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62 People Own Same Wealth as Half the World

26 points by B1FF_PSUVM 11y ago

powera 11y ago
These statistics almost always willfully ignore the fact that many of these people have negative net worth; it's entirely possible that I personally have more wealth than 10 percent of the world simply due to their having negative wealth.
- parenthephobia 11y ago
  Is it okay if the poorest 10% of the world's population has negative net worth? Should somebody who thinks inequality is bad ignore statistics that don't ignore people with negative net worth? If so, why? Oh, and from the report: "The average wealth of each adult belonging to the richest 1 percent is $1.7m, more than 300 times greater than the wealth of the average person in the poorest 90 percent, although for many people in the bottom 10 percent their wealth is zero or negative." So they didn't ignore it anyway.
  - jeremysmyth 11y ago
    Right, but that method puts an associate lawyer with a $1.2M mortgage and $80k car loan beneath the guy who lives in a cardboard box behind a Starbucks.
powertower 11y ago
Comparing wealth that was generated from/inside wealthy countries with the net worth of the poor in non-wealthy countries is not a good comparison - unless you can link that wealth as stolen from those other countries. Otherwise, there is no link between the two. Even when comparing the 1st and 2nd world countries you are going to have a difficult time linking this alleged wealth transfer/theft... For example, when Apple sells a high-margin product in the USA - and the stock holders, employees, CEOs, etc, see their wealth increase - how many Rubles are stolen from the people of Russia? It is a ridiculous question.
B1FF_PSUVM 11y ago
This is totally not a problem. La-la-la. Which is why this submission of mostly factual material got 8 or 12 points in ten minutes, climbed to the top 10 of the front page ... ... and then vanished from the first ten pages of the site, having got 17 points in some 15 minutes. Algorithms. La-la-la.
- powera 11y ago
  The site is called Hacker News, not Inequality News.
FrankyHollywood 11y ago
The problem with these figures is it presents wealth like a cake. Some people get a larger portion of it than others. But the fact is some people create more cake. They bake a cake that was not present before. If Bill Gates didn't start Microsoft the billions of dollars he has wouldn't exist. The third world would be just as poor. He added value to the world. Money is not a fixed commodity, it can increase. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_growth
- Gibbon1 11y ago
  > the billions of dollars he has wouldn't exist It's definitely true. No bill gates, no Microsoft. No word processors, no spread sheets, no Microsoft access. No desk top operating systems. No compilers, no IDE's. No internet. Would have been terrible loss for humanity if the man had gotten hit by a truck in 1975.
  - FrankyHollywood 11y ago
    Terrible? Horrible! :) Any how, the 3th world would still be poor in either scenario. People have been trying to solve inequality for a long time. There seems to be no real political solution like communism or the likes. The only thing one can do is willing to share some. I'm from the Netherlands and pay about 50% income tax. I don't complain. We have good free education for everyone, good healthcare for everyone, and people without a job get their unemployment benefits. In the US people seem to vote mostly on candidates who promise less and less tax. How can you get people willing to share? Why are some people never satisfied with what they have? Why is having a big car more status than having 2 happy children? I don't understand these things...
    - vixen99 11y ago
      The solution has been found, is in action and you should be cheering. It's called global capitalism. We are witnessing the greatest decline in absolute poverty in the history of our entire species. Moreover global inequality has been falling. "The number of people living in extreme poverty around the world is likely to fall to under 10 percent of the global population in 2015, according to World Bank projections released today, giving fresh evidence that a quarter-century-long sustained reduction in poverty is moving the world closer to the historic goal of ending poverty by 2030." You're right; nothing to do with politics. It's just letting people do business. http://www.theglobalist.com/the-real-winners-and-losers-of-globalization/ http://www.theglobalist.com/the-real-winners-and-losers-of-g... http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/george-monbiot-says-were-to-blame-for-everything-perhaps-hes-even-right http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/george-monbiot-says-were-to-bl...

26 points by B1FF_PSUVM 11y ago

These statistics almost always willfully ignore the fact that many of these people have negative net worth; it's entirely possible that I personally have more wealth than 10 percent of the world simply due to their having negative wealth.

parenthephobia 11y ago
Is it okay if the poorest 10% of the world's population has negative net worth? Should somebody who thinks inequality is bad ignore statistics that don't ignore people with negative net worth? If so, why? Oh, and from the report: "The average wealth of each adult belonging to the richest 1 percent is $1.7m, more than 300 times greater than the wealth of the average person in the poorest 90 percent, although for many people in the bottom 10 percent their wealth is zero or negative." So they didn't ignore it anyway.
- jeremysmyth 11y ago
  Right, but that method puts an associate lawyer with a $1.2M mortgage and $80k car loan beneath the guy who lives in a cardboard box behind a Starbucks.

powertower 11y ago

Comparing wealth that was generated from/inside wealthy countries with the net worth of the poor in non-wealthy countries is not a good comparison - unless you can link that wealth as stolen from those other countries. Otherwise, there is no link between the two. Even when comparing the 1st and 2nd world countries you are going to have a difficult time linking this alleged wealth transfer/theft... For example, when Apple sells a high-margin product in the USA - and the stock holders, employees, CEOs, etc, see their wealth increase - how many Rubles are stolen from the people of Russia? It is a ridiculous question.

B1FF_PSUVM 11y ago

This is totally not a problem. La-la-la. Which is why this submission of mostly factual material got 8 or 12 points in ten minutes, climbed to the top 10 of the front page ... ... and then vanished from the first ten pages of the site, having got 17 points in some 15 minutes. Algorithms. La-la-la.

powera 11y ago
The site is called Hacker News, not Inequality News.

FrankyHollywood 11y ago

The problem with these figures is it presents wealth like a cake. Some people get a larger portion of it than others. But the fact is some people create more cake. They bake a cake that was not present before. If Bill Gates didn't start Microsoft the billions of dollars he has wouldn't exist. The third world would be just as poor. He added value to the world. Money is not a fixed commodity, it can increase. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_growth

Gibbon1 11y ago
> the billions of dollars he has wouldn't exist It's definitely true. No bill gates, no Microsoft. No word processors, no spread sheets, no Microsoft access. No desk top operating systems. No compilers, no IDE's. No internet. Would have been terrible loss for humanity if the man had gotten hit by a truck in 1975.
- FrankyHollywood 11y ago
  Terrible? Horrible! :) Any how, the 3th world would still be poor in either scenario. People have been trying to solve inequality for a long time. There seems to be no real political solution like communism or the likes. The only thing one can do is willing to share some. I'm from the Netherlands and pay about 50% income tax. I don't complain. We have good free education for everyone, good healthcare for everyone, and people without a job get their unemployment benefits. In the US people seem to vote mostly on candidates who promise less and less tax. How can you get people willing to share? Why are some people never satisfied with what they have? Why is having a big car more status than having 2 happy children? I don't understand these things...
  - vixen99 11y ago
    The solution has been found, is in action and you should be cheering. It's called global capitalism. We are witnessing the greatest decline in absolute poverty in the history of our entire species. Moreover global inequality has been falling. "The number of people living in extreme poverty around the world is likely to fall to under 10 percent of the global population in 2015, according to World Bank projections released today, giving fresh evidence that a quarter-century-long sustained reduction in poverty is moving the world closer to the historic goal of ending poverty by 2030." You're right; nothing to do with politics. It's just letting people do business. http://www.theglobalist.com/the-real-winners-and-losers-of-globalization/ http://www.theglobalist.com/the-real-winners-and-losers-of-g... http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/george-monbiot-says-were-to-blame-for-everything-perhaps-hes-even-right http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/george-monbiot-says-were-to-bl...