Richest 1% amassed almost two-thirds of new wealth created since 2020
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
2. This is conveniently timed from a low stock market point. If they had timed it from Jan 2022 when the market most recently peaked, I bet the top x% have lost more than the bottom x%.
The takeaway is that people worth $850k were more likely to own stocks between 2020 and 2022 than Sudanese cattle herders.
I think their comment was to encourage readers to engage with the article rather than dismissing it based on the title and feeling resentful towards the “rich”.
> A total of $42 trillion in new wealth has been created since 2020, with $26 trillion, or 63%, of that being amassed by the top 1% of the ultra-rich, according to the report.
Regardless, it is refreshing to see OP's explanation in these comments.
Think it could be good spin in the future for Americas ultra-rich.
"Don't worry 80k/yr, you're part of the global 1%!" - Daddy Warbucks
A person in Sudan is averaging around $460 US a year, while in the US it is like $74K, and thus Americans are accumulating wealth at a higher percentage.
Also the comparative lifestyle in regards to goods and services are much different. While it might be more expensive to live in the US the lifestyle is dramatically different. Wealth doesn't always mean accumulation.
Gain: Perspective. Escaping how one person framed the situation, elucidating another way to consider the issue.
Result: Greater objectivity.
Requirement: Critical thinking. Reasoning ability. An open mind.
Asset values swing most wildly on the basis of the risk free rate, which is where most of the new "wealth" created since 2020 has come from (ZIRP, QE etc). It is somewhat illusory in that low rates must be sustainable to support elevated valuations. Obviously we're seeing the other side of that with rates having risen due to inflationary pressures.
e.g. look at how much "wealth" Japan had in the 1980's before their economy imploded. The imperial palace was perceived to be worth more than all of California, something like that.
I would argue yes. Not because there's more wealth, but because it means that a greater percentage of the existing wealth is going to the largest 1%.
Then your future salaries are also real assets, and should be counted for your net worth. The same argument applies, you can take out loans against your future earnings and spend it, so it is a part of your current net worth, right?
You say that maybe you get into an accident so you can't work? Same logic applies to stocks, something might happen and nobody wants to pay for them anymore rendering them useless.
So to make the comparison fair you have to be consistent. Either future earnings are assets, or they aren't, otherwise the comparison isn't meaningful.
Note, life could become worse for almost everyone, while real wealth is created. I would argue that's pretty much what is happening. It doesn't mean real resources weren't created or extracted and someone owns those things.
The idea of altering these figures to account for happiness or quality of life is a fallacy in my opinion. GDP should be measured the way it is. Decmocracies need to figure out their own definitions of "happiness" or whatever you want to call it and optimize for those parameters. But there is no combined measure that covers both.
Where I live, the only time my property tax rises is when the budget is increased. (Unfortunately, the budget keeps on increasing, because city council keeps having bigger and bigger dreams. Oh, yay, I’m so glad we’re dropping $50M on another sports centre I’ll never use. Better upgrade the pool while we’re at it, it’s been an entire decade since we last spent a fortune on it!)
I'm not saying that this "information" makes me happy -- I'm nowhere near any 1% -- but I'm saying that taking the money from the 1% and giving it to the government won't solve anything.
Try again
Not necessarily. You could tax the rich more and tax the non-rich less, leaving the same amount of money for the government.
What, would you prefer that of a national socialist?
It's false if one person on the planet made a fortune honestly and ethically
Yeah, that is the whole point of the statement. No fortune is honest or ethical. The concepts are incompatible.
A weak argument and unhelpful perspective
It is only unhelpful if you want to perpetuate the crime of wealth hoarding.
How so?
Scenario: Assume that someone was born intelligent, and chose to sacrifice their time and money to become a surgeon, and then earned a lot of money. They chose to invest that money to generate more money.
It isn't unethical because they didn't break a law. It isn't dishonest because they worked for it.
What do you see that I don't see?
Bahahahahahaha
"Political nihilism is the position holding no political goals whatsoever, except for the complete destruction of all existing political institutions—along with the principles, values, and social institutions that uphold them.[105] Though often related to anarchism, it may differ in that it presents no method of social organisation after a negation of the current political structure has taken place. An analysis of political nihilism is further presented by Leo Strauss."
Is that a good game?
Why not just appoint the natural-born redheads as kings?
Seriously, if I'm born into a "game" where I'm predestined to lose by my birth status, then I'd rather not play that game at all, thank you very much.
However, you have to wonder about the mentality of not seeking wealth as your primary goal in life. The smartest are not necessarily the wealthiest. Was Einstein the richest person in the world? No. He chose to pursue science, not business.
I feel that society should actually deter people who are obsessed with wealth-seeking over all other values. That's unhealthy personally and socially. Money is not the true measure of a man.
I argue that this is good for society overall. It’s far better for my wife and I to do our best to raise successful children (for whatever definitions of success we choose) than to leave them to fend for themselves.
Inherent in parents trying to do their best with/for their kids is that some parents will do that more effectively than others. Other parents will simply be not good parents. Being born to not good parents will suck for sure.
That's a bit questionable, because overbearing or helicopter parents can do a lot of damage to a kid. ;-) Anyway, it seems like a bit of a false dichotomy too, because Plato argued in the Republic that children should be raised communally rather than by individual parents.
Well, no, by definition you need buy-in from the whole community.
In Plato's Republic, parents didn't know which children were theirs, and vice versa. This eliminated exactly the thing you were talking about: favoritism toward your own children.
Mark Zuckerberg went to Exeter before going to Harvard. Raw intellect alone doesn't open doors to schools like Exeter. It would also be fair to say that attending Exeter also increased Zuckerberg's probability to attend Harvard, which increased his probability to come across groundbreaking ideas that he could then steal.
A lot of lasting generation wealth is from cronyism as well. For example many of the large land owners (even to this day) in England descended from folks that were involved in the Norman invasion of England. Some of those didn't directly use their 'superior genes' to conquer the land, they just happened to be buddies with William I.
There was a lot of propping up of google/fb in their early days by other wealthy investors and in the case of Google, the US government.
Feel free to continue to worship your tech gods for their superior genetics though. Circumstance, luck and timing has a lot to do with the current set of billionaires we have in tech. They rode a wave of technological innovation that they themselves didn't even invent. Well other than maybe Pagerank. That was pretty awesome. Most of the ideas were lifted from the "greatest hits" of computer science though.
In the end there has to be a 'winner.' It could have easily been a different group of people if public preference was ever so slightly different. I could be easily typing this message on a AOL browser right now if the outcome was slightly different.
This purely "genetic winner" viewpoint is super narrow viewpoint that if one is not careful can quickly get disgusting. Genes that are advantageous in one situation can be poor in another. Barring outliers, there is sometimes no "best" when talking about genetics/expression of genes. Pugs do much better around humans than wolves. Who has the better genetics?
If you're lucky enough to have parents and ancestors that put their money to work compounding over a long time period, it would be growing more each year than the rest of us can hope to earn in our lifetimes. No evil plan needed. Just time.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/5-huge-lies-generational-weal...
As a software engineer, I'm doing alright. I'm not jealous of the idiots of the world who are idiotic and think they are some kind of genius, like a Trump or a Kushner.
Have you ever seen how overrepresented children of professors are in cognitive fields and exceptional attainment? It's a lot higher than rich parents.
And then there are those who make so much money that it's not even worth their time or effort to bend over and pick up a hundred dollar bill.
Is that claim still valid when the current #2 richest person lost $200B?
Wealth is an amount. Income is a flow. These have different units.
Most people have debt - inflation transfers value from lenders to borrowers, so tons of people with car loans and college loans and mortgages are better off as inflation lowers the effective amount they owe.
Wages have increased significantly as inflation rose.
And no matter how you slice it real incomes have increased vastly over the past 40 years, e.g., https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
True. But it increased because personal income increased: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
Furthermore, two income households have decreased as less people get married, so the personal income is even greater than that graph.
>Getting a job and hiring a nanny, maid, and gardener creates fictional household income, because homemaking is assigned $0 value by the Fed.
That's just nonsense. First, very few households have any of those, and certainly not the median house.
And, as the graph above shows, median personal income has vastly increased over the same time.
If you want to make stuff up, try looking up the data before making false claims.