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>Most of the poor have no wealth in the first place. Plenty of the poor actively destroy value, see the sanitation nightmares that are homeless encampments in

>Most of the poor have no wealth in the first place. Plenty of the poor actively destroy value, see the sanitation nightmares that are homeless encampments in the Seattle area. And the rest of the poor don't produce life sustaining value. Wealth transfers in the US are exclusively from the middle class and wealthy to the poor. To say otherwise is simple demagoguery.

dang 7y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. We're trying to avoid that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
fzeroracer 7y ago
This is nonsense and ignores that the rich and wealthy can actively destroy value on a far more massive scale. The damage fracking has done to the environment for example is far more than any homeless encampment and that's just one example. Most of the wealth from the poor is stolen through increasing rent seeking behaviors from landlords, insurance companies and lobbying. I could speak at length the ways banks organized things as to punish the poor by organizing deposits to occur after transactions so that they can charge overdraft fees or insurance companies deciding not to cover you because of pre-existing conditions.
- wang_li 7y ago
  >Most of the wealth from the poor is stolen through increasing rent seeking behaviors from landlords, insurance companies and lobbying. I could speak at length the ways banks organized things as to punish the poor by organizing deposits to occur after transactions so that they can charge overdraft fees or insurance companies deciding not to cover you because of pre-existing conditions. You could go on at length about that stuff, but you'd mostly be wrong. Don't write checks unless the money is in the account to cover the check. Pre-existing conditions don't work like that. Ultimately, if it costs $18000/year for a person to live and they only earn $15000/year then they are short $3000 and that money comes from the middle class and wealthy. When you factor in all government services and transfers this is what happens to over 60% of the country. It is objective reality that the lifestyles of the bottom 60% are subsidized by the top 40% of tax payers. https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/51361-householdincomefedtaxesonecol.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-...
  - boomlinde 7y ago
    > It is objective reality that the lifestyles of the bottom 60% are subsidized by the top 40% of tax payers. You could turn the tables and say that the lower and middle classes subsidize employment terms that are favorable to the wealthy. To tax the top 40% because some subset of the top 40% can't pay the bottom 60% a living wage is just a way for the wealthy to extract further wealth from the middle class. I'd say that both perspectives are valid ways to look at it, and won't pretend that either of them is "objective reality", but with a growing wealth gap it seems obvious to me who benefits most from this system.
  - fzeroracer 7y ago
    No, I'd be right and if you're going to dismiss me, you should at least prove you're actually educated in the topic. Chase has had to settle class action lawsuits due to the predatory way they handled overdraft fees [1] so don't feed me that bullshit. It was something I personally experienced and saw my parents struggle through due to the way they were paid and Chases scummy behavior. As for pre-existing conditions that is literally how they worked before and is something that insurance companies constant lobby to go back to. Because when my mother had her stroke her insurance denied her immediately because they determined the stroke was somehow a pre-existing condition. And ultimately your logic is incredibly flawed because profits and productivity has gone up while pay for the workers has not kept up. This isn't wealth transfer, this is the rich deciding to underpay their workers to the point that they can't survive working for them, which then gets billed to the government. Your logic also offers zero explanation why wealth is concentrating towards the wealthy because wealth transfer would imply that, you know, it's actually going to the poor people. [1] https://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/chase-agrees-to-settle-lawsuit-on-overdraft-fees https://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/chase-agrees-to-s...
    - wang_li 7y ago
      I don't see why you think I'm not educated on the topic. I, at least, can discern what's relevant to the question of which way wealth is transferred. I am aware of the complaints about how banks process transactions in and out of customer accounts. It's a moot point for two reasons. First, the complaint boils down to whether a bank making a checking account available is also an agreement to extend small value, short term loans to people. If you don't try to float checks then you will not be hit with overdraft fees. It's as simple as that. Second, it's irrelevant where someone spends their money. If someone doesn't earn more than it costs to maintain their lifestyle their spending habits only impact how much they get from others, not how wealthy they are. As far as preexisting conditions go, denial of coverage on that basis has been illegal for ten years. The only reason to bring it up is because you want to prompt an emotional response from people who are ignorant. Profits and productivity are, again, irrelevant. If the question is "Which way does wealth transfer?" The answer is simple to discern and simply requires that we know how much it costs to survive and how much a person earns. We know both of this things on average nationally and wealth is transferred from the top 40% to the bottom 60%. I linked to the government report that demonstrates this. As far as this unrelated statement goes: >Your logic also offers zero explanation why wealth is concentrating towards the wealthy because wealth transfer would imply that, you know, it's actually going to the poor people. Someone can create $1000/year in value, and another person comes up short by $300/year in survival. The first person transfers wealth down to the second person while still becoming wealthier. This is pretty basic stuff.
Rapzid 7y ago
And yet 1% of the worlds population owns half of the worlds wealth.. EDIT: And 40% of the wealth in the USA as of 2017.

dang 7y ago

Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. We're trying to avoid that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

fzeroracer 7y ago

This is nonsense and ignores that the rich and wealthy can actively destroy value on a far more massive scale. The damage fracking has done to the environment for example is far more than any homeless encampment and that's just one example. Most of the wealth from the poor is stolen through increasing rent seeking behaviors from landlords, insurance companies and lobbying. I could speak at length the ways banks organized things as to punish the poor by organizing deposits to occur after transactions so that they can charge overdraft fees or insurance companies deciding not to cover you because of pre-existing conditions.

wang_li 7y ago
>Most of the wealth from the poor is stolen through increasing rent seeking behaviors from landlords, insurance companies and lobbying. I could speak at length the ways banks organized things as to punish the poor by organizing deposits to occur after transactions so that they can charge overdraft fees or insurance companies deciding not to cover you because of pre-existing conditions. You could go on at length about that stuff, but you'd mostly be wrong. Don't write checks unless the money is in the account to cover the check. Pre-existing conditions don't work like that. Ultimately, if it costs $18000/year for a person to live and they only earn $15000/year then they are short $3000 and that money comes from the middle class and wealthy. When you factor in all government services and transfers this is what happens to over 60% of the country. It is objective reality that the lifestyles of the bottom 60% are subsidized by the top 40% of tax payers. https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/51361-householdincomefedtaxesonecol.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-...
- boomlinde 7y ago
  > It is objective reality that the lifestyles of the bottom 60% are subsidized by the top 40% of tax payers. You could turn the tables and say that the lower and middle classes subsidize employment terms that are favorable to the wealthy. To tax the top 40% because some subset of the top 40% can't pay the bottom 60% a living wage is just a way for the wealthy to extract further wealth from the middle class. I'd say that both perspectives are valid ways to look at it, and won't pretend that either of them is "objective reality", but with a growing wealth gap it seems obvious to me who benefits most from this system.
- fzeroracer 7y ago
  No, I'd be right and if you're going to dismiss me, you should at least prove you're actually educated in the topic. Chase has had to settle class action lawsuits due to the predatory way they handled overdraft fees [1] so don't feed me that bullshit. It was something I personally experienced and saw my parents struggle through due to the way they were paid and Chases scummy behavior. As for pre-existing conditions that is literally how they worked before and is something that insurance companies constant lobby to go back to. Because when my mother had her stroke her insurance denied her immediately because they determined the stroke was somehow a pre-existing condition. And ultimately your logic is incredibly flawed because profits and productivity has gone up while pay for the workers has not kept up. This isn't wealth transfer, this is the rich deciding to underpay their workers to the point that they can't survive working for them, which then gets billed to the government. Your logic also offers zero explanation why wealth is concentrating towards the wealthy because wealth transfer would imply that, you know, it's actually going to the poor people. [1] https://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/chase-agrees-to-settle-lawsuit-on-overdraft-fees https://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/chase-agrees-to-s...
  - wang_li 7y ago
    I don't see why you think I'm not educated on the topic. I, at least, can discern what's relevant to the question of which way wealth is transferred. I am aware of the complaints about how banks process transactions in and out of customer accounts. It's a moot point for two reasons. First, the complaint boils down to whether a bank making a checking account available is also an agreement to extend small value, short term loans to people. If you don't try to float checks then you will not be hit with overdraft fees. It's as simple as that. Second, it's irrelevant where someone spends their money. If someone doesn't earn more than it costs to maintain their lifestyle their spending habits only impact how much they get from others, not how wealthy they are. As far as preexisting conditions go, denial of coverage on that basis has been illegal for ten years. The only reason to bring it up is because you want to prompt an emotional response from people who are ignorant. Profits and productivity are, again, irrelevant. If the question is "Which way does wealth transfer?" The answer is simple to discern and simply requires that we know how much it costs to survive and how much a person earns. We know both of this things on average nationally and wealth is transferred from the top 40% to the bottom 60%. I linked to the government report that demonstrates this. As far as this unrelated statement goes: >Your logic also offers zero explanation why wealth is concentrating towards the wealthy because wealth transfer would imply that, you know, it's actually going to the poor people. Someone can create $1000/year in value, and another person comes up short by $300/year in survival. The first person transfers wealth down to the second person while still becoming wealthier. This is pretty basic stuff.

Rapzid 7y ago

And yet 1% of the worlds population owns half of the worlds wealth.. EDIT: And 40% of the wealth in the USA as of 2017.