5 ms·

What's extra weird is that everything got really cheap, yet most people don't have any money, and the environment is in disarray. I'd imagine history is not goi

by neom 7y ago

What's extra weird is that everything got really cheap, yet most people don't have any money, and the environment is in disarray. I'd imagine history is not going to look kindly on the wealthy.

bbddg 7y ago
puts every imaginable fruit and veggie in a store at extremely low prices Why are people buying this food that is harming the planet??
- neom 7y ago
  Probably because those that produced and distributed goods and services (be it red meat, pesticides, prescription medications, airline tickets or Tupperware) did not clearly understand (or did and chose not to) and spell out the true cause and effect for the average consumer.
bilbo0s 7y ago
History won't be looking kindly on anyone in this era. Wealthy or not. It's not like before, when no one knew how things worked and were subsequently duped into doing dumb things. In this era, historians will find the information was openly published on the internet, in music, in newscasts, in movies, etc for all to see, and we still did the dumb thing. I suspect entire books on everything from history to psychology will be written in an attempt to dissect and figure out what was going on and how this could happen?
AdrianB1 7y ago
$4.5/kg does not look cheap at all, I buy tomatoes for less than $1/kg directly from farmers 15 km outside the city or up to $1.5 from the Mega Image (Belgian chain) at the end of the street. The cheap ones have great taste, the supermarket ones are bad, I buy those only outside of the regular season when they are the only option.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> I'd imagine history is not going to look kindly on the wealthy. That's assuming the money is going to the wealthy, which isn't really compatible with things being cheap. What really happened is that other things -- like housing -- got more expensive. But most of that money didn't go to Bill Gates, it went to grandma when she retired to Florida and sold her house to a millennial for four times what she paid for it in real dollars, whose huge mortgage payment is in turn now eating more than all of the money saved from having crappy tomatoes.
- neom 7y ago
  The Walton and Mars family net worths exceed $250 billion. If you add in Aldi and Ikea you're over $340 billion, Bezos gives you another $100 billion.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    Comparing absolute numbers to nothing isn't very meaningful. You compare your $340 billion to the almost a hundred trillion dollars in US total net worth and the amount that went somewhere else is above 99%. To get to the numbers like "1% of people own 40% of the wealth" you have to go the 1%, which is to say about three million people, and then you're including a bunch of doctors and software engineers who are clearly not in the same box as the Walton and Mars families.
    - adrianN 7y ago
      If you compare 340 billion to the net worth of the median person the mind boggles.
      - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
        Then you're comparing the sum total of the wealth of many of the richest families to that of one individual person. The fact that rich people have a lot of money is not really a recent development. But it's the focus on the super rich which is missing the thread. If housing prices go up, people at the 25th percentile lose and people at the 75th percentile gain. We see the loss for the people at the 25th percentile and recognize it as a problem, but then people are pretending like we can just take the money "back" from the Walton family even though that's not where most of it actually went. It went to home price appreciation for a bunch of middle aged and retired sociologists and car dealership managers and dental hygienists. If you want them to give it back so the poor aren't so poor then you have to recognize that and thereby identify who it is you really have to fight over that money.

by neom 7y ago

What's extra weird is that everything got really cheap, yet most people don't have any money, and the environment is in disarray. I'd imagine history is not going to look kindly on the wealthy.

bbddg 7y ago

puts every imaginable fruit and veggie in a store at extremely low prices Why are people buying this food that is harming the planet??

neom 7y ago
Probably because those that produced and distributed goods and services (be it red meat, pesticides, prescription medications, airline tickets or Tupperware) did not clearly understand (or did and chose not to) and spell out the true cause and effect for the average consumer.

bilbo0s 7y ago

History won't be looking kindly on anyone in this era. Wealthy or not. It's not like before, when no one knew how things worked and were subsequently duped into doing dumb things. In this era, historians will find the information was openly published on the internet, in music, in newscasts, in movies, etc for all to see, and we still did the dumb thing. I suspect entire books on everything from history to psychology will be written in an attempt to dissect and figure out what was going on and how this could happen?

AdrianB1 7y ago

$4.5/kg does not look cheap at all, I buy tomatoes for less than $1/kg directly from farmers 15 km outside the city or up to $1.5 from the Mega Image (Belgian chain) at the end of the street. The cheap ones have great taste, the supermarket ones are bad, I buy those only outside of the regular season when they are the only option.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

> I'd imagine history is not going to look kindly on the wealthy. That's assuming the money is going to the wealthy, which isn't really compatible with things being cheap. What really happened is that other things -- like housing -- got more expensive. But most of that money didn't go to Bill Gates, it went to grandma when she retired to Florida and sold her house to a millennial for four times what she paid for it in real dollars, whose huge mortgage payment is in turn now eating more than all of the money saved from having crappy tomatoes.

neom 7y ago
The Walton and Mars family net worths exceed $250 billion. If you add in Aldi and Ikea you're over $340 billion, Bezos gives you another $100 billion.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  Comparing absolute numbers to nothing isn't very meaningful. You compare your $340 billion to the almost a hundred trillion dollars in US total net worth and the amount that went somewhere else is above 99%. To get to the numbers like "1% of people own 40% of the wealth" you have to go the 1%, which is to say about three million people, and then you're including a bunch of doctors and software engineers who are clearly not in the same box as the Walton and Mars families.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    If you compare 340 billion to the net worth of the median person the mind boggles.
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      Then you're comparing the sum total of the wealth of many of the richest families to that of one individual person. The fact that rich people have a lot of money is not really a recent development. But it's the focus on the super rich which is missing the thread. If housing prices go up, people at the 25th percentile lose and people at the 75th percentile gain. We see the loss for the people at the 25th percentile and recognize it as a problem, but then people are pretending like we can just take the money "back" from the Walton family even though that's not where most of it actually went. It went to home price appreciation for a bunch of middle aged and retired sociologists and car dealership managers and dental hygienists. If you want them to give it back so the poor aren't so poor then you have to recognize that and thereby identify who it is you really have to fight over that money.