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Comment by loorinm | Hacker News Reader

The boots is just the beginning. Through financial products, the rich actually get paid simply for having money, while the banks charge fees to customers simply for being poor.

Banks charging customers simply for being pior is just the tip of the iceberg of how our society is designed to increase the stratification of rich and poor.

The more you already have, the more you can make money just by having more than other people. It’s exponential increases on returns the richer you get.

The poorer you get the harder it is to make even slight progress toward bettering your situation.

But we as “normal people” are to blame for this. We all agree to play by the rules of a few mentally ill sociopaths and that’s really on us.

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> But we as “normal people” are to blame for this. We all agree to play by the rules of a few mentally ill sociopaths and that’s really on us.

That it's true.

But I've also seen in a lot of countries poor people voting for policies which will actually make them poorer.

Poor people arguing against universal health care. Arguing against taxes for the rich and regulation.

Typically because they are tricked to fight against other poor people (other religions, other ethnicities, other backgrounds)

I know it is easy to assume that people are tricked. Perhaps the obvious alternative is that they are evil. If you want to understand these people, consider that they instead have different values which do not derive from a fight against other poor people.

People will vote against government benefits for many reasons, even if at first glance it seems to hurt them.

One reason is self-respect. Many of these voters feel terrible if they are getting government help. They might feel a need to take it if offered, but also feel that it isn't right. It can feel like stealing and it can feel like being treated as a child. Some people value independence and do not want to be tempted with dependence.

Another reason is a concern for the economy. If a bit of welfare is good, then lots of welfare must be extra-good... but then nobody works (except under treat of arrest) and you have an economy like that of Venezuela. So if that is what we'd get, voting to go the other way is the safer choice.

Some people feel a religious opposition to taxing the wealthy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology

> One reason is self-respect. Many of these voters feel terrible if they are getting government help. They might feel a need to take it if offered, but also feel that it isn't right. It can feel like stealing and it can feel like being treated as a child. Some people value independence and do not want to be tempted with dependence.

Which is a perfect example of what people have been tricked to believe and then it got repeated as often as possible to make sure it gets burned into peoples brain to make them believe "that's just the way I am"

"r > g" -- Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st centuary

If the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the growth rate of the economy (g), then you almost inevitably get an increasing concentration of wealth. That being poor actually costs money is just icing on the cake.

And if I remember r is always greater than g, except for around WWI and WWII. The rich will always get richer, short of anything like destroying and rebuilding the entire country.

> Through financial products, the rich actually get paid simply for having money, while the banks charge fees to customers simply for being poor.

Concise explanation of the absurdity

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