7 ms·

82% of Wealth Created in 2017 Went to the top 1%, says Oxfam

54 points by sus_007 9y ago

justonepost 9y ago
What I want to see is figures on consumption. Fundamentally, who really cares about wealth? They are just numbers in a bank account somewhere. Whoever is good at growing those numbers without causing inflation - more power to them. What we need is to redistribute consumption, not wealth. Punish the rich for wasting resources on buying super cars and yachts and mansions, don't punish them for innovating and working hard.
- fluxic 9y ago
  >Punish the rich for wasting resources on buying super cars and yachts and mansions, don't punish them for innovating and working hard. Harder than 82% of the other population? Lol.
  - hi-im-mi-ih 9y ago
    This is Marxism at it finest: boil the complex reality of the wealth generation and the economic productivity of the super rich into a seductive narrative about oppression using a ratio that you actually wrote incorrectly: Harder than 99% of the other population? Lol. If you punish the most productive members of a society and redistribute wealth in any way that adheres to the oppression narrative, there will be absolutely disastrous consequences. This is because your perception how wealth is distributed is flawed - It is not the tyranny of the 1% that creates their wealth, it is their sacrifice. Remember, they only get rich if they sell something that is cheap to huge numbers of desiring consumers (a very difficult endeavor), or if they provide a useful service to large-scale businesses (a similarly difficult exercise). Both of those are good activities to have performed by intelligent, hard working individuals, because they provide a unique and often impossible-to-duplicate value to their customers that truly enrich their lives.
    - _olivier_ 9y ago
      To be more precise, 82/18=4.5 times as hard as the combined remaining 99% of the population.
    - fluxic 9y ago
      >It is not the tyranny of the 1% that creates their wealth, it is their sacrifice. http://digg.com/2017/wyatt-ingraham-koch-shirts http://digg.com/2017/wyatt-ingraham-koch-shirts
      - hi-im-mi-ih 9y ago
        You need to refute the central point of my argument, not provide a counterexample as you have done.
    - dariosalvi78 9y ago
      We are all grown adults here and there is no need to point out that those earnings are not justified by a relatively higher 'sacrifice' or work. Being poor is a high sacrifice enough.
      - hi-im-mi-ih 9y ago
        Being poor is not a sacrifice. Being poor is a condition in the terms of your life. A sacrifice is being frugal, being diligent, and working hard at self-improvement - Do all poor people do that consistently, as a quality of being poor? Of course not; being poor is a condition, it is not a sacrifice. It holds no merit as a condition. You cannot use your lack of capital as a bargaining chip at the table. It is not a sign of your deserving more money. If you work hard and do something good for me, that I am willing to pay for, then you deserve money. Capitalism is altruistic. It functions when people do good, valuable things for each other and establish trust that payment will be provided for that value. It has nothing to do with your status as poor.
        fluxic 9y ago
        >Capitalism is altruistic. It functions when people do good, valuable things for each other and establish trust that payment will be provided for that value. It has nothing to do with your status as poor. Like selling addictive opioids, scam affiliate marketing subscriptions, atmosphere-ruining fossil fuels, attention-destroying social media sites (often targeted at children!), society-destroying social media bots, arcane financial products whose only purpose is to shield immense wealth from taxes or regulation, etc. etc. Yeah, capitalism sure is great, ain't it.
  - justonepost 9y ago
    Absolutely... 82% of the rest of the population really has no idea on how to properly do capital allocation. The Warren Buffets of the world are pretty rare. But seriously, who cares if some guy is controlling how 10 billion dollars get invested? He certainly knows better on how to do it than I do. What upsets me is when that guy siphons money off of that 10 billion and buys some stupidly large house which is utterly useless to society at large.
    - thinkloop 9y ago
      What size house do you recommend?
    - zimpenfish 9y ago
      > But seriously, who cares if some guy is controlling how 10 billion dollars get invested? He certainly knows better on how to do it than I do. I wouldn't be entirely sure about that given how poorly most funds seem to do against the bare stock market.
- monob 9y ago
  If no one cares about wealth I'm sure the wealthy won't mind a 100% wealth tax then. After all it's only numbers in a bank account.
- fouc 9y ago
  There are jobs and companies that build & maintain the super cars, yachts, and mansions. If you punish that consumption, you'll also punish everyone that's benefiting.
  - justonepost 9y ago
    Sure, but those are STUPID jobs. They only innovate for the 1%. It's a redirection of global resources into something that only serves the rich. If we had a consumption tax that redirected all spending into things that help everyone, than all of these things we fret about will go away. The great capital allocators of the world will still be able to be the great, rich capital allocators of the world, but minus all the wasteful toys. They'll serve mankind doing what they do best without siphoning off important innovation and resources.
    - thinkloop 9y ago
      I doubt you'll have many capital allocators in that world.
      - justonepost 9y ago
        Warren Buffet seems to like that world and he's pretty good at it.
NTDF9 9y ago
And then come the tax cuts which reduce essential services, which are disproportionately more important for the poor. Make no mistake, the world is bought by the rich, directly or indirectly. If you sit on a 401k with $1M in it, you are a part of the problem even if you feel average.
- ghthor 9y ago
  Why the bareny finacially independant part of the problem here? I just ask because this is my goal, and I can't wait to give my employer the finger and start working whatever I want to work on.
bung 9y ago
FWIW, how does ranking on this site work; 20 points and 2 comments and at the top?
tehlike 9y ago
Earned income is the worst income. Taxed heavily.
volgo 9y ago
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 accepted safe withdraw rate of 4%, if you inherit $3 million (which is not even that much), you can safely collect $120,000 of capital gains/dividend income every year without doing anything. This also frees you up to work on other things that will acquire you even more wealth. People whose parents didn't leave them a large inheritance have to rely on salary, which is taxed at a higher rate and more difficult to earn. In effect, late stage capitalism becomes the anti-thesis of the spirit of capitalism - devoid of competition, free innovation, and upward mobility. In an ideal capitalism society, the most talented should earn the most, but the compounding effect of capital makes it so that whoever holds wealth the longest earns the most.
- vinchuco 9y ago
  There may be a bitcoin parallel here.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  This is one of the best comments I have ever read. Thanks for writing this. Mostly because of how succinct it is. How can anyone argue with this? This is the central problem, in three paragraphs. The only people who could argue "Well, but it's fair because..." are those who benefit from the status quo. But my mind is open to being persuaded otherwise. What can be done? Throughout history, revolution seems to be the only way to shake up the system, and those don't even work. (It worked for the US because an ocean separated it from its enemies.) And once the revolution settles, the system simply converges back on capitalism, e.g. China. Or Russia's feudal "maybe you can make a business, but if it becomes successful, the government will take it" model. (Also China.) I think the uncomfortable truth is that life just sucks, and the big will hold down the small and fuck them for eternity. I don't like phrasing it like that, but if it's the truth then we should face it. EDIT: Damn, this thread was marked as a dupe, so there's no chance of discussing this here. But we should revisit this topic by pointing out this exact comment next thread.
jasonkester 9y ago
This article seems to by trying to make us angry. As though those mean rich people came in and grabbed all the wealth before the rest of us got our share. It doesn't make much sense to worry about that. I don't personally have any less wealth than I would have if those meanies hadn't made their money. It's kinda cool, in my mind, that crazy rich people exist, since that means that being crazy rich is the sort of thing that can happen to people. I'm people, so if I work at it, maybe I'll be one of those terrible folk one o' these days, with too much of the pie. But nobody else seems to think that way. We just keep getting this same article written about how there's only so much wealth to be had, and this little group keep taking it all.
- fluxic 9y ago
  “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” ― Ronald Wright
  - carlob 9y ago
    I often heard it attributed to Steinbeck, though I've also read he never said this verbatim. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Disputed https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Disputed
- lph 9y ago
  I can't speak to your finances, but the average worker absolutely has less as a direct result of the wealth flow shifting ever more to the rich. Wages have been stagnant for decades, despite steadily increasing productivity.
- madaxe_again 9y ago
  Actually, if wealth were distributed more evenly, you would have more money. As to being one of those folk: no. It’s a closed club, members only. Every newly minted billionaire you see made it there not through hard work, but connections - if you can point me at anyone who, in the last decade, has become a billionaire without an “in”, i’ll be happy to tell you where their “in” was. These are dynasties - nepotistic, closed circle, dynasties. As for you, unless you are already a billionaire, you will never be one. Sorry. It’s like a peasant farmer thinking one day maybe he’ll be duke, even though it’s a hereditary position, so the beatings are worth tolerating.
frenchie14 9y ago
> Eighty-two per cent of the wealth generated last year went to the richest one per cent of the global population It's worth noting that in order to be in the global top 1% you need an income of $32,000 http://www.globalrichlist.com/#na http://www.globalrichlist.com/#na
- mrarjen 9y ago
  Correct, and in many countries with less income the cost of living is also scaled to this. So to get a perfect average the cost of living and income balances need to kind of be adjusted to reflect this...? But then again the top few people who have a lot will earn so much more that they can barely even get rid of their fortunes. And that $32,000 isn't even enough in certain area's to have a house to live in and food security...
- AndrewDucker 9y ago
  No. That's income. To be in the top 1% of the global wealthiest you need 720,000 Euros (880,000 dollars).
dang 9y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16201193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16201193
spyckie2 9y ago
These same issues came up in the early 20th century as well with the same kind of discourse on it. When markets get mature, all additional wealth generated goes to a select few due to how difficult it is to generate that wealth in the first place (often requiring dominant competitive advantages, like... extreme innovation or execution that the average population is unable to do... or ownership of capital). We have a 40-60 year gap in our collective memories of the discourse, in part due to the scare of communism, massive resets of industries/markets from war (meaning market growth opportunities where everyone involved can benefit from the lowest to the highest), and globalization keeping those opportunities alive without squeezing the labor class in the US. The simple fact is that mature industries don't have room for paying average joes more than what they get paid right now, and average joes can't really do anything about it. It's similar to scientific discovery, where the main bulk of low hanging fruit has been picked and only the smartest people tackle the most esoteric challenges - mature industries are optimized to hell and only the strong players can make any gains in them. There just aren't many non-mature markets anymore.

54 points by sus_007 9y ago

What I want to see is figures on consumption. Fundamentally, who really cares about wealth? They are just numbers in a bank account somewhere. Whoever is good at growing those numbers without causing inflation - more power to them. What we need is to redistribute consumption, not wealth. Punish the rich for wasting resources on buying super cars and yachts and mansions, don't punish them for innovating and working hard.

fluxic 9y ago
>Punish the rich for wasting resources on buying super cars and yachts and mansions, don't punish them for innovating and working hard. Harder than 82% of the other population? Lol.
- hi-im-mi-ih 9y ago
  This is Marxism at it finest: boil the complex reality of the wealth generation and the economic productivity of the super rich into a seductive narrative about oppression using a ratio that you actually wrote incorrectly: Harder than 99% of the other population? Lol. If you punish the most productive members of a society and redistribute wealth in any way that adheres to the oppression narrative, there will be absolutely disastrous consequences. This is because your perception how wealth is distributed is flawed - It is not the tyranny of the 1% that creates their wealth, it is their sacrifice. Remember, they only get rich if they sell something that is cheap to huge numbers of desiring consumers (a very difficult endeavor), or if they provide a useful service to large-scale businesses (a similarly difficult exercise). Both of those are good activities to have performed by intelligent, hard working individuals, because they provide a unique and often impossible-to-duplicate value to their customers that truly enrich their lives.
  - _olivier_ 9y ago
    To be more precise, 82/18=4.5 times as hard as the combined remaining 99% of the population.
  - fluxic 9y ago
    >It is not the tyranny of the 1% that creates their wealth, it is their sacrifice. http://digg.com/2017/wyatt-ingraham-koch-shirts http://digg.com/2017/wyatt-ingraham-koch-shirts
    - hi-im-mi-ih 9y ago
      You need to refute the central point of my argument, not provide a counterexample as you have done.
  - dariosalvi78 9y ago
    We are all grown adults here and there is no need to point out that those earnings are not justified by a relatively higher 'sacrifice' or work. Being poor is a high sacrifice enough.
    - hi-im-mi-ih 9y ago
      Being poor is not a sacrifice. Being poor is a condition in the terms of your life. A sacrifice is being frugal, being diligent, and working hard at self-improvement - Do all poor people do that consistently, as a quality of being poor? Of course not; being poor is a condition, it is not a sacrifice. It holds no merit as a condition. You cannot use your lack of capital as a bargaining chip at the table. It is not a sign of your deserving more money. If you work hard and do something good for me, that I am willing to pay for, then you deserve money. Capitalism is altruistic. It functions when people do good, valuable things for each other and establish trust that payment will be provided for that value. It has nothing to do with your status as poor.
      - fluxic 9y ago
        >Capitalism is altruistic. It functions when people do good, valuable things for each other and establish trust that payment will be provided for that value. It has nothing to do with your status as poor. Like selling addictive opioids, scam affiliate marketing subscriptions, atmosphere-ruining fossil fuels, attention-destroying social media sites (often targeted at children!), society-destroying social media bots, arcane financial products whose only purpose is to shield immense wealth from taxes or regulation, etc. etc. Yeah, capitalism sure is great, ain't it.
- justonepost 9y ago
  Absolutely... 82% of the rest of the population really has no idea on how to properly do capital allocation. The Warren Buffets of the world are pretty rare. But seriously, who cares if some guy is controlling how 10 billion dollars get invested? He certainly knows better on how to do it than I do. What upsets me is when that guy siphons money off of that 10 billion and buys some stupidly large house which is utterly useless to society at large.
  - thinkloop 9y ago
    What size house do you recommend?
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    > But seriously, who cares if some guy is controlling how 10 billion dollars get invested? He certainly knows better on how to do it than I do. I wouldn't be entirely sure about that given how poorly most funds seem to do against the bare stock market.
monob 9y ago
If no one cares about wealth I'm sure the wealthy won't mind a 100% wealth tax then. After all it's only numbers in a bank account.
fouc 9y ago
There are jobs and companies that build & maintain the super cars, yachts, and mansions. If you punish that consumption, you'll also punish everyone that's benefiting.
- justonepost 9y ago
  Sure, but those are STUPID jobs. They only innovate for the 1%. It's a redirection of global resources into something that only serves the rich. If we had a consumption tax that redirected all spending into things that help everyone, than all of these things we fret about will go away. The great capital allocators of the world will still be able to be the great, rich capital allocators of the world, but minus all the wasteful toys. They'll serve mankind doing what they do best without siphoning off important innovation and resources.
  - thinkloop 9y ago
    I doubt you'll have many capital allocators in that world.
    - justonepost 9y ago
      Warren Buffet seems to like that world and he's pretty good at it.

NTDF9 9y ago

And then come the tax cuts which reduce essential services, which are disproportionately more important for the poor. Make no mistake, the world is bought by the rich, directly or indirectly. If you sit on a 401k with $1M in it, you are a part of the problem even if you feel average.

ghthor 9y ago
Why the bareny finacially independant part of the problem here? I just ask because this is my goal, and I can't wait to give my employer the finger and start working whatever I want to work on.

bung 9y ago

FWIW, how does ranking on this site work; 20 points and 2 comments and at the top?

tehlike 9y ago

Earned income is the worst income. Taxed heavily.

volgo 9y ago

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 accepted safe withdraw rate of 4%, if you inherit $3 million (which is not even that much), you can safely collect $120,000 of capital gains/dividend income every year without doing anything. This also frees you up to work on other things that will acquire you even more wealth. People whose parents didn't leave them a large inheritance have to rely on salary, which is taxed at a higher rate and more difficult to earn. In effect, late stage capitalism becomes the anti-thesis of the spirit of capitalism - devoid of competition, free innovation, and upward mobility. In an ideal capitalism society, the most talented should earn the most, but the compounding effect of capital makes it so that whoever holds wealth the longest earns the most.

vinchuco 9y ago
There may be a bitcoin parallel here.
sillysaurus3 9y ago
This is one of the best comments I have ever read. Thanks for writing this. Mostly because of how succinct it is. How can anyone argue with this? This is the central problem, in three paragraphs. The only people who could argue "Well, but it's fair because..." are those who benefit from the status quo. But my mind is open to being persuaded otherwise. What can be done? Throughout history, revolution seems to be the only way to shake up the system, and those don't even work. (It worked for the US because an ocean separated it from its enemies.) And once the revolution settles, the system simply converges back on capitalism, e.g. China. Or Russia's feudal "maybe you can make a business, but if it becomes successful, the government will take it" model. (Also China.) I think the uncomfortable truth is that life just sucks, and the big will hold down the small and fuck them for eternity. I don't like phrasing it like that, but if it's the truth then we should face it. EDIT: Damn, this thread was marked as a dupe, so there's no chance of discussing this here. But we should revisit this topic by pointing out this exact comment next thread.

jasonkester 9y ago

This article seems to by trying to make us angry. As though those mean rich people came in and grabbed all the wealth before the rest of us got our share. It doesn't make much sense to worry about that. I don't personally have any less wealth than I would have if those meanies hadn't made their money. It's kinda cool, in my mind, that crazy rich people exist, since that means that being crazy rich is the sort of thing that can happen to people. I'm people, so if I work at it, maybe I'll be one of those terrible folk one o' these days, with too much of the pie. But nobody else seems to think that way. We just keep getting this same article written about how there's only so much wealth to be had, and this little group keep taking it all.

fluxic 9y ago
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” ― Ronald Wright
- carlob 9y ago
  I often heard it attributed to Steinbeck, though I've also read he never said this verbatim. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Disputed https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Disputed
lph 9y ago
I can't speak to your finances, but the average worker absolutely has less as a direct result of the wealth flow shifting ever more to the rich. Wages have been stagnant for decades, despite steadily increasing productivity.
madaxe_again 9y ago
Actually, if wealth were distributed more evenly, you would have more money. As to being one of those folk: no. It’s a closed club, members only. Every newly minted billionaire you see made it there not through hard work, but connections - if you can point me at anyone who, in the last decade, has become a billionaire without an “in”, i’ll be happy to tell you where their “in” was. These are dynasties - nepotistic, closed circle, dynasties. As for you, unless you are already a billionaire, you will never be one. Sorry. It’s like a peasant farmer thinking one day maybe he’ll be duke, even though it’s a hereditary position, so the beatings are worth tolerating.

frenchie14 9y ago

> Eighty-two per cent of the wealth generated last year went to the richest one per cent of the global population It's worth noting that in order to be in the global top 1% you need an income of $32,000 http://www.globalrichlist.com/#na http://www.globalrichlist.com/#na

mrarjen 9y ago
Correct, and in many countries with less income the cost of living is also scaled to this. So to get a perfect average the cost of living and income balances need to kind of be adjusted to reflect this...? But then again the top few people who have a lot will earn so much more that they can barely even get rid of their fortunes. And that $32,000 isn't even enough in certain area's to have a house to live in and food security...
AndrewDucker 9y ago
No. That's income. To be in the top 1% of the global wealthiest you need 720,000 Euros (880,000 dollars).

dang 9y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16201193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16201193

spyckie2 9y ago

These same issues came up in the early 20th century as well with the same kind of discourse on it. When markets get mature, all additional wealth generated goes to a select few due to how difficult it is to generate that wealth in the first place (often requiring dominant competitive advantages, like... extreme innovation or execution that the average population is unable to do... or ownership of capital). We have a 40-60 year gap in our collective memories of the discourse, in part due to the scare of communism, massive resets of industries/markets from war (meaning market growth opportunities where everyone involved can benefit from the lowest to the highest), and globalization keeping those opportunities alive without squeezing the labor class in the US. The simple fact is that mature industries don't have room for paying average joes more than what they get paid right now, and average joes can't really do anything about it. It's similar to scientific discovery, where the main bulk of low hanging fruit has been picked and only the smartest people tackle the most esoteric challenges - mature industries are optimized to hell and only the strong players can make any gains in them. There just aren't many non-mature markets anymore.