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Comment by ams6110 | Hacker News Reader

Well that's great. Give everyone an index fund when they are born; by the time they turn 18 they will have their basic income.

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Please don't post unsubstantive comments here. Especially on divisive topics, it's somewhere on the flamebait-troll vector and usually leads to worse.

Children already have different starting positions in the "race" from even before they are born from a variety of different factors but most factors are likely linked to the wealth of their parents (their education, their careers, how they value their children's education, the amount of money they spend on their children, the opportunities they have access to etc. etc. etc.).

Giving every child an index fund (which should probably start being accessible when they are teenagers and become fully accessible in late 20s) would only solve some of the broader problems beyond the article.

I also think it just isn't going happen because it effectively devalues the wealth of the wealthiest. It's like a wealth tax, right? Also, if everyone has 100-10000K it probably doesn't mean the same thing it means now. The general problem, as stated in the article, is the distribution of wealth - but the wealthy want to stay wealthy not be equally wealthy.

Norway successfully implemented a sovereign wealth fund - currently work nearly 200k per citizen - on the back of their finite natural resources (oil), and I think that is the model that the UK (my country) should have followed. Otherwise, the sources of the funds is likely to be more direct taxation which doesn't seem likely to actually happen.

Are you only interested in Norway and the U.K., or do you not see a likely fallacy of composition here?

I selected a successful example of an attempt at a sovereign wealth fund (in fact the only example that I know), and an example of a country that chose not to implement a sovereign wealth fund despite being the same situation. I'm not entirely sure if the examples I chose constitute a fallacy. I was merely suggesting one approach that could work for some countries to establish equal funds for their citizens. Some countries may not have access to abundant raw resources though.

> I think that is the model that the UK (my country) should have followed.

I agree, but we do have to remember that Norway had roughly the same amount of oil as us, but a tenth of the population.

Who are you suggesting will be giving all these babies index funds, and with what investment?

This sounds a lot like the idea of a social wealth fund: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/opinion/inequality-soc...

That would work if people saved money, but they've been taught to spend rather than save. Most people believe that if they earn $1 they must spend that $1 as soon as possible.

What about teaching people to save then instead?

The boring simple solutions don't garner much attention. People want magic pills or cool tech.

Doesn't really solve the problem because people will just sell their shares in the fund to buy whatever they want as soon as they can.

But it doesn't work like that.

Where are you going to get the funds you "give" to the children?

There is no free lunch.

Funny, slightly related, idea: With today's high rate of investment in the stock market, and specifically the rise of index funds, the US may have achieved something closer to socialism than any of history's self-professed "socialist" nations.

Much more of the stock market than you think is owned by overseas investors.

Most of the stock market is owned by institutional funds and people who are already quite wealthy.

First, there’s a bit of a myth that through indirect holdings, like holdings of stock in a pension fund, the stock market has become democratized, and everyone’s all in. Not so. Wolff’s data shows that while stock ownership has increased over the past few decades, in 2013 (his most recent data point), less than half — 46 percent — of households owned stocks, either directly or through their holdings in some sort of fund (e.g., a retirement account). Contrast that with the 94 percent ownership rate of the top 1 percent.
But even that 46 percent ownership rate gets misunderstood, because it doesn’t differentiate how much stock is owned by different income classes. Less than a third of all households hold at least $10,000 in stocks, compared to 93 percent of those households in the top 1 percent.

The figures below show that, since the late 1980s, about 80 percent of the value of the market has been held by the top 10 percent. Within that top 10 percent, the share of stock wealth held by the top 1 percent is about equal to the share held by the 90-99th percentiles; both groups’ shares are twice as large as the share that the entire bottom 90 percent holds.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/02/...

I find that figure exceedingly hard to believe was calculated correctly. Pension funds alone for civil servants (defined benefits, not retirement accounts,) are significantly invested in stock equities, which is a significant portion of households working and retired. Add in 401Ks, IRAs, and discount the undocumented in the workforce I would be shocked if it was not at least 75%.

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