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The ultra-rich are claiming an increasing share of global wealth
- black_13 11mo ago[dead]
- simianwords 11mo ago> Together, they now own three times more than the poorest half of humanity, or 2.8 billion adults. While the gap has stabilized since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has grown sharply over recent decades: Back in 1995, the 0.001% held "only" twice as much as the poorest half. Important context: here debt is counted as negative. This means a person with no debt but zero wealth also owns more wealth than bottom 20% or so cumulatively because the debts of people cancel out with others wealth. I think this is misleading.
- llbbdd 11mo agoSomehow I'm not inspired to believe that being misleading was a mistake, given the topic
- scotty79 11mo agoWhy is it misleading? Debt is negative wealth. Being indebted to the very rich puts you lower than people who at least have nothing. Would it be less misleading for you if they silently ignored bottom 20% of people?
- fragmede 11mo agoBecause of the lifestyle you can live while in debt. If you're driving expensive cars and living in nice houses and eating good food because you pay for it with a credit card, sure, you're in debt, but your life is better than someone that isn't using a credit card to pay for things. Are you going hungry? is the question.
- scotty79 11mo agoLife in debt is better for now. But it will be way worse in the future if things won't go your way and they most likely won't. There's plenty of people willing to indebt almost everybody, because it's profitable. They sell temporary life above means for future wage slavery. The question is, do your really believe loan sharks and other lenders are saviors of the poor? In absence of lenders the issue of poor people would need to be solved systemically. Instead the government abstains and lets poor sell themselves to the highest bidder. When it comes to calculating wealth in the context of social justice it's absolutely correct to count debt as negative.
- fragmede 11mo ago> do your really believe loan sharks and other lenders are aviors of the poor? How and what I believe society should be organized and who is good and bad has nothing to do with how society is. Debt is negative, but it's that you can't just smush the two numbers together and have a valid comparison. A pauper with $0 to their name, living on the streets, and a person living in a $1 million house with $1 million in debt are living two very different lives.
- bloqs 11mo agowhile debt might be well marketed as acceptable, I worry that you have allowed yourself to consider it not real: if someone is in debt to the bank for the majority of their homes value of 300k while earning 50k PA and then someone else pays 10k rent PA but earns 40k PA then the person on 40k is still wealthier
- lithocarpus 11mo agoNot quite - because the person with the 300k house still owns the house. They have a 300k asset and <300k in debt. (assuming house value didn't crash after they bought it.
- naveen99 11mo agoYes, people underwrite their own debt with their future labor. Economists don’t count this leverage on future labor as wealth for the poor but for some reason count it for the rich after renaming it to bonds.
- simianwords 11mo agoRich people having too much wealth is not necessarily that bad a thing because most of the investment is in productive companies. It’s not like they are using their wealth on frivolous consumption. Which means redistribution would only change who controls the investment and not the actual consumption patterns of people. Implication is that poor people will consume the same as before after redistribution with perhaps some extra assets. So nothing materially changes other than some security. Poor people will continue to consume the same as before. Bigger problem is it’s not so clear that redistribution is necessarily a good thing because I feel the people who made money are more likely to make better decisions on their own companies. I don’t know how companies would fare if for example Amazon were redistributed and run like some public company.
- hobs 11mo agoWhat is a yacht but frivolous consumption? A supercar? A private jet? Designer clothes? The list goes on for miles.
- simianwords 11mo agowhat percentage of billionaires wealth goes into consumption? take a guess.
- hobs 11mo agoWhat absolute value does? Percentages are a very weird way to look at it when people are starving. (also, tax them more)
- simianwords 11mo agoi'm willing to talk about absolute as well. lets try to understand how many lives can be saved if billionaires completely cut their frivolous spending. lets be clear that this has to be compared against how much wealth they brought for others and whether they could have done this if the incentive for personal spending did not exist. assuming billionaires spend .1% of their wealth on frivolous purchases - you would net a one time amount of around 20 billion dollars. you can't do anything with this let alone save poverty. if you could then you can simply ask the government to move 20 billion around. they have tried it and it doesn't work.
- renewiltord 11mo agoYeah and if you make US median income you’re in the top 0.3% of worldwide income. I don’t see all these people giving away to the bottom 99.7%, hahaha.
- harimau777 11mo agoI'm not sure that's actually all that relevant. Political power and social class are much more determined by the wealth distribution within a society than they are by the worldwide wealth distribution.
- parineum 11mo agoPolitical power and social class don't feed hungry people.
- aeternum 11mo agoOvereating now kills more people than hunger, it just flipped somewhat recently.
- s1mplicissimus 11mo agoYet both can be at alarmingly high rates at the same time, it's not like one cancels the other out
- renewiltord 11mo agoThis story is literally about global wealth.
- imtringued 11mo agoAnd you talked about income, not wealth. The problem is that your comment is simply not relevant.
- Libidinalecon 11mo ago
- throwaway77385 11mo agoThe question is where this will lead and what, if anything will, should or can be done to put the brakes on this wealth (re-)distribution. It feels as though over the last few decades, all we have seen is a continuing trend of increasing amounts of wealth being amassed by a smaller and smaller circle of people. What I find incredibly hard to judge is the point at which the current system leading to this will face violent reorganisation. We've had feudalism, communism and fascism (and even a few attempts at egalitarian democracies long before that), but they all failed. It is tempting to say they all failed because "they could have never worked". That's easy to say with hindsight. Once the current experiment implodes, will we all be armchair experts, scoffing at the idea that this could have ever worked also? And if so, why isn't anyone looking at the system and trying to change something? The other systems usually ended in world wars or violent revolution. Often the ruling class became too comfortable / belligerent, just to then be replaced by the same thing (but maybe with a bit of lag. See the 2nd world war's ending. The middle class thrived up until about the 70s/80s). Would feudalism have stayed if they'd had the levels of surveillance and AI-powered control we are currently facing? How about communism? Could a planned economy work if that is suddenly super-charged with computers and AI (and the necessary oppression to achieve it)? Capitalism mixed with strong safeguards ensuring that there is a return for productivity for everyone feels like the best attempt we've made at a system that works for everyone until all the safeguards began being dismantled in the 70s. Can we return to that system or is regulatory capture irreversible and therefore capitalism will always inevitably lead back to feudalism? And what can be done about it once AI and automation ensure the hegemony can't be touched anymore? I have no answers, only questions...
- general1465 11mo agoMassive taxation of ultra rich (50%+) after WW2 in USA
- samdoesnothing 11mo ago> Capitalism mixed with strong safeguards ensuring that there is a return for productivity for everyone feels like the best attempt we've made at a system that works for everyone until all the safeguards began being dismantled in the 70s. You mean when the US left the gold standard and began a 50 year period of inflationary money printing? That same inflation is a direct transfer of wealth to the asset class, and a hidden tax on the working class. > Can we return to that system Not directly. There is zero chance that the US can return to the gold standard, but they could lose their position as the world currency and be replaced by something that is resistant to inflation.
- AndrewThrowaway 11mo agoIf you take any ancient or not so ancient civilization or kingdom, all the wealth including land and people's lives belonged to king/imperator which was appointed by god or something like that. Isn't is exactly the same with the system we have now? The question we have to ask is about 99% of population of peasants who work 8h a day same as they did in Mesopotamia. Do they have a living standard, healthcare, possibility to have social bonds, possibility to retire. Basically all the things to have a life. If peasants are able to have all this, I really don't care if some King of ours has 20 trillion or 50 bazillion. In money or in gold.
- squigz 11mo agoWe don't live in those times anymore. Just because something was a certain way for most of history doesn't mean anything about how we should shape our future.
- oliwarner 11mo agoSo the past was shitty too? You don't care? Okay, well some of us do. Wealth grants power. Opinions from money matter gain greater reach and traction, and these very quickly turn into influence and power. The current US administration clearly shows how wielding power for your own ends gives you money. It's a toxic cycle that rewards grift instead of work. You don't care, but this is a serious problem for society because it's a negative aspiration. Don't be good, don't try hard, just be rich or die a peasant. But the peasants have limited appetites for gruel and work when all they see is grift and abuse. They revolted until old money stopped stopped demanding fealty. Will the new masters learn before we peasants eat the rich?
- temp8830 11mo agoPreach, brother! Because the ultra-rich surely weren't taking over the world under the previous administration!
- lithocarpus 11mo agoThis has been happening for a very long time. The current administration is just worse and/or more blatant about it than previous ones. So I agree with your sarcasm and I also agree with the parent comment that the current admin is doing a better job "clearly showing" how this works to everyone.
- ksec 11mo agoI wish we could ignore some of these what I think as Sensational Topics. In terms of wealth, distribution etc. There is only one question to be asked and solve which will fix 90% of the problem. Housing. I said this during UBI discussions, wealth distribution and the Anti-Big Tech and it is still not getting any attention. Anywhere between 400T to 700T in the world today are Real Estate Assets. The biggest and easier way to solve wealth distribution is allowing Real Estate or average house / home prices to slowly return to 1990s level. Or with 4-5x multiple of average yearly salary.