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Every time I read stuff about the 1% and income inequality I always think about the same exact logic that you outlined here. Splitting up the wealth of the top

Every time I read stuff about the 1% and income inequality I always think about the same exact logic that you outlined here. Splitting up the wealth of the top 1% and giving it to everyone else doesn't even make much of a dramatic difference to them. I agree there are stats that show CEO pay is at an all time high. Minimum wage adjusted for inflation is not as high as it once was either. I also think we have to solve this problem by creating better and better jobs. Paying the high school kid who takes movie tickets in Seattle a $15 an hour minimum wage is not the long term solution. We need more well paying skilled jobs.

notahacker 11y ago
> Splitting up the wealth of the top 1% and giving it to everyone else doesn't even make much of a dramatic difference to them. If it was remotely feasible to confiscate the wealth of the top 1% and redistribute it, there would be enough nominal value to double the net worth (or halve the net debt) of the remaining 99% of people. That seems like a pretty dramatic difference to me. I agree there's a long list of reasons why we shouldn't attempt this, but top 1% don't actually have much to share around isn't one of them.
- graycat 11y ago
  I made a crude, "generous", estimate based on the 1000 richest and picked 1000 mostly because I was able to get the Forbes 400 data easily. For your 1%, we'd need some data on how much money they have. Do you have some data for us?
- graycat 11y ago
  Or, take a 1% person and assume they have $100 million and we redistribute all of it. Then we would be giving that to the other 99 people, call it 100, i.e., include the (formerly) 1% person. Then each person would get $1 million, once. But for the middle class, really want a job at $100,000 a year for 40 years, that is, $4 million. So the $1 million is only 25% of the way there. For the poor people, we still need to find the other 75%, that is, $3 million.

notahacker 11y ago

> Splitting up the wealth of the top 1% and giving it to everyone else doesn't even make much of a dramatic difference to them. If it was remotely feasible to confiscate the wealth of the top 1% and redistribute it, there would be enough nominal value to double the net worth (or halve the net debt) of the remaining 99% of people. That seems like a pretty dramatic difference to me. I agree there's a long list of reasons why we shouldn't attempt this, but top 1% don't actually have much to share around isn't one of them.

graycat 11y ago
I made a crude, "generous", estimate based on the 1000 richest and picked 1000 mostly because I was able to get the Forbes 400 data easily. For your 1%, we'd need some data on how much money they have. Do you have some data for us?
graycat 11y ago
Or, take a 1% person and assume they have $100 million and we redistribute all of it. Then we would be giving that to the other 99 people, call it 100, i.e., include the (formerly) 1% person. Then each person would get $1 million, once. But for the middle class, really want a job at $100,000 a year for 40 years, that is, $4 million. So the $1 million is only 25% of the way there. For the poor people, we still need to find the other 75%, that is, $3 million.