16 ms·

Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

218 points by eplanit 9y ago

collyw 9y ago
Someone else on HN commented that the poor need to stop reproducing in order to improve equality. At first I found the comment kind of troubling, but the more I think about it the more it seems to make sense. Watching this video kind of backs up the point to a degree, even though the topic is immigration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE Can someone come back with a decent counterargument? I haven't been able to yet. (It's worth remembering that a good percentage of people reading this will be in the top 1% despite not being "rich" by western standards).
- kccqzy 9y ago
  Maybe read an introduction to eugenics?
  - collyw 9y ago
    I don't see that as a counterargument, more of a strawman. Eugenics is based on the gene pool not on relative levels of wealth (as I understand it). Honestly, if you live in desperate poverty, why would you want to bring a child into the world knowing the amount of suffering that its is likely to live through? Yet the poorest people seem to be the most likely to have the most children. Maybe another way of phrasing the headline would be: "The poor are reproducing far faster than the rich" It doesn't sound as shocking then.
    - letslightafire 9y ago
      Most people who are that poor are not educated enough about reproduction to prevent childbirth due to lack of sexual contraceptives or information about safe-sex. They are born to absolute poverty and know little outside of their little town or country. Sex to them might just be seen as something you do with little to no consequence or something that just comes easily. What you see as suffering might be seen as normal daily life to them which is terrible. The way most children in richer countries live might seem foreign to them. That being said, infant mortality is also very high in those countries so a chunk of those children born will not make it past 20 years old. I do believe that as countries get richer the people of the country start having more responsibilities and jobs and those overwhelm the time available to take care of kids.
      - joefourier 9y ago
        It might also be that having kids increases your economic prosperity in the case of many poor individuals - extra manual labour on a farm, additional household income, and a retirement strategy for when you are older and incapable of supporting yourself independently.
      - iguy 9y ago
        poor are not educated enough about reproduction to prevent childbirth Many people say this. But it's worth knowing that, historically, lots of societies firmly limited reproduction when they were as poor as (say) most of Africa is now. The methods varied.
        letslightafire 9y ago
        I can only think of China as an example of purposely limiting reproduction, what others are there?
        iguy 9y ago
        Right, 20th century China is the example of government limiting reproduction which springs to mind. What I had in mind was people limiting their own. In the west the main mechanism was delayed marriage (i.e. saving up a socially approved amount of money first) which kept us well away from starvation 500 years ago. In china/japan I believe the pattern was more infanticide (in the same period) but know less about this.
    - verylittlemeat 9y ago
      >Honestly, if you live in desperate poverty, why would you want to bring a child into the world knowing the amount of suffering that its is likely to live through? Having children is a fundamental human activity. It gives people purpose, connection, novelty and a million other things I can't think of since I'm not a parent or a mother. As you say, many poor people have many children. Perhaps you should look into what giving birth means to them rather than just assuming they're selfish idiots.
      - collyw 9y ago
        It was you who called them "selfish idiots" not me. I know exactly what giving birth means.
        verylittlemeat 9y ago
        >why would you want to bring a child into the world knowing the amount of suffering that its is likely to live through? This statement is all but calling them selfish idiots. Your question is nothing but a self serving rhetorical for conclusions you already made.
        collyw 9y ago
        No its not. A lack of thought is closer to what I was thinking. It takes a lot of effort raising a child, especially in poverty. I don't think of that as selfish.
- drhodes 9y ago
  There's a subreddit for what you're looking for: https://reddit.com/r/changemyview https://reddit.com/r/changemyview Lots of interesting debate happens there.
  - collyw 9y ago
    I might do, though I find the discussion generally of a higher quality here than on reddit.
    - dsacco 9y ago
      You might be pleasantly surprised. There are focused subreddits which are quite ruthless and thorough in their moderation style. For example, the modal discussion on /r/NeutralPolitics is far more productive and informed than on Hacker News. /r/AskHistorians is similarly remarkable. These subreddits require insightful commentary with citations to scholarly sources - anecdata, off-topic banter and trolling are virtually eradicated. Hacker News fosters higher quality discussion than most subreddits because it's smaller and has a much higher floor for the scope successful moderation. But look at this thread: people are throwing around uninformed opinions about basic economics left and right. Outside of technical disussion, Hacker News discussions often fracture into arguments where people talk past each other and reinvent entire fields from first principles. I think HN is nearly as good as you can expect a general discussion forum to be, but the focused, well-moderated subreddits for specific topics are clearly better for useful discussion.
      - collyw 9y ago
        I have seen a few discussions on the change my view subreddit and its better then average, but I would still say its a fair bit lower than the standard of discussion here (at least for the subjects I saw).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- vowelless 9y ago
  Wow, that video is ... something.
- tempagain567i 9y ago
  You have in fact scratched the surface of a very important and fundamental insight about human society. The conclusion that I have come to is that blaming institutions and policies is basically wrong. Blaming circumstances is wrong. It is the people of a society that determine what that society is, full stop. If tomorrow everyone in the united states were made to be good with high intelligence, high morality and so on, all of our problems would disappear. People get caught up on "You can't define what a good person is so you are wrong" or "a person is the result of nature as well as nature." These points are actually irrelevant. Just because you can't define something precisely with modern methods doesn't mean anything. And the way that a person becomes a certain way doesn't matter. The face remains that it is people who do and create everything and therefore the characteristics of those people determine the outcome. So if you don't like something, don't go to a protest. It would be infinitely more impactful to educate and mentor a child you know. But it would be much less noisy and visceral, so not many people do it even if they are aware of how important it is. Anyway, besides giving these poor countries the tools to succeed, there is nothing we can do. Like was pointed out in the video, allowing all the best people to leave and come here only makes the situation worse. Also eugenics is good. Take a moment to actually think about eugenics before disagreeing with me. Most people never get past the hurdle of seeing past the propaganda where eugenics means Nazi concentration camps and forced sterilization. There is more than one way to skin a cat and the benefits of eugenics not only include saving billions from needless suffering at the hands of genetic diseases (ie most diseases directly or indirectly) but also preventing our country and the world from slipping into a dark eventuality that can be recognized immediately after my aforementioned insight: letting the scales of a society slide toward "Petty and stupid" will, like magic, cause any country to fall into a third world state.
  - tempagain567i 9y ago
    It is against the rules to comment on voting so I won't. But the lack of any counter-arguments is astounding, let alone coherent ones.
- joefourier 9y ago
  Who would be considered "poor", however? Unemployed individuals, or simply low-earning ones, and in which country? Giving the declining birth rate in first-world countries, reducing reproduction in rich countries would further increase the population imbalance between rich and poor countries. It must also be asked, is improving equality a goal worth pursuing? You could improve equality by making every single individual dirt-poor. Improving average living standards would be a better in my world-view - and by all metrics, that has been going up since the start of the industrial revolution. Birth rates almost invariably go down as a society gets richer and more educated - therefore the goal of improving average welfare could be better served by improving the lives of third-worlders directly, which would naturally decrease their birth-rates in the long-term. Another argument could be that many "poor" individuals have positive economic impact - they are consumers of goods increasing overall economic output, or provide useful labor at a low price, allowing many others to have goods and services they could not otherwise afford.
- curun1r 9y ago
  His argument is akin to arguing that the Soviets lost WWII because they lost so many more soldiers than the Germans. But that's not what happened. The Germans might have had a higher score, but the Red Army still pushed them all the way back to Berlin and Hitler died in a bunker. Success is measured in achievements, not by lack of failure. For the poor to stop breeding would be ceding their one and only competitive advantage. Humans, and for that matter, life on Earth in general, aren't "judged" (in the sense that extinction/flourishing is a judgment) based on how many failed organisms they produce. Rather, that determination is based on how many successful organisms are produced. As residents of richer countries, we're conditioned to breed at or around the replacement level and to view each failure as a catastrophe. So when we see those 80 gum balls being added each year to his misery containers, we're viewing it through the lens of seeing the failure. But in poorer countries, people adapt to the increased chance of failure by having more kids. They breed well above the replacement level knowing that, in all likelihood, not all of those kids will succeed. From that perspective, you need to focus on that 1 or 2 gum balls being allowed into the richer countries. That's the success. And having fewer kids runs contrary to that goal.
  - iguy 9y ago
    conditioned to breed at or around the replacement level The concept to read up on here is r/K selection. Life is certainly judged by how many offspring, but there are various strategies for producing them, and one of the trade-offs is number vs. investment in each. Among all animals humans are far at the r-strategy end (high parental investment). But different societies choose slightly different points, probably related to their history of farming. And the richer countries today are those traditionally towards the r-strategy end.
- lifeformed 9y ago
  Birth rate is a function of poverty. It's high in poor places, since the childhood survival rate is low, and you need extra children to help support family and community. As standards of living increase, birth rate drops, until it's at a sustainable 2-per-family, like it is in rich countries. Force poor people to have less kids, and you keep them in poverty. Improve their living situations and they'll have less kids.
  - collyw 9y ago
    I think there are a lot more factors that just wealth involved in the number of children. Religion being one. Culture being another. I didn't say anything about "forcing" people to have less kids. But I do think we should encourage them. It would cost very little to feed people in extreme poverty, could you offer them that as an incentive not to have children? Offer them enough food for a family of three. If they want to have 5 kids, its themselves who will suffer? (Thats just a suggestion that I haven't thought through in any depth, I am sure there will be plenty of flaws in it). On a side note, China has been growing very rapidly in the last few decades, and they had a one child policy for much of that.
- zo7 9y ago
  The troubling aspect of it aside, a policy like that would result in a net negative for everyone else. Global industries rely on poverty to guarantee an abundance of low-paid (or not paid at all) workers. In their absence, they'd either need to be replaced by bringing wealthy people into poverty, or we'd have to brace for an economic upheaval as traditional industries are disrupted (which would likely also create poverty).
- Synaesthesia 9y ago
  China managed to virtually eliminate poverty from the 70’s to today. I think Africa and Latin America can do the same, they have the resources.
perpetualcrayon 9y ago
Plutocracy is to economics as inbreeding is to genetics.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Howso?
  - perpetualcrayon 9y ago
    If beliefs were fluid and adapted continuously and were challenged by the current state of the world I would maybe argue differently. But ask yourself this. How frequently do you change your fundamental beliefs about how the world works? How do you think the people who enjoy success beyond your wildest dreams feel about changing the system that has benefited them and their families for countless generations? On top of that, which "causes" would you decide to support? Would you choose to support a cause that disproportionately affects your family's net worth in a negative way as long as it made the rest of the world a better place to live? The fact is no one knows the precise ingredients to a healthy society or what the real solution to wealth inequality is, but only the wealthy and powerful get to steer the ship.
    - dredmorbius 9y ago
      Thanks, that clarifies and greatly improves your initial quip. I've been changing numerous of my fundamental beliefs and can report that perssonally it's been difficult, painful, and disconcerting as hell. There's a quote on enlightenment by a recent Cupertino mystic I ran across a few years back: "Make no mistake about it -- enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or becoming happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing through the facade of pretense. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true." Slightly more: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/78lr8h/enlightenment_is_a_destructive_process/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/78lr8h/enlight... As for human frames, world mental models, and ideologies, they seem profoundly tended to be highly self-serving, particularly of the powerful. As to the relationship of wealth and power: "Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power." Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
wagecuck 9y ago
AR-15s are only $500 dollars now.
ghouse 9y ago
In the US, a large part of this trend is due to the tax code. Examples: 1) in real estate, a "1031 transfer" allows the tax payer to not pay tax on the gain from the sale of property so long as they purchase another piece of real estate. 2) Capital Gains tax rates are lower than Ordinary Income tax rates. So, the tax you pay on income derived from wealth is lower than the tax rate you pay on income derived from employment.
- starchild_3001 9y ago
  Re: 1) it only applies to your primary residence. It's by no means the way top %1 in wealth maintain or create their income. [Edit: I thought it does. But I'm not so sure anymore. Better scratch this comment] 2) I'd suggest examining double taxation. Corporations already pay taxes. It's unclear why an investor should pay additional taxes too on top of it, for the same profit.
  - ghouse 9y ago
    1) That's inaccurate. From my own direct experience, it applies to any investment property. 2) You're making an argument to not tax dividends, not capital gains.
danschumann 9y ago
Top 1% of composers are most of all classical music played ( probably over two-thirds ). Of their music, maybe 1% of their songs are the ones that get most of that playing. Celestial bodies also have exponential inequality. Get a little mass, get more gravity, get more mass. Inequality is within nature itself. Actors in hollywood. They release one movie, now they get 50 offers for other movies. They quickly get more than 2/3 of the opportunities, relative to an unknown. Inequality will always exist because trust exists, and if you trust someone, you will want to work with them. Capitalism is great, because even if you're an unknown, you can do a good job(at whatever field you want), and get more opportunities, and do more good jobs, and get exponentially more opportunities.
- haskellandchill 9y ago
  Capitalism isn’t very good at the initial bootstrap, start from zero and you have to take stop gap jobs that exhaust you while long term having a chance to build skills for a future job could have far better outcomes for everyone economically.
- starchild_3001 9y ago
  This was one of the more interesting comments on this thread! Thanks for sharing.
- psyc 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect
orf 9y ago
So when do we get trickled down on exactly?
- gaius 9y ago
  If you are reading this site in a Western country you are almost certainly in the global 1%. Household income of $30k if I remember correctly.
  - lisper 9y ago
    No. The world's population is 7 billion so 1% is 70 million. That's less than the population of Germany.
    - jgh 9y ago
      depends if the measurement is income or wealth. Income is like $32k, wealth is much higher.
      - 0xffff2 9y ago
        That doesn't really matter. The original claim categorically can't be true given that the population of all "western countries" is much, much larger than 1% of the total population.
    - Axsuul 9y ago
      You're confusing 1% of population with top 1% of wealth
      - 0xffff2 9y ago
        The "richest 1%" is the top 1% of the population when sorted by wealth.
  - bhouston 9y ago
    Close. In terms of income, it is 30K EUR/yr or 37K USD/yr or 47K CAD/yr. But more accurate is to look at wealth, you are the top 1% if you have more than 700K EUR or 885K USE or 1.4M CAD. That is a fair bit. Most in US will not quality. According to: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/05061...
bitL 9y ago
So the whole world would look like Brazil by 2050?
mooneater 9y ago
It is said the Chinese plan out 100 and 1000 years. Why not continue the extrapolation past 2050 and 2100, it might provide sound bites with more teeth "One person to control 99% of wealth by date 20XX".
- niccccccccc 9y ago
  Yup I am sure China planned to be up to their eyeballs in debt, their money flooding out to Canada and Australia, and cultural revolution 2.0 underway. Yup, all planned out
  - mooneater 9y ago
    Obviously real world plans cannot be perfectly executed. But the act of planning itself, provides the long term perspective badly missing from the western point of view. That is my point.
  - mooneater 9y ago
    Not saying this because Im a huge fan of china. Just a fan of thinking long-term.
- skybrian 9y ago
  This is silly. Chinese history is no more predicable than anywhere else. If any such plans exist, they are pretty worthless.
  - mooneater 9y ago
    "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything"
forrestthewoods 9y ago
Top 1% Global Income - $32,500/year Top 1% Global Wealth - $770,000 assets via https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/05061...
- bhouston 9y ago
  Just to be specific, those numbers you give are in EURs, not USD.
- olivermarks 9y ago
  2,200 billionaires if this is to be believed http://time.com/money/4746795/richest-people-in-the-world/ http://time.com/money/4746795/richest-people-in-the-world/
- neonhomer 9y ago
  The wealth seems like a much more accurate of the top 1%, especially with the amount of personal debt people have.
- aquark 9y ago
  This feels like a large disconnect? Assuming these two sets of people are not the same -- there are a lot of people in the west earning > $32K a year and having less than $770K in assets. So they are in the top set but not the bottom. Since the cardinality of the sets is the same, where are all the people that have more than $770K in assets but earn less than $32K a year. Even a fairly modest 5% return would produce more income than that, or are the stats excluding investment income? People with that much equity in their home wouldn't realize the income ... but how many people in the west even live in $700K+ homes and yet have less than $32K in income a year? Maybe some seniors, but surely not a very large group.
  - forrestthewoods 9y ago
    I agree. It does feel weird. I suspect radically differing methodology may be at play. Then again if you take a teacher who made $40k/year for 30 years but has a decent pension and owns a normal home maybe it's possible?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Mc_Big_G 9y ago
This should make poor Republicans super happy based on how they vote.
agumonkey 9y ago
Until poverty become a rarity and they start to pay for it.
CryoLogic 9y ago
Top 1% worldwide is not a great statistic. In many US cities that is just above poverty due to CoL at ~32k.
- inerte 9y ago
  Is there a better one instead? Or is it useless to measure global inequality and weatlh accumulation? Is there a local/national/global threshold that would make you concerned?
  - Axsuul 9y ago
    There should also be 0.5 and 0.9 quantiles since just knowing the 0.99 doesn't really say too much about the overall distribution.
  - pkaye 9y ago
    I think quality of life also plays a role. If you live in the bay area and make $100k but live in a cramped appt with 2 others and a long commute while someone in the midwest makes $50k but owns a spacious house and a low traffic commute, who is really better off?
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Poverty is relative to local cost levels and living standards. It's the level at which, within your local market, essentials of life are not attainable.
Animats 9y ago
Communism went away. It's not that communism was better. It's that it was competition. There was, for half a century, a competitive threat - do better than the USSR, or face a revolution. That threat was taken quite seriously in the US for decades. Industrialists (the US economy was mostly manufacturing back then) were careful not to get too greedy or power-hungry. They feared expropriation. Britain nationalized many industries. Most telcos were run by governments. Monopolies were routinely targeted by democratic governments. Capitalism now has a monopoly position and acts like it.
- matt_wulfeck 9y ago
  We’re at the point now where labels such as “capitalist” and “communist” is meaningless. China is a purported communist country but is minting more billionaires per year than any other country.
  - knuththetruth 9y ago
    This seems like a strange sentiment when the trajectory of wealth accumulation and power in Capitalists societies track pretty closely with the analysis of Marxism. Unless your saying that all ostensibly communist societies are actually examples of State Capitalism.
  - jadedhacker 9y ago
    I disagree that labels are meaningless. Capitalism is well understood to mean private ownership of the means of production. China is doing a lot of different things and most people understand that.
    - ItsMe000001 9y ago
      If it's so well understood why is everyone including those in power acting is helpless? Even the rich warn about the problems. I don't think things like "money", "capitalism" etc are well understood at all. It may not even be possible because those are very fuzzy terms that describe vastly different things depending on what aspects you are looking at and they consist of >90% context. IMO any discussion waving around any of those words can be safely ignored or engaged in only because one is extremely bored and wants entertainment.
drawkbox 9y ago
USA wants to be #1 at the GINI index and coefficient, we are challenging Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, Chile, African countries and more for the top spot! USA! USA! [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  I wonder if the pendulum will eventually swing the other way.
TekMol 9y ago
Until the other 99% switch to a new blockchain where ownership is distributed differently.
- mimsee 9y ago
  That'd be ideal of course, but as of today, blockchain doesn't force equality. China had a good grap over Bitcoin where the big money miners where due to cheap electricity.
  - TekMol 9y ago
    That's why I said new blockchain. A blockchain for the rest of us.
    - michaelmrose 9y ago
      Its profoundly unclear how merely throwing the word blockchain does anything useful for equality. Having a different way to record ownership doesn't change how ownership is distributed. Logically the blockchain would be a good way to record ownership in a more equal society in same fashion as forks and bricks would be useful tools in a new and more equal society.
      - TekMol 9y ago
        Imagine you and I cannot afford each others services because all of the money is owned by those greedy 1%. So like slaves, we sweat away for them. Day in. Day out. But if we agree on a new currency where you and I own 100000 coins each, we can happily start working for each other.
        michaelmrose 9y ago
        We can already vote in people who agree to redistribute the currency we already have. This doesn't appear any more revolutionary or likely. Why would any of the people who own real resources like deeds, stocks, stores, things agree to give them to you?
wilsonfiifi 9y ago
two-thirds of all wealth? Not if cryptocurrency holders have anything to say about it!
amarant 9y ago
I mean.. 1% controlling more than half of all wealth sounds bad and all, but according to the article, quality of life has been improving faster than ever for the remaining 99% too.. As long as that second part holds true, I don't really care about the first part to be honest
- michaelmrose 9y ago
  With wealth comes decision making power whatever lies you were told in school. If you think those whose interests aren't aligned will make decisions that are aligned with your needs you haven't thought this through sufficiently.
- cmurf 9y ago
  It's arguably unstable though, regardless of quality of life improving overall. Things can, and have, changed very quickly. And so far the species hasn't adequately predicted the sequence of events leading up to destabilization, and how to avoid the inevitable equalizer: war The top 1% should worry, but there's something euphoric about being that wealthy, almost like oxygen deprivation. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/scheidel-great-leveler-inequality-violence/517164/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/scheide...
austenallred 9y ago
I wonder what percentage of Hacker News readers are in the international 1%. That’s about $32,000/yr salary. My guess is it’s much greater than 50%.
- collyw 9y ago
  We should clarify if we are talking about top 1% of earnings, or top 1% of wealth. The housing boom in the UK in the last 15 years has made wealth very related to age.
  - v_lisivka 9y ago
    Nobody cares. If you have computer and Internet, you are in top 5%. Communists says that they need to hung top 10% to "clear world".
    - v_lisivka 9y ago
      These downvotes are suspicious. Admins, can you check them, please?
      - austenallred 9y ago
        The comment read to me as "nobody cares, communists want to kill everyone that has the Internet." A pretty reasonable thing to downvote IMO.
        v_lisivka 9y ago
        You nailed the point, but these downvotes are suspicious regardless of that. I receive downvotes often, so I know the pattern. Two my comments are downvoted in short burst: 4 downvotes at once. This is why I asking to check downvoters for vote-ring or something like that.
        collyw 9y ago
        Just accept that people don't like your comment. What do you suspect? Russian bots?
thinkloop 9y ago
> “If the system of capitalist liberal democracy which has triumphed in the west is to pass the big test of globalisation – and the assault from radical Islam as well as its own internal pressures from post-crash austerity – we need some new thinking on ways to widen opportunity, share ownership and philanthropy. Fast.” Sprinkle in a little radical islam fear mongering for kicks. This was funded by the Labour Party - not saying the message about inequality isn't true, but really strange to see that completely out of nowhere.
AtomicOrbital 9y ago
Any student of history is well aware of these cycles of ever increasing concentrations of power and wealth followed by violent grassroots overthrow of 1% types where control and wealth returns to a more productive distribution ... rinse & repeat ... for example look at Italy from the years 1000 to 1400 which experienced several such cycles ... its a natural expression of the will to power ... the real crime to humanity happens when poor children are starved of education and opportunities while 1% blithely hordes resources in blind faith that more is better when in-fact everyone is better off when the people at the bottom are maximally lifted into self actualized individuals knowing they have skin in the game ... anything less than this is wasting human potential on a massive scale
cal5k 9y ago
Steven Pinker's new book, Enlightenment Now, has a pretty compelling section on wealth/income inequality. The basic position - and I think the data supports this - is that it really doesn't matter what the top 1% are doing so long as the bottom half are seeing improved living conditions. Furthermore, wealth isn't a static I win/you lose proposition - much of that wealth has been created in recent history. People spend less as a percentage of income on food and housing, have better access to healthcare, and more leisure time than ever before. It's a remarkable story. Over a billion people have been lifted out of poverty over the last 30 years thanks to globalization. I think that's much more important than how much money Warren Buffett or Bill Gates have. Income/wealth inequality has been the state of humanity for all of recorded history, and it seems unlikely to go away any time soon - it's trivially easy to show how wealth accumulation occurs using game theory even if trade is relatively fair. The only events that seem to reliably reset the balance are global wars, huge famines, or natural disasters. I think it's a natural human inclination to fixate on the rich and to demonize them, and perhaps some are deserving of such demonization, but it doesn't seem to be a terribly useful way to think about improving the human condition. It just spurs on class resentment which is, if history is any guide, just about the worst way to go about things possible.
- psyc 9y ago
  It couldn't possibly not matter, because wealth is not only standard of living, but also power. At the highest level, the wealthy are not simply comfortable. They have the power to shape and organize aspects of the economy, supply chain, and the laws. That has to matter in some way beyond having one's material needs met or not.
  - tibbetts 9y ago
    It matters, and it might be ok if the wealthy were being nice about it. Unfortunately a very active subset seems to be bringing back feudalism. In the 20s-70s rich people were conveniently afraid of communist revolution and thus inclined to distributed gains. Without another credible threat of global revolution I don’t know how this gets fixed. Of course, communism did have downsides for the people who actually lived under it.
throwaway84742 9y ago
Worldwide, if you make over $32k per year you’re 1%. I suggest folks think carefully about this fact before suggesting hanging the rich or anything else Marxist-Leninist. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/05061...
- collyw 9y ago
  Top 1% of earning, not necessarily top 1% of wealth. I remember checking my moderately above average European income on a site that showed this. I think I was in or close to the top 1% of earners. But not being on the property ladder I think I was closer to top 6% by wealth. (It was a while ago so my numbers may be a bit out, but I hope you get the idea).
  - throwaway84742 9y ago
    >> Top 1% of earning, not necessarily top 1% of wealth. When it comes to hanging the rich nobody cares about such details.
    - collyw 9y ago
      On a moderate but above average salary in Spain. If I get some inheritance when my parents die and have my own apartment paid off, then I could be in the top 1% in 20 years time. I am by no means rich by western standards, just a bit above average. Do you suggest we hang all pensioners who have paid of their properties and earned a reasonable wage throughout their lives in Western Europe? Jordan Peterson seems correct for a certain percentage of people when he says 'Middle Class Socialists don't like the poor but they hate the rich'. Your comment comes across as backing that up.
      - throwaway84742 9y ago
        I suggest not hanging anybody. You have reading comprehension issues.
- 9y ago
aantix 9y ago
Does it matter? The expenditures for the US in 2016 we’re nearly 4 trillion. Trillion. The top 10’s wealth if siezed wouldn’t even come close to that.
wowisitlikethis 9y ago
isn't inequality bred by our insistent concept of pecking order throughout our organizations, which results in the people at the top of the stack hoarding more than sharing... simply just because they can, maybe this hoarding is fueled by the unease and insecurity they they too feel. especially when someones livelihood is totally tied to their job(healthcare, education, housing). in that kind of environment can you blame anyone in an advantageous position to want to hoard so that they feel secure against the winds of change. secure for their family more than anything. imagine someone with a big family who loses their job and has to feed all of them, has to be responsible for all their health-care, housing and education. some societies have created an environment where if you lose your job your life is totally wrecked, seeing as most americans don't have a nest egg to fallback on since saving is not really part of consumerist culture. knowing all this, can you blame the 1% for wanting to feel secure? just like everyone else. they have exaggerated the need to hoard and their bags of loot provide long term comforts not basic needs.
return0 9y ago
Every simple RPG game must have faced this problem - the rich get richer exponentially. Programmers sometimes introduce weird rules such as , the more you have the costlier it is to buy sth etc. Capitalism has a real problem. Piketty has exposed it adequately. People need to put forward solutions, to get the money flowing again. Taxation is not the only solution, in fact its impossible to get it right in today’s globalised economy.
smaddox 9y ago
A more accurate title would be "Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all capital by 2030". Wealth is not equivalent to capital. The vast majority of capital is tied up in the market capitalization of corporations, and only a small fraction of the market capitalization corresponds to actual physical wealth. If tomorrow the global stock market took a 10% dip across the board, then nearly 10% of the world's capital would vanish in the blink of an eye, but the worlds material wealth would not change at all. There's no doubt that there is dramatic capital inequality in the world, but as long as that capital is being put to productive use (generating and distributing wealth) all is well. There's also vast wealth inequality (though, numbers wise, it's not nearly as bad as capital inequality), but as long as the minimum wealth is not desolation, wealth inequality is not a fundamental problem. As humans (or just as animals), we will always crave what we do not have, but if the cost of fixing wealth inequality is transferring capital to those incapable of applying it productively, thereby lowering the worlds total wealth, I do not believe we should bear that cost. Rather than focusing on wealth inequality, we should focus on building solid safety nets and proper incentives.
- charlesdm 9y ago
  That same 1% would then also lose 2/3rds of 10% of their net worth. Something to remember.. Politicians can hate on the wealth inequality, but it's a problem they themselves have created in part through QE.
rm999 9y ago
To put it in perspective: today you are in the global top 1% if you have at least $744,400 in household assets. You are in the top 10% if you have at least $71,560; top 50% (median) if you have at least $2,220. And the mean wealth is $52,819 per adult. source: https://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21710771-new-analysis-how-worlds-wealth-distributed-you-may-be-higher-up https://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21710771...
qaq 9y ago
I keep seeing mentions of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett etc. when people talk about 1%. 1% are lawyers, Doctors, Senior Software Eng. etc. it's over 3 mil. people in US alone. Billionaires are 0.018% of that 1% and Gates and buffet are the top 1% of billionaires.
tomashm 9y ago
And many of them are not very sympathetic, https://www.npr.org/2018/02/19/586457604/whats-it-like-to-be-rich-ask-the-people-who-manage-billionaires-money https://www.npr.org/2018/02/19/586457604/whats-it-like-to-be....

218 points by eplanit 9y ago

Someone else on HN commented that the poor need to stop reproducing in order to improve equality. At first I found the comment kind of troubling, but the more I think about it the more it seems to make sense. Watching this video kind of backs up the point to a degree, even though the topic is immigration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE Can someone come back with a decent counterargument? I haven't been able to yet. (It's worth remembering that a good percentage of people reading this will be in the top 1% despite not being "rich" by western standards).

kccqzy 9y ago
Maybe read an introduction to eugenics?
- collyw 9y ago
  I don't see that as a counterargument, more of a strawman. Eugenics is based on the gene pool not on relative levels of wealth (as I understand it). Honestly, if you live in desperate poverty, why would you want to bring a child into the world knowing the amount of suffering that its is likely to live through? Yet the poorest people seem to be the most likely to have the most children. Maybe another way of phrasing the headline would be: "The poor are reproducing far faster than the rich" It doesn't sound as shocking then.
  - letslightafire 9y ago
    Most people who are that poor are not educated enough about reproduction to prevent childbirth due to lack of sexual contraceptives or information about safe-sex. They are born to absolute poverty and know little outside of their little town or country. Sex to them might just be seen as something you do with little to no consequence or something that just comes easily. What you see as suffering might be seen as normal daily life to them which is terrible. The way most children in richer countries live might seem foreign to them. That being said, infant mortality is also very high in those countries so a chunk of those children born will not make it past 20 years old. I do believe that as countries get richer the people of the country start having more responsibilities and jobs and those overwhelm the time available to take care of kids.
    - joefourier 9y ago
      It might also be that having kids increases your economic prosperity in the case of many poor individuals - extra manual labour on a farm, additional household income, and a retirement strategy for when you are older and incapable of supporting yourself independently.
    - iguy 9y ago
      poor are not educated enough about reproduction to prevent childbirth Many people say this. But it's worth knowing that, historically, lots of societies firmly limited reproduction when they were as poor as (say) most of Africa is now. The methods varied.
      - letslightafire 9y ago
        I can only think of China as an example of purposely limiting reproduction, what others are there?
        iguy 9y ago
        Right, 20th century China is the example of government limiting reproduction which springs to mind. What I had in mind was people limiting their own. In the west the main mechanism was delayed marriage (i.e. saving up a socially approved amount of money first) which kept us well away from starvation 500 years ago. In china/japan I believe the pattern was more infanticide (in the same period) but know less about this.
  - verylittlemeat 9y ago
    >Honestly, if you live in desperate poverty, why would you want to bring a child into the world knowing the amount of suffering that its is likely to live through? Having children is a fundamental human activity. It gives people purpose, connection, novelty and a million other things I can't think of since I'm not a parent or a mother. As you say, many poor people have many children. Perhaps you should look into what giving birth means to them rather than just assuming they're selfish idiots.
    - collyw 9y ago
      It was you who called them "selfish idiots" not me. I know exactly what giving birth means.
      - verylittlemeat 9y ago
        >why would you want to bring a child into the world knowing the amount of suffering that its is likely to live through? This statement is all but calling them selfish idiots. Your question is nothing but a self serving rhetorical for conclusions you already made.
        collyw 9y ago
        No its not. A lack of thought is closer to what I was thinking. It takes a lot of effort raising a child, especially in poverty. I don't think of that as selfish.
drhodes 9y ago
There's a subreddit for what you're looking for: https://reddit.com/r/changemyview https://reddit.com/r/changemyview Lots of interesting debate happens there.
- collyw 9y ago
  I might do, though I find the discussion generally of a higher quality here than on reddit.
  - dsacco 9y ago
    You might be pleasantly surprised. There are focused subreddits which are quite ruthless and thorough in their moderation style. For example, the modal discussion on /r/NeutralPolitics is far more productive and informed than on Hacker News. /r/AskHistorians is similarly remarkable. These subreddits require insightful commentary with citations to scholarly sources - anecdata, off-topic banter and trolling are virtually eradicated. Hacker News fosters higher quality discussion than most subreddits because it's smaller and has a much higher floor for the scope successful moderation. But look at this thread: people are throwing around uninformed opinions about basic economics left and right. Outside of technical disussion, Hacker News discussions often fracture into arguments where people talk past each other and reinvent entire fields from first principles. I think HN is nearly as good as you can expect a general discussion forum to be, but the focused, well-moderated subreddits for specific topics are clearly better for useful discussion.
    - collyw 9y ago
      I have seen a few discussions on the change my view subreddit and its better then average, but I would still say its a fair bit lower than the standard of discussion here (at least for the subjects I saw).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
vowelless 9y ago
Wow, that video is ... something.
tempagain567i 9y ago
You have in fact scratched the surface of a very important and fundamental insight about human society. The conclusion that I have come to is that blaming institutions and policies is basically wrong. Blaming circumstances is wrong. It is the people of a society that determine what that society is, full stop. If tomorrow everyone in the united states were made to be good with high intelligence, high morality and so on, all of our problems would disappear. People get caught up on "You can't define what a good person is so you are wrong" or "a person is the result of nature as well as nature." These points are actually irrelevant. Just because you can't define something precisely with modern methods doesn't mean anything. And the way that a person becomes a certain way doesn't matter. The face remains that it is people who do and create everything and therefore the characteristics of those people determine the outcome. So if you don't like something, don't go to a protest. It would be infinitely more impactful to educate and mentor a child you know. But it would be much less noisy and visceral, so not many people do it even if they are aware of how important it is. Anyway, besides giving these poor countries the tools to succeed, there is nothing we can do. Like was pointed out in the video, allowing all the best people to leave and come here only makes the situation worse. Also eugenics is good. Take a moment to actually think about eugenics before disagreeing with me. Most people never get past the hurdle of seeing past the propaganda where eugenics means Nazi concentration camps and forced sterilization. There is more than one way to skin a cat and the benefits of eugenics not only include saving billions from needless suffering at the hands of genetic diseases (ie most diseases directly or indirectly) but also preventing our country and the world from slipping into a dark eventuality that can be recognized immediately after my aforementioned insight: letting the scales of a society slide toward "Petty and stupid" will, like magic, cause any country to fall into a third world state.
- tempagain567i 9y ago
  It is against the rules to comment on voting so I won't. But the lack of any counter-arguments is astounding, let alone coherent ones.
joefourier 9y ago
Who would be considered "poor", however? Unemployed individuals, or simply low-earning ones, and in which country? Giving the declining birth rate in first-world countries, reducing reproduction in rich countries would further increase the population imbalance between rich and poor countries. It must also be asked, is improving equality a goal worth pursuing? You could improve equality by making every single individual dirt-poor. Improving average living standards would be a better in my world-view - and by all metrics, that has been going up since the start of the industrial revolution. Birth rates almost invariably go down as a society gets richer and more educated - therefore the goal of improving average welfare could be better served by improving the lives of third-worlders directly, which would naturally decrease their birth-rates in the long-term. Another argument could be that many "poor" individuals have positive economic impact - they are consumers of goods increasing overall economic output, or provide useful labor at a low price, allowing many others to have goods and services they could not otherwise afford.
curun1r 9y ago
His argument is akin to arguing that the Soviets lost WWII because they lost so many more soldiers than the Germans. But that's not what happened. The Germans might have had a higher score, but the Red Army still pushed them all the way back to Berlin and Hitler died in a bunker. Success is measured in achievements, not by lack of failure. For the poor to stop breeding would be ceding their one and only competitive advantage. Humans, and for that matter, life on Earth in general, aren't "judged" (in the sense that extinction/flourishing is a judgment) based on how many failed organisms they produce. Rather, that determination is based on how many successful organisms are produced. As residents of richer countries, we're conditioned to breed at or around the replacement level and to view each failure as a catastrophe. So when we see those 80 gum balls being added each year to his misery containers, we're viewing it through the lens of seeing the failure. But in poorer countries, people adapt to the increased chance of failure by having more kids. They breed well above the replacement level knowing that, in all likelihood, not all of those kids will succeed. From that perspective, you need to focus on that 1 or 2 gum balls being allowed into the richer countries. That's the success. And having fewer kids runs contrary to that goal.
- iguy 9y ago
  conditioned to breed at or around the replacement level The concept to read up on here is r/K selection. Life is certainly judged by how many offspring, but there are various strategies for producing them, and one of the trade-offs is number vs. investment in each. Among all animals humans are far at the r-strategy end (high parental investment). But different societies choose slightly different points, probably related to their history of farming. And the richer countries today are those traditionally towards the r-strategy end.
lifeformed 9y ago
Birth rate is a function of poverty. It's high in poor places, since the childhood survival rate is low, and you need extra children to help support family and community. As standards of living increase, birth rate drops, until it's at a sustainable 2-per-family, like it is in rich countries. Force poor people to have less kids, and you keep them in poverty. Improve their living situations and they'll have less kids.
- collyw 9y ago
  I think there are a lot more factors that just wealth involved in the number of children. Religion being one. Culture being another. I didn't say anything about "forcing" people to have less kids. But I do think we should encourage them. It would cost very little to feed people in extreme poverty, could you offer them that as an incentive not to have children? Offer them enough food for a family of three. If they want to have 5 kids, its themselves who will suffer? (Thats just a suggestion that I haven't thought through in any depth, I am sure there will be plenty of flaws in it). On a side note, China has been growing very rapidly in the last few decades, and they had a one child policy for much of that.
zo7 9y ago
The troubling aspect of it aside, a policy like that would result in a net negative for everyone else. Global industries rely on poverty to guarantee an abundance of low-paid (or not paid at all) workers. In their absence, they'd either need to be replaced by bringing wealthy people into poverty, or we'd have to brace for an economic upheaval as traditional industries are disrupted (which would likely also create poverty).
Synaesthesia 9y ago
China managed to virtually eliminate poverty from the 70’s to today. I think Africa and Latin America can do the same, they have the resources.

perpetualcrayon 9y ago

Plutocracy is to economics as inbreeding is to genetics.

dredmorbius 9y ago
Howso?
- perpetualcrayon 9y ago
  If beliefs were fluid and adapted continuously and were challenged by the current state of the world I would maybe argue differently. But ask yourself this. How frequently do you change your fundamental beliefs about how the world works? How do you think the people who enjoy success beyond your wildest dreams feel about changing the system that has benefited them and their families for countless generations? On top of that, which "causes" would you decide to support? Would you choose to support a cause that disproportionately affects your family's net worth in a negative way as long as it made the rest of the world a better place to live? The fact is no one knows the precise ingredients to a healthy society or what the real solution to wealth inequality is, but only the wealthy and powerful get to steer the ship.
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    Thanks, that clarifies and greatly improves your initial quip. I've been changing numerous of my fundamental beliefs and can report that perssonally it's been difficult, painful, and disconcerting as hell. There's a quote on enlightenment by a recent Cupertino mystic I ran across a few years back: "Make no mistake about it -- enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or becoming happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing through the facade of pretense. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true." Slightly more: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/78lr8h/enlightenment_is_a_destructive_process/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/78lr8h/enlight... As for human frames, world mental models, and ideologies, they seem profoundly tended to be highly self-serving, particularly of the powerful. As to the relationship of wealth and power: "Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power." Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

wagecuck 9y ago

AR-15s are only $500 dollars now.

ghouse 9y ago

In the US, a large part of this trend is due to the tax code. Examples: 1) in real estate, a "1031 transfer" allows the tax payer to not pay tax on the gain from the sale of property so long as they purchase another piece of real estate. 2) Capital Gains tax rates are lower than Ordinary Income tax rates. So, the tax you pay on income derived from wealth is lower than the tax rate you pay on income derived from employment.

starchild_3001 9y ago
Re: 1) it only applies to your primary residence. It's by no means the way top %1 in wealth maintain or create their income. [Edit: I thought it does. But I'm not so sure anymore. Better scratch this comment] 2) I'd suggest examining double taxation. Corporations already pay taxes. It's unclear why an investor should pay additional taxes too on top of it, for the same profit.
- ghouse 9y ago
  1) That's inaccurate. From my own direct experience, it applies to any investment property. 2) You're making an argument to not tax dividends, not capital gains.

danschumann 9y ago

Top 1% of composers are most of all classical music played ( probably over two-thirds ). Of their music, maybe 1% of their songs are the ones that get most of that playing. Celestial bodies also have exponential inequality. Get a little mass, get more gravity, get more mass. Inequality is within nature itself. Actors in hollywood. They release one movie, now they get 50 offers for other movies. They quickly get more than 2/3 of the opportunities, relative to an unknown. Inequality will always exist because trust exists, and if you trust someone, you will want to work with them. Capitalism is great, because even if you're an unknown, you can do a good job(at whatever field you want), and get more opportunities, and do more good jobs, and get exponentially more opportunities.

haskellandchill 9y ago
Capitalism isn’t very good at the initial bootstrap, start from zero and you have to take stop gap jobs that exhaust you while long term having a chance to build skills for a future job could have far better outcomes for everyone economically.
starchild_3001 9y ago
This was one of the more interesting comments on this thread! Thanks for sharing.
psyc 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect

orf 9y ago

So when do we get trickled down on exactly?

gaius 9y ago
If you are reading this site in a Western country you are almost certainly in the global 1%. Household income of $30k if I remember correctly.
- lisper 9y ago
  No. The world's population is 7 billion so 1% is 70 million. That's less than the population of Germany.
  - jgh 9y ago
    depends if the measurement is income or wealth. Income is like $32k, wealth is much higher.
    - 0xffff2 9y ago
      That doesn't really matter. The original claim categorically can't be true given that the population of all "western countries" is much, much larger than 1% of the total population.
  - Axsuul 9y ago
    You're confusing 1% of population with top 1% of wealth
    - 0xffff2 9y ago
      The "richest 1%" is the top 1% of the population when sorted by wealth.
- bhouston 9y ago
  Close. In terms of income, it is 30K EUR/yr or 37K USD/yr or 47K CAD/yr. But more accurate is to look at wealth, you are the top 1% if you have more than 700K EUR or 885K USE or 1.4M CAD. That is a fair bit. Most in US will not quality. According to: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/05061...

bitL 9y ago

So the whole world would look like Brazil by 2050?

mooneater 9y ago

It is said the Chinese plan out 100 and 1000 years. Why not continue the extrapolation past 2050 and 2100, it might provide sound bites with more teeth "One person to control 99% of wealth by date 20XX".

niccccccccc 9y ago
Yup I am sure China planned to be up to their eyeballs in debt, their money flooding out to Canada and Australia, and cultural revolution 2.0 underway. Yup, all planned out
- mooneater 9y ago
  Obviously real world plans cannot be perfectly executed. But the act of planning itself, provides the long term perspective badly missing from the western point of view. That is my point.
- mooneater 9y ago
  Not saying this because Im a huge fan of china. Just a fan of thinking long-term.
skybrian 9y ago
This is silly. Chinese history is no more predicable than anywhere else. If any such plans exist, they are pretty worthless.
- mooneater 9y ago
  "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything"

forrestthewoods 9y ago

Top 1% Global Income - $32,500/year Top 1% Global Wealth - $770,000 assets via https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/05061...

bhouston 9y ago
Just to be specific, those numbers you give are in EURs, not USD.
olivermarks 9y ago
2,200 billionaires if this is to be believed http://time.com/money/4746795/richest-people-in-the-world/ http://time.com/money/4746795/richest-people-in-the-world/
neonhomer 9y ago
The wealth seems like a much more accurate of the top 1%, especially with the amount of personal debt people have.
aquark 9y ago
This feels like a large disconnect? Assuming these two sets of people are not the same -- there are a lot of people in the west earning > $32K a year and having less than $770K in assets. So they are in the top set but not the bottom. Since the cardinality of the sets is the same, where are all the people that have more than $770K in assets but earn less than $32K a year. Even a fairly modest 5% return would produce more income than that, or are the stats excluding investment income? People with that much equity in their home wouldn't realize the income ... but how many people in the west even live in $700K+ homes and yet have less than $32K in income a year? Maybe some seniors, but surely not a very large group.
- forrestthewoods 9y ago
  I agree. It does feel weird. I suspect radically differing methodology may be at play. Then again if you take a teacher who made $40k/year for 30 years but has a decent pension and owns a normal home maybe it's possible?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Mc_Big_G 9y ago

This should make poor Republicans super happy based on how they vote.

agumonkey 9y ago

Until poverty become a rarity and they start to pay for it.

CryoLogic 9y ago

Top 1% worldwide is not a great statistic. In many US cities that is just above poverty due to CoL at ~32k.

inerte 9y ago
Is there a better one instead? Or is it useless to measure global inequality and weatlh accumulation? Is there a local/national/global threshold that would make you concerned?
- Axsuul 9y ago
  There should also be 0.5 and 0.9 quantiles since just knowing the 0.99 doesn't really say too much about the overall distribution.
- pkaye 9y ago
  I think quality of life also plays a role. If you live in the bay area and make $100k but live in a cramped appt with 2 others and a long commute while someone in the midwest makes $50k but owns a spacious house and a low traffic commute, who is really better off?
dredmorbius 9y ago
Poverty is relative to local cost levels and living standards. It's the level at which, within your local market, essentials of life are not attainable.

Animats 9y ago

Communism went away. It's not that communism was better. It's that it was competition. There was, for half a century, a competitive threat - do better than the USSR, or face a revolution. That threat was taken quite seriously in the US for decades. Industrialists (the US economy was mostly manufacturing back then) were careful not to get too greedy or power-hungry. They feared expropriation. Britain nationalized many industries. Most telcos were run by governments. Monopolies were routinely targeted by democratic governments. Capitalism now has a monopoly position and acts like it.

matt_wulfeck 9y ago
We’re at the point now where labels such as “capitalist” and “communist” is meaningless. China is a purported communist country but is minting more billionaires per year than any other country.
- knuththetruth 9y ago
  This seems like a strange sentiment when the trajectory of wealth accumulation and power in Capitalists societies track pretty closely with the analysis of Marxism. Unless your saying that all ostensibly communist societies are actually examples of State Capitalism.
- jadedhacker 9y ago
  I disagree that labels are meaningless. Capitalism is well understood to mean private ownership of the means of production. China is doing a lot of different things and most people understand that.
  - ItsMe000001 9y ago
    If it's so well understood why is everyone including those in power acting is helpless? Even the rich warn about the problems. I don't think things like "money", "capitalism" etc are well understood at all. It may not even be possible because those are very fuzzy terms that describe vastly different things depending on what aspects you are looking at and they consist of >90% context. IMO any discussion waving around any of those words can be safely ignored or engaged in only because one is extremely bored and wants entertainment.

drawkbox 9y ago

USA wants to be #1 at the GINI index and coefficient, we are challenging Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, Chile, African countries and more for the top spot! USA! USA! [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

tonyedgecombe 9y ago
I wonder if the pendulum will eventually swing the other way.

TekMol 9y ago

Until the other 99% switch to a new blockchain where ownership is distributed differently.

mimsee 9y ago
That'd be ideal of course, but as of today, blockchain doesn't force equality. China had a good grap over Bitcoin where the big money miners where due to cheap electricity.
- TekMol 9y ago
  That's why I said new blockchain. A blockchain for the rest of us.
  - michaelmrose 9y ago
    Its profoundly unclear how merely throwing the word blockchain does anything useful for equality. Having a different way to record ownership doesn't change how ownership is distributed. Logically the blockchain would be a good way to record ownership in a more equal society in same fashion as forks and bricks would be useful tools in a new and more equal society.
    - TekMol 9y ago
      Imagine you and I cannot afford each others services because all of the money is owned by those greedy 1%. So like slaves, we sweat away for them. Day in. Day out. But if we agree on a new currency where you and I own 100000 coins each, we can happily start working for each other.
      - michaelmrose 9y ago
        We can already vote in people who agree to redistribute the currency we already have. This doesn't appear any more revolutionary or likely. Why would any of the people who own real resources like deeds, stocks, stores, things agree to give them to you?

wilsonfiifi 9y ago

two-thirds of all wealth? Not if cryptocurrency holders have anything to say about it!

amarant 9y ago

I mean.. 1% controlling more than half of all wealth sounds bad and all, but according to the article, quality of life has been improving faster than ever for the remaining 99% too.. As long as that second part holds true, I don't really care about the first part to be honest

michaelmrose 9y ago
With wealth comes decision making power whatever lies you were told in school. If you think those whose interests aren't aligned will make decisions that are aligned with your needs you haven't thought this through sufficiently.
cmurf 9y ago
It's arguably unstable though, regardless of quality of life improving overall. Things can, and have, changed very quickly. And so far the species hasn't adequately predicted the sequence of events leading up to destabilization, and how to avoid the inevitable equalizer: war The top 1% should worry, but there's something euphoric about being that wealthy, almost like oxygen deprivation. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/scheidel-great-leveler-inequality-violence/517164/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/scheide...

austenallred 9y ago

I wonder what percentage of Hacker News readers are in the international 1%. That’s about $32,000/yr salary. My guess is it’s much greater than 50%.

collyw 9y ago
We should clarify if we are talking about top 1% of earnings, or top 1% of wealth. The housing boom in the UK in the last 15 years has made wealth very related to age.
- v_lisivka 9y ago
  Nobody cares. If you have computer and Internet, you are in top 5%. Communists says that they need to hung top 10% to "clear world".
  - v_lisivka 9y ago
    These downvotes are suspicious. Admins, can you check them, please?
    - austenallred 9y ago
      The comment read to me as "nobody cares, communists want to kill everyone that has the Internet." A pretty reasonable thing to downvote IMO.
      - v_lisivka 9y ago
        You nailed the point, but these downvotes are suspicious regardless of that. I receive downvotes often, so I know the pattern. Two my comments are downvoted in short burst: 4 downvotes at once. This is why I asking to check downvoters for vote-ring or something like that.
        collyw 9y ago
        Just accept that people don't like your comment. What do you suspect? Russian bots?

thinkloop 9y ago

> “If the system of capitalist liberal democracy which has triumphed in the west is to pass the big test of globalisation – and the assault from radical Islam as well as its own internal pressures from post-crash austerity – we need some new thinking on ways to widen opportunity, share ownership and philanthropy. Fast.” Sprinkle in a little radical islam fear mongering for kicks. This was funded by the Labour Party - not saying the message about inequality isn't true, but really strange to see that completely out of nowhere.

AtomicOrbital 9y ago

Any student of history is well aware of these cycles of ever increasing concentrations of power and wealth followed by violent grassroots overthrow of 1% types where control and wealth returns to a more productive distribution ... rinse & repeat ... for example look at Italy from the years 1000 to 1400 which experienced several such cycles ... its a natural expression of the will to power ... the real crime to humanity happens when poor children are starved of education and opportunities while 1% blithely hordes resources in blind faith that more is better when in-fact everyone is better off when the people at the bottom are maximally lifted into self actualized individuals knowing they have skin in the game ... anything less than this is wasting human potential on a massive scale

cal5k 9y ago

Steven Pinker's new book, Enlightenment Now, has a pretty compelling section on wealth/income inequality. The basic position - and I think the data supports this - is that it really doesn't matter what the top 1% are doing so long as the bottom half are seeing improved living conditions. Furthermore, wealth isn't a static I win/you lose proposition - much of that wealth has been created in recent history. People spend less as a percentage of income on food and housing, have better access to healthcare, and more leisure time than ever before. It's a remarkable story. Over a billion people have been lifted out of poverty over the last 30 years thanks to globalization. I think that's much more important than how much money Warren Buffett or Bill Gates have. Income/wealth inequality has been the state of humanity for all of recorded history, and it seems unlikely to go away any time soon - it's trivially easy to show how wealth accumulation occurs using game theory even if trade is relatively fair. The only events that seem to reliably reset the balance are global wars, huge famines, or natural disasters. I think it's a natural human inclination to fixate on the rich and to demonize them, and perhaps some are deserving of such demonization, but it doesn't seem to be a terribly useful way to think about improving the human condition. It just spurs on class resentment which is, if history is any guide, just about the worst way to go about things possible.

psyc 9y ago
It couldn't possibly not matter, because wealth is not only standard of living, but also power. At the highest level, the wealthy are not simply comfortable. They have the power to shape and organize aspects of the economy, supply chain, and the laws. That has to matter in some way beyond having one's material needs met or not.
- tibbetts 9y ago
  It matters, and it might be ok if the wealthy were being nice about it. Unfortunately a very active subset seems to be bringing back feudalism. In the 20s-70s rich people were conveniently afraid of communist revolution and thus inclined to distributed gains. Without another credible threat of global revolution I don’t know how this gets fixed. Of course, communism did have downsides for the people who actually lived under it.

throwaway84742 9y ago

Worldwide, if you make over $32k per year you’re 1%. I suggest folks think carefully about this fact before suggesting hanging the rich or anything else Marxist-Leninist. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/05061...

collyw 9y ago
Top 1% of earning, not necessarily top 1% of wealth. I remember checking my moderately above average European income on a site that showed this. I think I was in or close to the top 1% of earners. But not being on the property ladder I think I was closer to top 6% by wealth. (It was a while ago so my numbers may be a bit out, but I hope you get the idea).
- throwaway84742 9y ago
  >> Top 1% of earning, not necessarily top 1% of wealth. When it comes to hanging the rich nobody cares about such details.
  - collyw 9y ago
    On a moderate but above average salary in Spain. If I get some inheritance when my parents die and have my own apartment paid off, then I could be in the top 1% in 20 years time. I am by no means rich by western standards, just a bit above average. Do you suggest we hang all pensioners who have paid of their properties and earned a reasonable wage throughout their lives in Western Europe? Jordan Peterson seems correct for a certain percentage of people when he says 'Middle Class Socialists don't like the poor but they hate the rich'. Your comment comes across as backing that up.
    - throwaway84742 9y ago
      I suggest not hanging anybody. You have reading comprehension issues.
9y ago

aantix 9y ago

Does it matter? The expenditures for the US in 2016 we’re nearly 4 trillion. Trillion. The top 10’s wealth if siezed wouldn’t even come close to that.

wowisitlikethis 9y ago

isn't inequality bred by our insistent concept of pecking order throughout our organizations, which results in the people at the top of the stack hoarding more than sharing... simply just because they can, maybe this hoarding is fueled by the unease and insecurity they they too feel. especially when someones livelihood is totally tied to their job(healthcare, education, housing). in that kind of environment can you blame anyone in an advantageous position to want to hoard so that they feel secure against the winds of change. secure for their family more than anything. imagine someone with a big family who loses their job and has to feed all of them, has to be responsible for all their health-care, housing and education. some societies have created an environment where if you lose your job your life is totally wrecked, seeing as most americans don't have a nest egg to fallback on since saving is not really part of consumerist culture. knowing all this, can you blame the 1% for wanting to feel secure? just like everyone else. they have exaggerated the need to hoard and their bags of loot provide long term comforts not basic needs.

return0 9y ago

Every simple RPG game must have faced this problem - the rich get richer exponentially. Programmers sometimes introduce weird rules such as , the more you have the costlier it is to buy sth etc. Capitalism has a real problem. Piketty has exposed it adequately. People need to put forward solutions, to get the money flowing again. Taxation is not the only solution, in fact its impossible to get it right in today’s globalised economy.

smaddox 9y ago

A more accurate title would be "Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all capital by 2030". Wealth is not equivalent to capital. The vast majority of capital is tied up in the market capitalization of corporations, and only a small fraction of the market capitalization corresponds to actual physical wealth. If tomorrow the global stock market took a 10% dip across the board, then nearly 10% of the world's capital would vanish in the blink of an eye, but the worlds material wealth would not change at all. There's no doubt that there is dramatic capital inequality in the world, but as long as that capital is being put to productive use (generating and distributing wealth) all is well. There's also vast wealth inequality (though, numbers wise, it's not nearly as bad as capital inequality), but as long as the minimum wealth is not desolation, wealth inequality is not a fundamental problem. As humans (or just as animals), we will always crave what we do not have, but if the cost of fixing wealth inequality is transferring capital to those incapable of applying it productively, thereby lowering the worlds total wealth, I do not believe we should bear that cost. Rather than focusing on wealth inequality, we should focus on building solid safety nets and proper incentives.

charlesdm 9y ago
That same 1% would then also lose 2/3rds of 10% of their net worth. Something to remember.. Politicians can hate on the wealth inequality, but it's a problem they themselves have created in part through QE.

rm999 9y ago

To put it in perspective: today you are in the global top 1% if you have at least $744,400 in household assets. You are in the top 10% if you have at least $71,560; top 50% (median) if you have at least $2,220. And the mean wealth is $52,819 per adult. source: https://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21710771-new-analysis-how-worlds-wealth-distributed-you-may-be-higher-up https://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21710771...

qaq 9y ago

I keep seeing mentions of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett etc. when people talk about 1%. 1% are lawyers, Doctors, Senior Software Eng. etc. it's over 3 mil. people in US alone. Billionaires are 0.018% of that 1% and Gates and buffet are the top 1% of billionaires.

tomashm 9y ago

And many of them are not very sympathetic, https://www.npr.org/2018/02/19/586457604/whats-it-like-to-be-rich-ask-the-people-who-manage-billionaires-money https://www.npr.org/2018/02/19/586457604/whats-it-like-to-be....