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Comment by annoyingnoob | Hacker News Reader

Kind of ignores income inequality and that any benefits are going to top income earners.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...

The article claims income-tested benefits have doubled since 1979 and that incomes for the beneficiaries has increased. At the same time, earned income as a share of the economy has decreased - those folks need the extra benefits because they are unable to earn it, not for lack of trying. Life is good at the top an is going sideways or down at the bottom, for a long time. The current situation has a lot to do with Reaganomics and tax policy aimed at 'trickle-down' economics or generally allowing people with money to invest to keep more of their earnings than people who earn money from labor.

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Thomas Sowell once pointed out that billionaires are correlated with millionaires, and millionaires are correlated with a middle class. Most countries without billionaires are not great places to live and work. Governments without rich people to tax do not accomplish much in the way of welfare.

Take a look at a map of countries with billionaires.[0] I would argue those with billionaires are much better at providing social welfare than those without.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...

Unrelated but why does Germany have much more billionaires than the rest of the EU?

Germany is the world's #4 economy...largest economy in Europe. They would be expected to have the largest # of billionaires no?

Number #3 economy is Japan but it has less than half the billionaires. Germany's economy is 20% bigger than UK's but has more than triple the amount of billionaires. It's not necessarily correlated with GDP.

Or: those that are are good at providing social welfare provide the means for people to become billionaires?

I'm not arguing against billionaires. I'm arguing that billionaires make most of their money through investments and those investments are taxed at a lower rate than labor, where most of the middle class makes money through labor. If the wealthy can keep a few percent more of their income year after year then you end up with the inequality I'm pointing out. We can have billionaires and fair tax policy. Trickle-down does not work.

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