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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

"Person With 72 Billion Dollars Wonders Why Nobody Else Has Any Money"

"When I was poor and complained about inequality they said I was bitter; now that I'm rich and I complain about inequality they say I'm a hypocrite. I'm beginning to think they just don't want to talk about inequality."

-Russell Brand

That's a stupid thing to say. If you are rich you can do something about inequality right now by paying the people that work for you better. There is no need to talk about it.

This is a fallacy. No one person can solve income inequality, nor should they be required to play by different rules just because they support changes which would enable it. It’s just like when people say “if you think taxes should be higher to pay for government programs, then send extra money to the IRS yourself”

You are making a good point. I made the comment because I have heard several time from people who worked for rich "liberal" celebrities in LA that often these people are extremely stingy and want to pay extremely low rate. I know someone who got stiffed by a celebrity who is publicly known for a lot of charity work

In the big picture Russell Brand can't change the world but it would be good if he did pay people working for him well. Same for Facebook. They could pay their service workers better and do a lot of good that way.

In the end I think doing more studies is just a smokescreen for not doing anything.

well, the difference being in your example, is that the extra money goes into the black box of the government. whereas a CEO increasing wages for his employees will be directly evident in their improved lives. there's no bureaucracy tying up funds there.

"Person with Data on 3/5 Adults in America gives Access to University Professor"

"University Professor who analyzed plenty of data about people produces a convincing causes/effects analysis and hands it to political establishment"

“Political establishment continues to ignore provided data.”

"The end". Literally.

And the cause effect is something that: 1) you can't act on or 2) too many taxes or ...

Which is why I put random fake data into the fields on all my Facebook profile data. Facebook isn't the government after all.

It's not like he took those $72 billion from poor people. He created wealth that wouldn't have existed with him. This is the basic principle for how economies grow.

Sorry, where did the $72B come from then? Pretty sure it came from other people, generally people who had less money than he did.

You should do some reading on the monetary system. It isn't as simple as you seem to think.

I don't think it's simple. That's why I'm asking.

He started a business with 100% ownership and traded it away bit by bit for cash from investors and compensation for employees all in mutually agreed exchanges. Meanwhile, this business also started selling advertisements in mutually agreed exchanges which turned out to be very lucrative. After years of doing this, his business has now become wildly lucrative and the average investor would pay 72B for the shares that he has left (which will pay out the future returns of his lucrative company).

Facebook has been sued for click fraud, illegal ad targeting, underpaying employees, and privacy violations. They've been criminally charged with misleading regulators and for other privacy violations. I don't know if the majority of the market share was gained with underhanded and illegal tactics but some of it was.

"At the same time, the billionaire Facebook CEO . . . expressed concern about the country's skewed economic playing field."

“...we don’t do nearly enough to make it easy for everyone to take lots of shots" - Zuckerberg talking about equal opportunity ( from article )

Seems reasonable to me.

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