> If the rich have very little money and the poor have most of it, why are they poor? There are a lot more poor people than there are rich people. Collectively

> If the rich have very little money and the poor have most of it, why are they poor? There are a lot more poor people than there are rich people. Collectively they have most of the cash, but no one individual has very much. More importantly, though, one's wealth is not dictated by the amount of cash one owns. If you're rich and in need of cash you have plenty of assets you can trade for it. If you're poor then cash makes up a larger portion of your assets, and the part that isn't cash (your home, car, etc.) is both non-liquid and painful to part with. The first bit, incidentally, is part of the reason why redistribution doesn't help: there are a lot fewer rich than there are poor, and even if you seized all the assets of the rich and spread them around it wouldn't add up to much on an individual basis. (And then secondary effects kick in: production capacity collapses due to consuming capital, prices skyrocket, etc.) And then you have the fact that the rich end up rich as a result of various combinations of preferences, habits, and connections which distinguish them from the general population—not merely their bank accounts—and since those underlying factors shaping the flow of wealth aren't likely to change you'll soon end up back where you started.