5 ms·

Any article about wealth that does not put age at the center is garbage.

by dfadsadsf 5y ago

refurb 5y ago
Angry that old people have more time to accumulate wealth! Government needs to step in and fix that!
- coldtea 5y ago
  Old people have the most unequal (between them) share of overall wealth than ever before. Yay, free market!
  - refurb 5y ago
    Compared to later generations, they don’t actually!
lumost 5y ago
This is a distraction. Elon Musk has more wealth than a person who saved 1 MM per year for 300,000 years. While an old person is likely to have 20x the saved income of their younger year's - wealth inequality is driven by capital holders amassing more capital and in turn passing it on via inheritance.
- flavius29663 5y ago
  What's wrong with Elon Musk? He deserves it! He single handedly brought forward the EV revolution by at least 1 decade, maybe more. He improved the car emissions more than governments worldwide were not able to do for decades before him. EU made it significantly worse by betting on the wrong horse (diesel) and then pushing very hard on it and giving cancer to its citizens. Bill Gates put a computer in every home Steve Jobs put a smartphone in every hand (for better or worse) Bezos revolutionized online shopping AND cloud computing. Why wouldn't these people be billionaires? Governments could never achieve this kind of progress, they are too bureaucratic, corrupt and incompetent. Take away the billionaires' money now, and you will stop the next big innovation.
  - gaze 5y ago
    Do you really think Elon Musk provides orders of magnitude more value than the engineers who actually built the damn thing? His main contribution was the capital.
    - Grustaf 5y ago
      Of course a leader provides tens or hundreds of times the value of a follower, what an absurd question. But that doesn't mean it's reasonable that he collects 10000 times more of the value. There is so functional difference between having 1 or 10 billion, except the amount of undue influence you can have on politics.
      - s1artibartfast 5y ago
        When the form of wealth is stock, the functional difference between having 1 or XX billion is corporate control of the company.
        Grustaf 5y ago
        If your point is that it's important for founders to keep control, then sure, but you can have different classes of shares. Founders can stay in control of their companies without making tens of billions.
        s1artibartfast 5y ago
        In the US, I guess this is true, although non-voting/low voting shares are illegal in many parts of the world.
      - OldTimeCoffee 5y ago
        >Of course a leader provides tens or hundreds of times the value of a follower, what an absurd question. Why is this of course? If it weren't for the followers the leader would have nothing except hot air. The real value is in the followers, it's just distributed over larger numbers. Maybe I'm missing something, but someone actually has to do the work and it's not normally the "leaders"... There are a lot of small businesses getting a really hard education in this right now.
KptMarchewa 5y ago
When you do that, you'll find that people at 25-35 , XX years ago, held significantly higher share of total wealth than now.
- finiteseries 5y ago
  Will I also find something that actually vaguely resembles a population pyramid instead of 2020’s squeezed tube of toothpaste? i.e. proportionally more 25-35 year olds & infinitely fewer 35+? https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/1990/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/1...
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    You can try 1960. Less 25-35 year olds, more 50+ than in 1990, and way more kids. https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/1960/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/1...

Any article about wealth that does not put age at the center is garbage.

refurb 5y ago

Angry that old people have more time to accumulate wealth! Government needs to step in and fix that!

coldtea 5y ago
Old people have the most unequal (between them) share of overall wealth than ever before. Yay, free market!
- refurb 5y ago
  Compared to later generations, they don’t actually!

lumost 5y ago

This is a distraction. Elon Musk has more wealth than a person who saved 1 MM per year for 300,000 years. While an old person is likely to have 20x the saved income of their younger year's - wealth inequality is driven by capital holders amassing more capital and in turn passing it on via inheritance.

flavius29663 5y ago
What's wrong with Elon Musk? He deserves it! He single handedly brought forward the EV revolution by at least 1 decade, maybe more. He improved the car emissions more than governments worldwide were not able to do for decades before him. EU made it significantly worse by betting on the wrong horse (diesel) and then pushing very hard on it and giving cancer to its citizens. Bill Gates put a computer in every home Steve Jobs put a smartphone in every hand (for better or worse) Bezos revolutionized online shopping AND cloud computing. Why wouldn't these people be billionaires? Governments could never achieve this kind of progress, they are too bureaucratic, corrupt and incompetent. Take away the billionaires' money now, and you will stop the next big innovation.
- gaze 5y ago
  Do you really think Elon Musk provides orders of magnitude more value than the engineers who actually built the damn thing? His main contribution was the capital.
  - Grustaf 5y ago
    Of course a leader provides tens or hundreds of times the value of a follower, what an absurd question. But that doesn't mean it's reasonable that he collects 10000 times more of the value. There is so functional difference between having 1 or 10 billion, except the amount of undue influence you can have on politics.
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      When the form of wealth is stock, the functional difference between having 1 or XX billion is corporate control of the company.
      - Grustaf 5y ago
        If your point is that it's important for founders to keep control, then sure, but you can have different classes of shares. Founders can stay in control of their companies without making tens of billions.
        s1artibartfast 5y ago
        In the US, I guess this is true, although non-voting/low voting shares are illegal in many parts of the world.
    - OldTimeCoffee 5y ago
      >Of course a leader provides tens or hundreds of times the value of a follower, what an absurd question. Why is this of course? If it weren't for the followers the leader would have nothing except hot air. The real value is in the followers, it's just distributed over larger numbers. Maybe I'm missing something, but someone actually has to do the work and it's not normally the "leaders"... There are a lot of small businesses getting a really hard education in this right now.

KptMarchewa 5y ago

When you do that, you'll find that people at 25-35 , XX years ago, held significantly higher share of total wealth than now.

finiteseries 5y ago
Will I also find something that actually vaguely resembles a population pyramid instead of 2020’s squeezed tube of toothpaste? i.e. proportionally more 25-35 year olds & infinitely fewer 35+? https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/1990/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/1...
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  You can try 1960. Less 25-35 year olds, more 50+ than in 1990, and way more kids. https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/1960/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/1...