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The point is that would be more and better houses and other things that would benefit more people if some of that net worth were redirected toward building them

The point is that would be more and better houses and other things that would benefit more people if some of that net worth were redirected toward building them.

jonfw 6y ago
We are already getting more and better houses, and at a very rapid pace, under our current economic climate (the one where the 1% has so much of the financial wealth) - https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-living-space-per-person-has-nearly-doubled/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-s...
nybble41 6y ago
That net worth is already pretty much 100% directed toward building these things. The net worth of the "1%" is paper wealth—capital investments in various companies, for the most part. It belongs to them but they use it to make things to sell to other people and then invest the resulting profits in even more capital. If you want a more meaningful comparison, try investigating personal consumption expenditures for each income group. I'm sure consumption is higher per-capita among the "1%" but I'd be very surprised if the total were over, say, 10% of all PCEs.
makomk 6y ago
In a sense it already is. The ultra-wealthy own and run the businesses which supply everyone else with all those things, and their wealth is largely just the nominal paper value of a whole bunch of successful attempts to supply society with things. What doesn't and cannot happen is redirecting their wealth in the sense that a lot of the American left imagine, where we can just take their billions and turn them into billions of dollars of healthcare or housing or anything else that would benefit the less wealthy. The reason this isn't possible is that their wealth doesn't represent actual resources they're claiming. When we say that someone like Jeff Bezos is worth $150 billion dollars, that doesn't mean they're personally using $150 billion dollars worth of land, materials, equipment, people's time, etc that can be redirected into houses or healthcare, whereas someone who buys a $200 TV is making use of something like that amount of actual resources that cannot be used for anything else. Houses and healthcare need land, materials, and lots of workers' time, which then cannot be used for other things, and it fundamentally has to be the people who'd have those other things who ultimately pay for this.

The point is that would be more and better houses and other things that would benefit more people if some of that net worth were redirected toward building them.

jonfw 6y ago

We are already getting more and better houses, and at a very rapid pace, under our current economic climate (the one where the 1% has so much of the financial wealth) - https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-living-space-per-person-has-nearly-doubled/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-s...

nybble41 6y ago

That net worth is already pretty much 100% directed toward building these things. The net worth of the "1%" is paper wealth—capital investments in various companies, for the most part. It belongs to them but they use it to make things to sell to other people and then invest the resulting profits in even more capital. If you want a more meaningful comparison, try investigating personal consumption expenditures for each income group. I'm sure consumption is higher per-capita among the "1%" but I'd be very surprised if the total were over, say, 10% of all PCEs.

makomk 6y ago

In a sense it already is. The ultra-wealthy own and run the businesses which supply everyone else with all those things, and their wealth is largely just the nominal paper value of a whole bunch of successful attempts to supply society with things. What doesn't and cannot happen is redirecting their wealth in the sense that a lot of the American left imagine, where we can just take their billions and turn them into billions of dollars of healthcare or housing or anything else that would benefit the less wealthy. The reason this isn't possible is that their wealth doesn't represent actual resources they're claiming. When we say that someone like Jeff Bezos is worth $150 billion dollars, that doesn't mean they're personally using $150 billion dollars worth of land, materials, equipment, people's time, etc that can be redirected into houses or healthcare, whereas someone who buys a $200 TV is making use of something like that amount of actual resources that cannot be used for anything else. Houses and healthcare need land, materials, and lots of workers' time, which then cannot be used for other things, and it fundamentally has to be the people who'd have those other things who ultimately pay for this.