle. This project went on about 6 months too long but the homeowner didn't care. She got billed about $100,000 a month for work that should have been completed about 7 months earlier 100% knows this doesn't care. I'm fairly certain they just want to show their friends that they're having worked done to their house so they pay us to stand around and fix the tiniest little inconsistency/blemish. This is basically normal these days.

Another project I worked on in high school I'm still working on today and that was 20 years ago we built one of the largest homes in America in phases to hide the cost it's in Dayton Ohio and it's probably the most luxurious property ever conceived of it's basically a preppers billion dollar project complete with its own power plant that's an old train a lake that's climate controlled with rare species in it that also includes full-time marine biologist.

When Carl lindner built the Great American insurance Tower in Cincinnati the entire building was designed around his personal office and the view into the reds stadium so that he could see his team play they literally built the building around his office view.

You want stories of extravagance relating to personal construction with these people I got the stories we painted Carl linder Jr house once outside red white and blue just for a one weekend event involving George w bush. It was a 35,000 ft house took us a month and then took us another month to turn it back.

When Jessica Simpson was married to Nick lachey I worked in their home Jessica basically expected everyone to do everything for her not only was I construction crew I had to pick up her dirty clothes too. This is the normal behavior I have to deal with.

It's kind of rare but I worked in this Uber Democrats house a few years ago her basement was filled with fresh boxes that weighed like 50 pounds a piece and I had to move about a hundred of them I got real curious and opened up a box they were all filled with Michelle Obama books I estimated there is about 120,000 "becoming it Michelle Obama" books. ever wonder why Michelle Obama sold so many books? it's because about 20 people bought 100,000 a piece.

While I love the UX of this site and how well executed it is, I think it’s spreading misconceptions about how the world works.

Human behavior is driven by contagious imitation (monkey-see monkey-do), and we all pile into the same behaviors at the same time, so this inequality will always exist. No matter how equitable the system.

Of all the content on the internet, 1% of it gets 99% of the traffic. Of all the movies on Netflix, 1% get 99% of the eyeballs. Of all the businesses on earth, 1% get 99% of the customers. Of all the stocks in the stock market, a tiny percentage generate ALL of the returns. I could go on and on.

Fundamentally, value-creation in a connected world results in an exponential (log) function, not a linear one.

And people’s brains turn to mush when trying to comprehend exponential vs. linear growth.

You can look at similar wealth curves in the supposedly more equitable nordics to see how similar they are if scaled up to a population the size of the US. On an exponential curve, extending the x-axis 100X further results in equally extreme outcomes like Jeff Bezos.

Basically, everything humans do results in extreme inequality.

So while we should certainly raise taxes on the mega-rich, the goal shouldn’t be eliminating exponential inequality altogether. Because it’s a base property of humanity.

Thank you for a detailed and informative response.

> ....only has so many builders, roofers, cement shops, cranes... only so much capacity to produce houses....only so much labour, materials, capacity to produce.

IMO the underlying problem to solve is mobilisng this capacity. And the $$ to do so needn't come from rich people. The US anyway has been running budget deficit, there's also this ~$2T infrastructure bill. Some of that money could be used to solve housing/health/education problems and as an added benefit it'll provide jobs to the US citizens. I'm sure this will have 2nd order adverse effects but they I guess they won't be as disruptive.

I am not saying inequality is a problem; but taxing rich doesn't seem to solve it. It will lead to endless debate and lost time. It will take the focus away from the underling problems which is rotting basic human needs -- food/health/housing/education. The government should address underlying causes that lead to inequality and spend on infrastructure in a big way.

Dual tech worker couples making more than $400k in Silicon Valley are wealthy, and always have been. There's no suddenly about it.

They aren't ultrawealthy members of the capitalist class, sure. But they are definitely wealthy, and pretending that they aren't is just phenomenally out of touch.