9 ms·

a normal curve would be nice. The problem is not that there are rich people. The problem is that the rich are so incredibly more rich than everyone else. I'm

a normal curve would be nice. The problem is not that there are rich people. The problem is that the rich are so incredibly more rich than everyone else. I'm talking about wealth that exceeds human comprehension. I'm talking about one person consuming as much as 100,000 others. And of course, you may not consider that intrinsically bad, but it's not even the whole story. Once they become that wealthy, they go about tilting the entire system in their favor. So not only are they going to contribute a smaller relative portion of their treasure towards the common good, but they are going to actually acquire more wealth from those who are less well off. Even if you still don't see this as a moral problem, you should surely recognize that it isn't sustainable. Eventually, the guillotines come out. It would be better for everyone if that kind of violence was avoided.

bargl 8y ago
Do you see the wealth inequality between you and the people in at Level 1 poverty as a moral issue and how do we as a society solve that? I pose this question because it's often overlooked how we might have wealth inequality in the USA but it's beginning to reflect that of the wealth inequality between the USA and other nations. https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Factfulness https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Factfulness I have not read this book, but Gate's Notes on it are very interesting to me. Of course this is coming from one of the wealthiest men on the planet, but it's interesting in how we break this topic down. This argument doesn't defer the fact that we have a pronounced problem in the USA, I am strictly pointing out that if we take this as an issue of morality we should probably apply our morality globally not locally. Politics isn't moral in it's nature. It's about a limited scope of morality (us). We do need much better migration from rich to poor in the USA but I think this article points to a ton of people changing from one class group to another, which is the "American Dream." The issue I think a lot of people can agree on that we need to break down is wealth hoarding, and generational wealth. That's a problem we need to address in the USA. If I get Bill Gates wealthy, that shouldn't mean my great grand kids are in the upper class. It might mean they have more opportunity to maintain their wealth, but not a guarantee of wealth. I think we should all focus on issues that attack entrenched wealth like automation, incoherence, etc. So we can establish a playing field that encourages people to go the extra mile for the extra payoff at the end. Edit: a curve is great but with wealth it's all about migration from one level to another.
beaner 8y ago
> I'm talking about one person consuming as much as 100,000 others Most rich people, even very rich, have mostly normal things, just at the higher end of the scale. A Mercedes instead of a Ford - Restaurants instead of cooking at home. Etc. How many people really consume 100,000 x more than a regular person? That's impossible. A house that is 100,000 times as big? Cars and food that use 100,000 times as much resources? What! You make it sound common. For this to be real we'd have to live in a fantasy universe where some visible fraction of the populace drives things as big as the Titanic to work and park it in their house that's a skyscraper. Most people who are mega wealthy do not consume anywhere near 100,000 times more resources as everyone else. The planet doesn't have nearly that many resources. Just look around you - they live mostly normal lives. The difference between the average first-world person and the mega wealthy is smaller now in terms of life experience than it has ever been in history. Some may have 100,000 times more money, sure - but that's different. For people with that much wealth, it's not even liquid. It's locked up on paper as things like ownership of a fraction of a company. The times when massive amounts of money are spent on material goods privately often tend to be on things that are so far on the end of the spectrum that they drive technology for the whole world. The technology in Teslas flows to other developers, helping us fight global warming. The technology in even higher-end sports cars helps us discover new tricks of efficiency and engineering which also flow outward. Moving into spacious new apartments on billionaire's row develops new advancements in architecture, and also removes the super rich from competing for regular housing. And for the things that seem superfluous, like a $300M yacht, I would say, why do you really care? I don't know about you, but I wasn't brought up to be envious of the rich. (My parents never fed me any political opinions, which in retrospect I am incredibly thankful for.) But as a result, I know that things like yachts can exist, and I've always thought they were marvels of engineering, beautiful for their own sake. Plus to be built requires the employment of thousands. Luxury items that big are basically private wealth redistribution. The existence of an uneven spectrum of wealth is a good thing _precisely because_ of how it affects resource allocation. Taking that money from the marginal wealthy and giving it to everyone would only be an incremental increase for the rest of us. But its concentration and availability for things like starting Space X, starting Tesla, and, yes, fancy yachts, means that advancement can happen. The mega rich don't use more - proportional to their wealth, they use much less, but smartly designed. And those designs eventually help everyone else.
restalis 8y ago
You provide a good depiction of the current state but that still does not explain why some person that has as much as 100'000 others do is inherently a bad thing. Tilting the system in their favor may be undesirable for the society at large but now 1. that is something natural to do and is actually done by each of us (and the very attempt of incriminating the rich for their status can be counted as example) and 2. it would make more sense to narrow the targeting to the individuals that actually do that kind of tilting/corruption of the system. Blaming the rich for being rich will have bad consequence for the driving force that moves the society forward.
- misingnoglic 8y ago
  > You provide a good depiction of the current state but that still does not explain why some person that has as much as 100'000 others do is inherently a bad thing. Is it really that hard to see that people having more wealth than they can spend in a lifetime while others can't afford healthcare is an issue?
  - restalis 8y ago
    "Is it really that hard to see that people having more wealth than they can spend in a lifetime while others can't afford healthcare is an issue?" Yes, because it lies on assumptions that I'm not sure I'd understand or agree on. Let me try. "More wealth than they can spend in a lifetime" could mean that financial independence or life of opulence is the assumed reason for that wealth. If that is your assumption, then I'd say that for taking on some enterprise that (at least for me) would serve insufficiently as a driving force long term. What would serve adequately would be gaining enough leverage to be able to eventually do some meaningful change in the world (for the better according to my values), i.e. to make as much as I can out of my existence. That may mean gaining more than I may require personally in my life and would be hard to understand for people with less potential (which consequently can afford to aspire only to some lesser goals). Do we, in the name of equality, have to limit the fruition of our potential? Do we have to limit the amount of wealth we can create as well? (The last two questions are society-wise.) EDIT: Regarding the sustainability and the potential social disturbance resulting from inequality, there was a sibling comment (that I've answered to) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19330811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19330811
rjf72 8y ago
A few random points: 1) Guillotines require extreme discomfort. The French Revolution, commonly cited as the example here, was not about income inequality. It was caused by the fact that the French were practically, in some cases literally, starving while the government flailed about ineffectively, accrued tremendous debt seemingly to no end largely driven by fruitless wars, and ultimately turned to taxation to try to sustain a failing state. It was not an otherwise comfortable people suddenly deciding to start lopping off people's heads because wealth inequality rose beyond some acceptable level. The current situation in France emphasizes this. They have an arguably horrible and out of touch government with presidential approval ratings headed towards the teens. And there are active protests on the streets each weekend regularly featuring violence from the police. If France, as a whole, wanted to - they could depose their mostly despised government. But, for the most part, they're comfortable enough to remain apathetic. 2) I don't think even the wealthiest of the wealthy are personally consuming anything like you're referencing. 100,000 times more would be e.g. $5 billion a year compared to somebody earning $50k. I doubt even the richest of the rich would ever get remotely close to that level of consumption spending in their entire life, let alone per year. Stereotypical ultra high end luxury purchases such as artwork are also frequently appreciating assets. That means they're effectively free as they increase a person's wealth, rather than reduce it. In the worst case their 'real' cost is a fraction of their paper cost. In any case those sort of things are also just shifting wealth from one ultra rich family to another. Personally, I can live without an original Monet in my 'study'. 3) Finally, wealth isn't "money." Jeff Bezos is worth $140 billion or some other insane number, but almost none of that is in cash. It's in various assets and especially Amazon stock. The thing is, if he tried to liquidate even a substantial portion of that, the price of the stock would go plummeting. It creates this interesting sort of paradox where it may be true that somebody is 'worth' $140 billion, yet in reality they have nowhere near $140 billion in 'real' money or assets. On a macro-economic scale this is an extremely important point as asset prices are extremely inflated relative to what they could be liquidated at, which in turn provides extremely inflated measurements of wealth. ---- All this said I'd agree that huge wealth inequality is not a great thing. However, my one nuance there is that I think every method we have for combating such inequality tends to be even less desirable. So like many social or political issues, it comes down to picking bad or worse.

bargl 8y ago

Do you see the wealth inequality between you and the people in at Level 1 poverty as a moral issue and how do we as a society solve that? I pose this question because it's often overlooked how we might have wealth inequality in the USA but it's beginning to reflect that of the wealth inequality between the USA and other nations. https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Factfulness https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Factfulness I have not read this book, but Gate's Notes on it are very interesting to me. Of course this is coming from one of the wealthiest men on the planet, but it's interesting in how we break this topic down. This argument doesn't defer the fact that we have a pronounced problem in the USA, I am strictly pointing out that if we take this as an issue of morality we should probably apply our morality globally not locally. Politics isn't moral in it's nature. It's about a limited scope of morality (us). We do need much better migration from rich to poor in the USA but I think this article points to a ton of people changing from one class group to another, which is the "American Dream." The issue I think a lot of people can agree on that we need to break down is wealth hoarding, and generational wealth. That's a problem we need to address in the USA. If I get Bill Gates wealthy, that shouldn't mean my great grand kids are in the upper class. It might mean they have more opportunity to maintain their wealth, but not a guarantee of wealth. I think we should all focus on issues that attack entrenched wealth like automation, incoherence, etc. So we can establish a playing field that encourages people to go the extra mile for the extra payoff at the end. Edit: a curve is great but with wealth it's all about migration from one level to another.

beaner 8y ago

> I'm talking about one person consuming as much as 100,000 others Most rich people, even very rich, have mostly normal things, just at the higher end of the scale. A Mercedes instead of a Ford - Restaurants instead of cooking at home. Etc. How many people really consume 100,000 x more than a regular person? That's impossible. A house that is 100,000 times as big? Cars and food that use 100,000 times as much resources? What! You make it sound common. For this to be real we'd have to live in a fantasy universe where some visible fraction of the populace drives things as big as the Titanic to work and park it in their house that's a skyscraper. Most people who are mega wealthy do not consume anywhere near 100,000 times more resources as everyone else. The planet doesn't have nearly that many resources. Just look around you - they live mostly normal lives. The difference between the average first-world person and the mega wealthy is smaller now in terms of life experience than it has ever been in history. Some may have 100,000 times more money, sure - but that's different. For people with that much wealth, it's not even liquid. It's locked up on paper as things like ownership of a fraction of a company. The times when massive amounts of money are spent on material goods privately often tend to be on things that are so far on the end of the spectrum that they drive technology for the whole world. The technology in Teslas flows to other developers, helping us fight global warming. The technology in even higher-end sports cars helps us discover new tricks of efficiency and engineering which also flow outward. Moving into spacious new apartments on billionaire's row develops new advancements in architecture, and also removes the super rich from competing for regular housing. And for the things that seem superfluous, like a $300M yacht, I would say, why do you really care? I don't know about you, but I wasn't brought up to be envious of the rich. (My parents never fed me any political opinions, which in retrospect I am incredibly thankful for.) But as a result, I know that things like yachts can exist, and I've always thought they were marvels of engineering, beautiful for their own sake. Plus to be built requires the employment of thousands. Luxury items that big are basically private wealth redistribution. The existence of an uneven spectrum of wealth is a good thing _precisely because_ of how it affects resource allocation. Taking that money from the marginal wealthy and giving it to everyone would only be an incremental increase for the rest of us. But its concentration and availability for things like starting Space X, starting Tesla, and, yes, fancy yachts, means that advancement can happen. The mega rich don't use more - proportional to their wealth, they use much less, but smartly designed. And those designs eventually help everyone else.

restalis 8y ago

You provide a good depiction of the current state but that still does not explain why some person that has as much as 100'000 others do is inherently a bad thing. Tilting the system in their favor may be undesirable for the society at large but now 1. that is something natural to do and is actually done by each of us (and the very attempt of incriminating the rich for their status can be counted as example) and 2. it would make more sense to narrow the targeting to the individuals that actually do that kind of tilting/corruption of the system. Blaming the rich for being rich will have bad consequence for the driving force that moves the society forward.

misingnoglic 8y ago
> You provide a good depiction of the current state but that still does not explain why some person that has as much as 100'000 others do is inherently a bad thing. Is it really that hard to see that people having more wealth than they can spend in a lifetime while others can't afford healthcare is an issue?
- restalis 8y ago
  "Is it really that hard to see that people having more wealth than they can spend in a lifetime while others can't afford healthcare is an issue?" Yes, because it lies on assumptions that I'm not sure I'd understand or agree on. Let me try. "More wealth than they can spend in a lifetime" could mean that financial independence or life of opulence is the assumed reason for that wealth. If that is your assumption, then I'd say that for taking on some enterprise that (at least for me) would serve insufficiently as a driving force long term. What would serve adequately would be gaining enough leverage to be able to eventually do some meaningful change in the world (for the better according to my values), i.e. to make as much as I can out of my existence. That may mean gaining more than I may require personally in my life and would be hard to understand for people with less potential (which consequently can afford to aspire only to some lesser goals). Do we, in the name of equality, have to limit the fruition of our potential? Do we have to limit the amount of wealth we can create as well? (The last two questions are society-wise.) EDIT: Regarding the sustainability and the potential social disturbance resulting from inequality, there was a sibling comment (that I've answered to) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19330811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19330811

rjf72 8y ago

A few random points: 1) Guillotines require extreme discomfort. The French Revolution, commonly cited as the example here, was not about income inequality. It was caused by the fact that the French were practically, in some cases literally, starving while the government flailed about ineffectively, accrued tremendous debt seemingly to no end largely driven by fruitless wars, and ultimately turned to taxation to try to sustain a failing state. It was not an otherwise comfortable people suddenly deciding to start lopping off people's heads because wealth inequality rose beyond some acceptable level. The current situation in France emphasizes this. They have an arguably horrible and out of touch government with presidential approval ratings headed towards the teens. And there are active protests on the streets each weekend regularly featuring violence from the police. If France, as a whole, wanted to - they could depose their mostly despised government. But, for the most part, they're comfortable enough to remain apathetic. 2) I don't think even the wealthiest of the wealthy are personally consuming anything like you're referencing. 100,000 times more would be e.g. $5 billion a year compared to somebody earning $50k. I doubt even the richest of the rich would ever get remotely close to that level of consumption spending in their entire life, let alone per year. Stereotypical ultra high end luxury purchases such as artwork are also frequently appreciating assets. That means they're effectively free as they increase a person's wealth, rather than reduce it. In the worst case their 'real' cost is a fraction of their paper cost. In any case those sort of things are also just shifting wealth from one ultra rich family to another. Personally, I can live without an original Monet in my 'study'. 3) Finally, wealth isn't "money." Jeff Bezos is worth $140 billion or some other insane number, but almost none of that is in cash. It's in various assets and especially Amazon stock. The thing is, if he tried to liquidate even a substantial portion of that, the price of the stock would go plummeting. It creates this interesting sort of paradox where it may be true that somebody is 'worth' $140 billion, yet in reality they have nowhere near $140 billion in 'real' money or assets. On a macro-economic scale this is an extremely important point as asset prices are extremely inflated relative to what they could be liquidated at, which in turn provides extremely inflated measurements of wealth. ---- All this said I'd agree that huge wealth inequality is not a great thing. However, my one nuance there is that I think every method we have for combating such inequality tends to be even less desirable. So like many social or political issues, it comes down to picking bad or worse.