4 ms·
If the top 0.1% of people own more wealth than the bottom 80%, then dividing it up would have a huge impact - not that I am proposing this anyway.
by pharmakom 5y ago
If the top 0.1% of people own more wealth than the bottom 80%, then dividing it up would have a huge impact - not that I am proposing this anyway.
- scatters 5y agoIt would certainly have an immediate impact in the short term, but in the longer term?
- mjburgess 5y agoThis is a net-worth calculation, not an income-based on. To see the flaw in this, note that if you liquidate all the wealth of the "top 0.1%" you can do that once, and no more. All the billionaires in the world hold enough assets all together to pay for c. 6mo of healthcare across the EU. So in that one-time liquidation, you get 6mo of one social service for one medium-sized continent. Sure, it's an impressive amount for a few thousand individuals to hold. More impressive, I'd say, is the net output of those few thousand individuals (ie., the 1000s of industrial bets they make which increases wealth for everyone over the long-run). Wealth statistics are often quoted to deliberately outrage the status-anxious; if it really were teh case that 0.1% of people could somehow fund lives for 80%, they'd be a revolution overnight.
- pharmakom 5y agoS&P 500 index averages 8% return per year so assets and income are not so easily separated.