Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

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lifeisstillgood

Just some back of the envelope work - with 70 million million divided amoung 300 million people, that's 233,333 per person. Assume 4 people per household that's about a million per household. Avg s&p dividend is 2.3% - That's minimum wage per 2 working adult household.

The math does seem to stack up. The problem is distribution, not total wealth it seems

Edit: Ok this is skewed as US stock markets are really a global stock market, but if you took for example global GDP (~115 Trn) and divided by 8 bn people or 4 person households you end up with 60k per household globally.

Here's a trick I was explaining to my son earlier. We really do live in the Matrix. An announcement comes on and they are resetting - everyone gets a new life starting tomorrow - but randomly allocated over the 8 billion possible "players". We can keep the current social order or we can design a new one.

Do you hope the 8 billion sided dice rolls in your favour and you land in Jeff Bezos body? Or do you think maybe we should redesign society ?

Yes but that way of splitting would very quickly destroy for the very very obvious reason - no money must be given to children... And dividing by adults, say over-15s, it's 70T per 257M, $272K per adult or $1044 per month for that family of 4 with 2 adults in it... That hardly solves any questions.

And you can't divide all of it, because it means destroying capitalism, taking the bottom out of society. Only a small fraction of capital stock can possibly be distributed this way.

> $272k per adult or $1044 per month for that family of 4 with 2 adults in it

Something fishy about your math here.

$272k per adult is $544k per family. If you paid it over one year that's $45k per month.

Edit: oh, I see, you are only giving people the interest on the capital and assuming a growth rate of ~2%. Both of which seem quite silly to me, but whatever.

The numbers are silly - but I am not advocating some massive one off redistribution - I am just trying to argue against the idea there is not enough money to go around.

>$272k per adult is $544k per family. If you paid it over one year that's $45k per month.

If it was paid out, you would lose your job.

But we spoke about possibility of creation of sustainable income for everyone, not a one-off money grab? Not a growth rate, but yes, dividends rate - because growth in capital itself will go into inflation, population growth, and growth of living standards, so yeah, 2.3% is all we can realistically plan for.

And then the big question is: how is this society different from Soviet Union? Literally, i am not exaggerating: an economy where capital is, by law, owned only by the government, and private ownership of means of production is a felony (or how else you will take all capital away)? Or if you want to literally give shares to individuals, not to some immense state fund which will do the redistribution job, what will prevent these people from drinking and gambling these shares away? If American rich will be robbed off all their money so they won't be able to buy, to the Chinese rich (they will be able to afford as people will be running to sell off - if they were attracted by 2.3% returns they'd be buying stock now as it is, only reason why they don't is that they don't see it as attractive - so they WILL sell - and stock will be dirt cheap)

It all sounds like a way to kill capitalism, or sell it off to foreigners...

I am not an advocate for UBI, I am an advocate for a fairer society. (And the intra-US wealth disparities are as nothing to globally)

I should not have assumed dividends were of total stock - that's nonsense. But even so stock market is not total wealth - far more wealth is in real estate for example.

First there is no destroying of society, I am assuming a different distribution of the dividends - assume something like the Norway Sovereign fund(s).

And while this is very back of the envelope I am assuming money goes to children (broad assumption that every household is two adults and two kids).

But let's look at say GDP distribution - that's 5.5 trn - which divided by 300 m people is 18k each.

I am just arguing against the idea that there is not enough wealth or money around, so we cannot share it.

There is enough. How we share it is politics.

And it's always worth nothing that history shows if you don't share for long enough, people take it away from you.

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