The 1% are getting richer and its not going to stop any time soon
independent.co.uk
independent.co.uk
Also, any single problem isn’t likely to completely screw you, you just pay for it and move on. For many people, they are literally one step from bankruptcy and can’t have anything go wrong.
Also, if you can afford even slightly nicer stuff, it is probably better-made and won’t require outright replacement. You can afford more insurances to avoid paying the full cost of what you do replace. (Most people will never do this.)
And the rich have way, way more time. They probably aren’t figuring out how to juggle two jobs, taking many-hour commutes, etc., all of which gives even more opportunity.
And that’s just off the top of my head, there’s probably more. You can’t even begin to equalize a system with so much advantage built in to one side.
My guess is that it starts by giving people more time. Fix the “need two jobs” problem permanently. Make housing more affordable to minimize travel.
Not true at all! Most businesses sink, even with the smartest people on board it's really hard to beat the S&P 500 longterm, that's why managed funds are suffering and also a big reason why stocks are overpriced right now. Everybody just buys into passive investing. It's gotta come down, but the best experts won't be able to time it.
Think about it, if all it took was money to hire some experts to beat the market, why not make a product out of it to sell to everyone? Warren Buffet can't hold a candle to the capital commanded by middle-class retirement investors.
The ones who make the money tend to be workaholics.
> If you have tons of money to spare, you can afford to throw money “at the wall” and see what sticks.
You can afford it, sure, but you'll lose pots 'o money that way.
> For every case of losing money, there’s probably a lot more that pays off, especially when a billionnaire can afford to have entire staff working to minimize the chance of bad investments.
If your staff is so great, they'd be making the money themselves. Besides, anyone can hire such staff - that's what mutual funds are.
Any billionaire I've read about made their investment decisions themselves.
> My guess
I recommend reading some biographies of wealthy people and how they got that way. Kennedy, Jobs, Gates, Carnegie, Buffet, Musk, Hearst, Getty, Walton, Bezos, take your pick, etc.
Citation needed.
> You can afford it, sure, but you'll lose pots 'o money that way.
Which misses the point, anyone else CAN'T
> Any billionaire I've read about made their investment decisions themselves.
That's a myth. They have the money to externalize things other people don't so having money means you have more time to spend on yourself and others. Most billionaires you read about that grew up poor are in the vast minority of people who ended up in the top 1%
> I recommend reading some biographies of wealthy people and how they got that way. Kennedy, Jobs, Gates, Carnegie, Buffet, Musk, Hearst, Getty, Walton, Bezos, take your pick, etc.
War profiteering, Screwed employees out of their stock, born fairly wealthy which allowed him access to tech others didn't have, Robber Baron, Talented and Lucky, Talented and Lucky, Printed lies, Money from parents, Externalized costs onto US taxpayer, Used investor money to build a company because he came from a banking background.
Most of the people didn't get wealthy because they worked harder, were smarter, etc. They either were in the right place at the right time and their hard work enabled them to take advantage of their luck or they were born into wealth and used that as an advantage. You're also comparing wildly different time periods with different rates of economic mobility.
That's not to say these people were undeserving of their wealth or that they are bad people, but realistically wealth for the vast majority of people is something that they are born into, especially in top 1%.
This point is especially poignant when you realize that the families that are wealthy in parts of the world such as Venice, Italy today are roughly the same families that were wealthy in 600 AD.
Edit: To clarify I think we're all really talking about the top 1% of the developed world. Not just the worth at large as others have noted most of us reading this are probably in the top 1% globally when including undeveloped nations.
Read biographies of Gates, Jobs, Carnegie, Bezos, Rockefeller, Walton, Buffett, etc. (More than just the wikipedia page.)
> Which misses the point
That isn't the point. The point is that method of increasing wealth (randomly thrashing about) does not work.
> That's a myth.
For which of the ones I mentioned?
> Most billionaires you read about that grew up poor are in the vast minority of people who ended up in the top 1%
We're talking about middle class to the 1%. All of the ones I mentioned went that route.
For example, having a fixed salary in France, at minimum wage (~17,760EUR/y) puts you in the top 4% globally. Anything above minimum wage and you steadily climb to the top 1%.
Poor people are a lot poorer than we think, and you're likely not among them if you're reading this.
By the way, it's nonsense to think that those 1% control that wealth. They'll be lucky to save more than half of it when the next stock market correction is coming in, or when the Fed prints the value of long-term bonds into oblivion. Yeah, maybe they get to vote on some shareholder meeting, or they get to shoot trespassers on their lawn, that's their level of control.
First the monarchs start to disappear, then the corrupt heads of state, and then rich people start spending their money to either escape the judgment, or to improve their public image in case they can't spend their way down to #2.
If you try to tax it away, the rich will just hide their wealth and then buy off the tax inspectors that go looking for it.
That didn't work out too well for anyone.
Politicians want, above all else, to stay in power. That’s their actual full time job. To do that you need key supporters, not just financiers for your campaign but blocks of voters, and the latter is the most precious of all and the one lobbyists can help politicians with. If the coal miners keep you elected you want to know what political moves will please them. Same thing with minorities, elderly and other demographic blocks; they want mutually exclusive things and lobbyists who represent these groups can tell you what would please the group they represent.
So, if you make it illegal for these groups to meet politicians through lobbyists politicians will do their best to reach the voters instead. That’s basically the service Cambridge Analytica supplied, in a sense.
Don't get me wrong, I think Lobbying in its current form is disgusting. Yet, directly I don't blame it for the wealth gap.
I suppose you could argue that lawmakers might have a chance at proposing solutions if not for lobbying, so by taking lobbying away you eventually, somehow, fix the problem. Even with that said, I'm still more curious to talk about possible solutions to the problem directly, rather than hoping to foster an environment where someone else will fix the problem.
First of all, most people down really own anything of value, if anything they owe.
In proportion to practically anything else, stocks have gone up like crazy and those 1% own a lot of it. They also are explicitly and implicitly the creditors of that debt. Stocks going up creates even more debt via the wealth effect.
The real redistribution from the bottom to the top will happen as follows: Stock market crashes, massive defaults on debt and massive dollar devaluation. Lots of IRAs will be fucked. Don't be left holding the bag!
If you feel guilty about it, give some to poor people. But please don't pollute Hacker News with articles.
But that's exactly how it's written in the headline :(
In fact isn't it rather convenient that the solution that everyone proposes to money/power inequality is to give the .1% more money and power?
Weird how that inequality just keeps going up, huh?
The rich will have nanobots and AI that can counter any strategy by the plebes.