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Comment by bmmayer1 | Hacker News Reader

Ah yes, the famous cabal of 1 percenters sitting around and committing grand larceny as they raid the bank accounts of poor people. At least that's what this headline would have you believe.

The reality is much more boring. Thanks to "math," they've determined that if the ratio of incomes from 1945-1974 held steady, the bottom 90% would have "more" than they do now. Of course the bottom 90% itself is a fantasy and you can find yourself in or out of it many times in the course of a career.

But is it possible that maybe, just maybe, wealth distribution isn't a 0 sum game? And maybe being in the bottom 90% is better now than it was 40 years ago, because of, I don't know, iPhones, next-day delivery for anything you want, telehealth, instant access to the world's information, electric cars, and many other things that 1 percenters have made for us?

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It's of little consolation having the price of your phone decline when the price of education, healthcare and a roof over your head have skyrocketed.

Even if that were not the case, it's abundantly clear that geometrically increasing consolidated economic power is being translated into consolidated raw political power (which is zero sum). The events of the last few months and history in general have proved that this is very, very dangerous.

We couldn't play flappy birds on a mini computer in our pockets in 1970, though, so I guess that makes all that r>g and compound interest accumulating in 0.1% pockets worthwhile.

Exactly this. As a college student looking at the outside world, I'm truly seeing how fortunate I am to have a family with the means to support me through my education. Pre-scholarship, my tuition bill comes out to > $10k per year (and that's not counting things like housing, and freshmen need to live in the dorms with a dining plan... that's another $10k that doesn't include the summer or winter breaks). The total estimated cost for an on-campus student is $25,000 per year.

Looking at the value of my family's house, it's increased almost 40% in three years which seems like it's an insane amount of growth for any asset. Education and houses just seem like they're unreasonably expensive at this point and I honestly don't know how you're expected to break into this market without already owning a house or something along those lines.

It's interesting that the 3 things you give as an example have sky rocketed in cost not because of the 1%, but mostly due to government interference in the free market. Government backed loans have driven up the cost of education and housing. Local governments limiting housing construction have further driven up the cost in many areas. Government created monopolies like the AMA have driven up the cost of healthcare.

> Government backed loans have driven up the cost of education and housing

Yes, housing would be cheaper if 40% of the population were living on the street because they couldn't afford a mortgage. Lots more supply to go around.

Blaming the AMA for healthcare costs is a unique take. While I can't say they are completely innocent, they are absolutely not a major factor in your insurance quote.

Most healthcare expenditure goes to paying wages; doctors and nurses' wages make up a very large proportion of insurance expenditures, and their respective associations have successfully restricted supply to drive up their wages. The AMA is doing a very good job of making doctor's salaries in the USA much higher than in most of the developed world.

It's not interesting at all.

When the government created undischargeable-in-bankruptcy loans for 17 year olds to get them into debt for life so they would need to be pliant, obedient workers for businesses owned by the 1%, on whose behalf did you think they were doing it?

The students'?

> and many other things that 1 percenters have made for us?

Jesus christ, this has to be satire. The people "making" these things are not in the 1 percent. We don't have to look up to the elites in gratitude because they deigned to give us their magical gifts.

A professional trains nearly 20 years under the guidance of other dedicated professionals to develop the potential to advance technology. The can't get the capital on their own to create technology, and instead sell their labor to ownership class

They go on to develop revolutionary technology. The owner class claims the IP, massively profits, and maybe gives the professional a bonus if they're lucky before being told to get back to work

The rest of us are told to be thankful for the gracious gifts of the owner class, which we buy with undervalued labor we sold to them in the first place

How marvelous

You reminded me of The Wire's piece on McNuggets :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvq3Pf3j61c

"Feed rats to the cats and cats to the rats and get the skins for nothing"

It's better than a chinchilla farm.

Wealth is obviously not a zero sum game. And of course the comforts of even the poorest have increased over the past half century.

But don't discount out of hand the concern that the relative distribution is a problem. Money, and especially money that is capital, almost algorithmically and naturally captures more money.

The trend line then becomes one where more and more wealth is concentrated at the top, even if the total amount of wealth increases.

Wealth, at some level, is the ability to direct labor. As wealth becomes more concentrated, you have fewer people organizing the world's labor power. It becomes harder for the poorest to engage in self determination.

Let's get something out of the way, it's not the 1 percenters that make things for us, it's the engineers, the programmers, the developers, the physicists, the biologists, the chemists, the grad students and every other poor soul grinding for progress on a computer screen in exchange for basic decency.

Why is it that nearly every company that puts first the shareholders ends up pooping the bed? Because the shareholders don't know jack except what the other people in the 1% want.

> Because the shareholders don't know jack except what the other people in the 1% want.

I think it's more likely because shareholders typically don't care much for the long term.

>But is it possible that maybe, just maybe, wealth distribution isn't a 0 sum game? And maybe being in the bottom 90% is better now than it was 40 years ago, because of, I don't know, iPhones

Telling homeless people that they are better off than the middle-class 40 years ago because they have a smartphone is basically the 21st century equivalent of "Let them eat cake".

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