Do you know that 8 people in the world have as much wealth as 3.6 BILLION people. That inequality is STAGGERING.
Where do you think the problem lies?
Where do you think the problem lies?
So, I'm going to guess the problem may lie somewhere other than with eight really rich people. But we don't really need to do the math on this one, do we? It doesn't even pass the sniff test - "these eight people are LITERALLY THE WORST" is just far too uncomplicated a proposition to accurately reflect the reality of a human world which, though many things, is never simple.
Thats just the top 8 people...Take the sum of the rest of the the global 1% or even 10% and do your math...
OH nm, the math has already been done.
280 trillion in global wealth / 6 billion people = 46k per person
And the top 10% has 86% percent of it, and the inequality is just growing exponentially.
I'm not advocating that wealth should be equally distributed OR that capitalism is all bad..however, that in-equality is STAGGERING....unregulated capitalism with no income redistribution is a one way ticket to a third world PLANET.
https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/articles/news-and...
What I see is that Wal-Mart makes a ton of money and their employees have to be on food stamps and still work 80 hour weeks while the owners reap all of the profit.
To me this is simply unregulated capitalism which nowdays has become thinly masked slavery.
Well, considering that financial and monetary policies are aimed at deregulation, and that financialization of the economy in developed countries is a thing, it would appear that unregulated capitalism is precisely what is causing massive inequality.
Um, why? Because you're one of the lucky few to whom $165 is not a significant sum of money?
Paul Graham has an essay about this error, how people thinks that there's a fixed amount of money. Once you understand that wealth is created and how, you can't talk like that with a straight face.
He fails to even begin to discuss capital, return on capital, and capital ownership as drivers in economic inequality. Basically it feels like a piece written by a smart guy who has no idea what he's talking about but feels emboldened because "economists are all idiots".
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/we...
> a $150 cash grant to poor women in the northern part of [Uganda] doubled their earnings within a year, while one-off $382 transfers to 16- to 35-year-olds were associated with 40-percent higher earnings four years later.
i'm not saying we should do it, but your analysis doesn't account for any knock on effects, and so is itself far too simple.
When in fact top 10% richest helped much more people along the way than all average combined. And the consequence is being rich.
Instead of complaining about inequality (aka making the rich poorer), better to think about how to make the poor richer.
That's complete bullshit. That's maybe how you wish things were. But it's not. I'm in the top 10%, and I've done nothing for it other than having been born in a wealthy country to middle-class parents, with my every need attended to by society. Had I been born somewhere else, I certainly would not be successful as I am now. Instead of being a physicist, maybe I would be boxing cheap plastic gadgets in a factory in Asia. I was born into the top rung on the current global economic arrangement, instead of on the bottom.
To put it this way: if hard work led to wealth every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.
In fact the top 10% keep the statu quo as it is because it benefits them. It benefits them that global economy is arranged in such a way that they are in the center, reaping the benefits of it, and keeping the "periphery" down and in their place, feeding them and their high standard of living. This means everything from stacking "democratic" governments with plutocratic cronies, to simply being a middle-class voter interested in maintaining things just as they are.
If you look at the instantaneous\* derivative, it's not the fact that you owe the federal government $2M for that MD that counts but rather your monthly obligation. Debt doesn't matter, required repayment per unit of time does - so almost like cash-basis accounting.
Finding a $100 on the street or borrowing $100 from a friend are the same in terms of their addition to your instantaneous wealth, it's the fact that one needs to be repaid that detracts from your "actual" wealth, and the repayment period matters. Compare the lifestyle of two neighbors working at the same institution making the same amount of money that each took out $500k mortgages to buy their identical houses, only one took it out for 15 years and the other for 30. On day 1, they both take the same hit to their net worth, but that doesn't change their wealth derivative in and of itself, it's the rate of paying it back that you should be counting.
That explains why one college educated individual can get a loan for $1000 from the bank and at time 0 they are, under this metric, better off than someone that needed to hit up a payday loans place for the same loan but at a higher interest rate. They both "earned" the same amount of money, and may even "spend" it on the same thing at the same rate, but when you take the repayment period into account (let's say 1 year vs 2 weeks, respectively) you can see why the graduate student is measurably better off.
Just like stocks you hold aren't actually contributing to your day-to-day wealth (and as such aren't taxed) but it's when you cash out that you've either made or lost money.
\* let's define an "instant" as a month, just to make things easier.
Yes, and (ideally) currency in an economy is a liquid representation of value. A college degree translates (after accounting for inefficiencies) to higher income potential, more efficient spending, etc.
EDIT: typo, "liquid representation of value," not "wealth"
In this respect, having debt is a positive sign, because banks evaluate loans based on expected ability to repay, i.e. future income streams.
This. This is the root of the issue in its entirety. As a civilized species (civilized in the sense that we "have" civilization) we should ban as a practice and ostracize those that propone the privatization of capital gains and the socialization of capital losses. Period. The figure posted by parent speaks volumes of the flaws of the currently dominant economic paradigm.
I hate to get too tangential and throw shade in a generically, but I've always felt like those of us that aspire to be millionaires, etc., are doing it wrong.