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> The billionaires really, really want you to perceive this distinction as a real inequality problem. When people making $30K are resenting/fighting people maki
by nwiswell 3y ago
> The billionaires really, really want you to perceive this distinction as a real inequality problem. When people making $30K are resenting/fighting people making $300K, the people making $300M are sitting back and laughing.
But that is inequality, too.
Just as a thought experiment, if you were to take the global GDP and spread it perfectly evenly over every person on the planet, you'd have less than $13k per capita. That's around half of the income per capita in Hammond.
I think there's a perception that there's this massive hoard of wealth at the very top, and if only we could distribute it more fairly, we could solve a bevy of social ills. It's not that simple.
It's absolutely true that there are some unbelievably wealthy people, but they are also small in number. If you were to magically disgorge, say, every American with $50M+ of 90% of their wealth, you'd be lucky to be able to use the proceeds to raise all the Hammonds to the living standards of all the Boca Ratons, which as far as you're concerned here, does not really change their lifestyles.
Honestly I'm much more disgusted that billionaires exist while there are infants dying of malnutrition than I am disgusted that billionaires exist while there's people worried about their kids and their retirement. Those sorts of things are really unavoidable as long as we're grappling with scarcity.
- bix6 3y agoI’m disgusted that there are 5-10,000 luxury yachts in the world while infants are dying of malnutrition and people have to worry about feeding their kids while attempting to save for retirement on salaries that have hardly moved for anyone except a few fortunate elites since the 80s.
- nwiswell 3y ago> on salaries that have hardly moved for anyone except a few fortunate elites since the 80s. I assume you're talking about salaries in the USA, and this is largely because global salaries have risen to take more of their fair share of the pie. At the same time, this has put a lot of pressure on US labor. The postwar period from 1945 to around 1980 in the USA was historically aberrant. In 1970, the USA's share of global GDP was 38%. In 2023 it was around 15.5%. Globally, living standards have skyrocketed since the 80s. https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit...