4 ms·

So when do we get trickled down on exactly?

by orf 9y ago

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...
- ddorian43 9y ago
  Costs are not the same.
- baddox 9y ago
  But probably not in the top 1% of wealth, right?
- avar 9y ago
  This $30k number is frequently cited and seems to always lead back to http://www.globalrichlist.com http://www.globalrichlist.com It's ~$30k after tax (net income). So the actual salary number is going to be higher. It's also misleading because most rich people are rich because of wealth, not income. You need ~$770k in assets to be in the global 1%.
  - gaius 9y ago
    But that is misleading too! In the UK there are millions (probably) of people who bought their houses before the recent property boom, who theoretically have an asset worth at least that much on paper. But since all other property in the country is similarly inflated, the wealth is not real in any meaningful sense. It’s just a number.
    - avar 9y ago
      It's not really misleading, the index never pretended to adjust your assets for the local cost of living. It also matters in a real sense. Who do you think is better off in absolute terms? Someone who owns a paid-off 200m^2 apartment in London, or someone with the same size apartment in whatever dirt-poor country you could name? The person with the apartment in London could sell it and move to a cheaper country (or even a small town in the UK) and be relatively wealthy, but the reverse isn't true. You're not poor in any meaningful sense compared to the rest of humanity just because you're struggling to pay off your monthly rent on your penthouse in Times Square.
      - gaius 9y ago
        It's not really misleading, the index never pretended to adjust your assets for the local cost of living. Of course it is, because ummm you live somewhere. That should be obvious but perhaps it isn't. A person with skill X, a teacher say, can be in "the 1%" (global) in the UK quite easily, but the same person with the same skill doing the same work, would be worse off in another country, so what other than the local economy is the variable? And someone in the global 1% in the UK is not especially wealthy because they need to spend it all straight away...
cstross 9y ago
Trickle-down theory is accurate! It's just not necessarily money that's raining down on our heads. Less snarkily: Piketty observes that reinvested capital accumulates at a faster rate than labour. Also, we have no global taxation system, so capital flows through the cracks into regimes with the lowest tax rate -- meanwhile, labour is pinned down by strict laws restricting immigration, and mostly can't go where wages are higher. (In the tech sector we're privileged exceptions, but consider the plight of an agricultural labourer.) The system itself is broken, and the people who run it have forgotten the lesson of history that people with no stake in a system eventually turn to violence when threatened with starvation.
- thinkloop 9y ago
  How would you fix it? It looks like a structural/technological issue: less people needed to produce the same/more amount of value. Whereas previously you needed thousands of workers, now you can have a craigslist make hundreds of millions of dollars with 19 workers (they had the record at one point for most money per employee). Labour is just less valuable now, and the system will need to change - not that it broke.
- expertentipp 9y ago
  > The system itself is broken, and the people who run it have forgotten the lesson of history that people with no stake in a system eventually turn to violence when threatened with starvation. The people who run it are aware that they can, with impunity, make others starve when necessary (see multiple famines in the European history). Such potential power is extremely exciting for some.
- hippich 9y ago
  Just curious - where agriculture labour would go if there would be no strict immigration laws?
LarryMade2 9y ago
We do, but what we din't take into account is that is, it is a trickle.

So when do we get trickled down on exactly?

by orf 9y ago

So when do we get trickled down on exactly?

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...
ddorian43 9y ago
Costs are not the same.
baddox 9y ago
But probably not in the top 1% of wealth, right?
avar 9y ago
This $30k number is frequently cited and seems to always lead back to http://www.globalrichlist.com http://www.globalrichlist.com It's ~$30k after tax (net income). So the actual salary number is going to be higher. It's also misleading because most rich people are rich because of wealth, not income. You need ~$770k in assets to be in the global 1%.
- gaius 9y ago
  But that is misleading too! In the UK there are millions (probably) of people who bought their houses before the recent property boom, who theoretically have an asset worth at least that much on paper. But since all other property in the country is similarly inflated, the wealth is not real in any meaningful sense. It’s just a number.
  - avar 9y ago
    It's not really misleading, the index never pretended to adjust your assets for the local cost of living. It also matters in a real sense. Who do you think is better off in absolute terms? Someone who owns a paid-off 200m^2 apartment in London, or someone with the same size apartment in whatever dirt-poor country you could name? The person with the apartment in London could sell it and move to a cheaper country (or even a small town in the UK) and be relatively wealthy, but the reverse isn't true. You're not poor in any meaningful sense compared to the rest of humanity just because you're struggling to pay off your monthly rent on your penthouse in Times Square.
    - gaius 9y ago
      It's not really misleading, the index never pretended to adjust your assets for the local cost of living. Of course it is, because ummm you live somewhere. That should be obvious but perhaps it isn't. A person with skill X, a teacher say, can be in "the 1%" (global) in the UK quite easily, but the same person with the same skill doing the same work, would be worse off in another country, so what other than the local economy is the variable? And someone in the global 1% in the UK is not especially wealthy because they need to spend it all straight away...

cstross 9y ago

Trickle-down theory is accurate! It's just not necessarily money that's raining down on our heads. Less snarkily: Piketty observes that reinvested capital accumulates at a faster rate than labour. Also, we have no global taxation system, so capital flows through the cracks into regimes with the lowest tax rate -- meanwhile, labour is pinned down by strict laws restricting immigration, and mostly can't go where wages are higher. (In the tech sector we're privileged exceptions, but consider the plight of an agricultural labourer.) The system itself is broken, and the people who run it have forgotten the lesson of history that people with no stake in a system eventually turn to violence when threatened with starvation.

thinkloop 9y ago
How would you fix it? It looks like a structural/technological issue: less people needed to produce the same/more amount of value. Whereas previously you needed thousands of workers, now you can have a craigslist make hundreds of millions of dollars with 19 workers (they had the record at one point for most money per employee). Labour is just less valuable now, and the system will need to change - not that it broke.
expertentipp 9y ago
> The system itself is broken, and the people who run it have forgotten the lesson of history that people with no stake in a system eventually turn to violence when threatened with starvation. The people who run it are aware that they can, with impunity, make others starve when necessary (see multiple famines in the European history). Such potential power is extremely exciting for some.
hippich 9y ago
Just curious - where agriculture labour would go if there would be no strict immigration laws?

LarryMade2 9y ago

We do, but what we din't take into account is that is, it is a trickle.