The wealth of the 1% just hit a record $44T | Hacker News Reader

The wealth of the 1% just hit a record $44T

cnbc.com

58 pointsrntn65 comments

The strategy is very simple: since if you are poor, you can not hold your money because you can not afford to invest, and your money eventually goes to the richest. So the government just tax the middle class, keep inflation high, which effectively transfers the money from them to the richest.

Thank you, central banking for printing money all day to give to investors and making sure to "protect" the markets with timely interventions.

Anxiously awaiting all of the "this is good, akshually" posts while ten more people file for bankruptcy because they took an ill-timed ambulance ride to the ER.

I know your post is incorrect, because there is no good timing for an ambulance ride. It will always bankrupt you.

In G20 countries other than the USofA with <gasp> social policies this is not the case.

Ambulances are either free (if part of a low annual fee Ambulance cover network) or capped at affordable, or subsidised if unemployed | disability | etc.

In Australia my brothers trip to hospital for an emergancy stent following a blocked heart artery involved an ambulance, two and days in hospital, and keyhole surgery.

Total cost to him, $400 for ambulance due to no cover, hospital + surgery free via public cover (from his taxes).

Wife had to get an ambulance ride a few years ago in the US. She was apprehensive of getting it because this - wrong - information is repeated over and over online. It and the hospital trip cost a few hundred with insurance. This is why we don't listen to people on the internet.

Sounds like pure luck. My ambulance was “out of network” (as if I had any choice in the matter) and the charges were “unreasonable” for the services provided per the insurance company. They initially billed me for $7k. I eventually got the insurance to pay $3k of that. So $4k out of pocket.

[edit to add this]

I did hear on the radio that a bill was passed in California recently to help fix this to some extent but I don’t recall the details. I believe it goes into effect mid-2024.

Excuse me.

$7K USD for ambulance in US? I thought the OP "while ten more people file for bankruptcy because they took an ill-timed ambulance ride to the ER." was being sarcastic.

And below it wrote ambulance with insurance only cost few hundred. So in US without insurance equals waiting to die or bankrupt?

Wasn't there a thing about Obamacare a while ago? I mean That was the first time for many NON-US Citizen to know US doesn't have Universal Health Care system. ( Which a lot of us take for granted )

$7k doesn’t sound right. If you were to pay cash (no insurance) for a bog standard ambulance ride, it would typically be several hundred. And likely written off, but that’s beside the point.

My family’s most expensive ambulance bill before insurance was $6k, but that was intensive care transport for our newborn. I believe we paid $250 out of pocket for that.

It’s true that having to pay anything out of pocket affects when people call for ambulances.

Also, keep in mind high car ownership rates mean most people drive or are driven to the ER. Ambulances are typically only used when there was on-scene medical care provided, that continues on the way to the hospital, or when transporting a patient between facilities. A minority of Americans use ambulances because they don’t have personal transportation.

Search “American Medical Response” and terms like “thousands” and you’ll find story after story of 4-5k bills, some of those from 7+ years ago.

Here’s one: https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/16ixoc8/i_...

And another which links to the California Assembly Bill to try to prevent this: https://calmatters.org/health/2023/12/surprise-ambulance-bil...

I didn’t receive any notice of the bill until nine months later and was told it would go to collections in 30 days. My insurance company decided to reconsider whether they would pay anything after I called them, and they told AMR they would review the case which put the clock for collections on hold for about six weeks until the insurance coughed up $3k or so.

There is studied pricing data available. For example, Fair, an organization working against surprise bills, tells us average pricing by charge code. Before insurance, basic transport averages under a thousand. Mileage and cost of living accounts for the variation.

People with huge bills before insurance are either receiving advanced care (like my infant daughter) or being transported long distances.

CMS has negotiated average basic transport down to a few hundred. I’d like to see this proliferated. Dispatching keeps ambulances from refusing service in the way CMS pricing dries up proactive care availability.

Certainly share your pain dealing with medical bills and receiving them after they’re overdue. I’m good at it but I know most aren’t, and they come at an overwhelming time. Also, many ambulance companies use crappy overbooked billing call centers so it’s hard to talk to someone. Reforming medical communication is part of the whole solution.

It’s nonsense. When I was broke in college I had to take an ambulance, the cost was $800. I called the payment center and told them I had no insurance and it was reduced to $100. This was a large hospital in a major American city.

>I had no insurance and it was reduced to $100. This was a large hospital in a major American city.

Thank You. While not perfect may be sanity is still a thing in the US.

What happened was the hospital weote it off. It doesn't detract from the fact that it was thousands initially.

Also that's just for the ride. If they need to stabilize you in any way it's going to increase drastically.

When my ex-wife was pregnant with our first child she caught valley fever and we went to the emergency room.

While there a tatted-up tough as nails gang-banger came in cradling his elderly dad in his arms. He was crying hysterically that his father was having a heart attack and please help.

The lady at the front desk tossed a clipboard at him and told him to fill it out and have a seat.

His father was turning blue. He cried please help he's dying and her response was he should have taken an ambulance.

He replied his dad didnt want to cuz he cant afford it. While crying while holding his dying father.

An EMT was coming out from just having dropped someone off. He heard all this go down and told the guy to call 911. He did while the EMT took his father and placed him on the gurney to wheel him outside.

He then turned around and came right back in, past the receptionist screaming at him and wheeled dude's father to the back while ignoring her.

This same hospital that night told my 7 months pregnant wife with coughing fits and lesions on her legs to go home they dont have a treatment for valley fever and tried to charge us for an overnight stay and stabilization.

Fuck the healthcare system in the US it's completely insane.

I have way too many horror stories I've experienced personally to ever have faith in it.

In 2005, my 55yo uncle died of an overdose in southern california (orange county Kaiser). Ofc he had no insurance. My grandmother was billed over $2500. There are plenty of cases where insurance doesn't apply.

Health insurance in the US is typically provided by the employer and covers the whole family, so there's a general assumption that everyone has it and it will cover some part of the cost. Medical services quote high to get as much as they can from the insurance, knowing (since everyone should have insurance) you won't be paying the whole amount. Obamacare was in part meant to cover the people missed by this.

But they're required to provide emergency services even to people without insurance, and the cost isn't set in stone. It can be reduced (happened to a family member, he called and asked and I think he said they just did it even without proof) or "financial assistance provided" (says this right on a recent one I have).

Haggling isn't really much of a thing here so I'd guess most people don't know those are options, or if they do are embarrassed to let people know they have financial troubles.

What’s even sadder is those EMTs are getting paid $15/hr in the Bay Area to do 24 hour shifts ffs

> It and the hospital trip cost a few hundred with insurance.

That’s a major asterisk. People usually lob this complaint with the context of not having any insurance or somehow their insurance not covering the particular ambulance. Your story does not disprove the others.

At least I disclosed my asterisk. When was the last time you read about someone getting a huge bill who also said “btw I don’t have insurance”? Every time it’s just - Don’t take the ambulance or you’ll go bankrupt. And then you have people who aren’t in their right mind endangering themselves because honest discourse on the internet is dead.

A lot of ambulance companies are out of network. I am happy to relay countless horror stories.

Only in America. Here in Japan, ambulance rides are free.

If do some rough math, 1% of the world's population is 81 million. So at $44T, if you took that $44T and split it up equally, each person would have ~$550,000 USD.

Doesn't seem like such a big number any more. I'd bet many people on HN have more wealth than that.

Actually, I'd bet many people on HN are in the top 1% of wealth globally.

Feeding, housing, healing people - so lame, I’ve got my golden sneakers and I just need to invest the rest in a really terrific bunker

>each person would have ~$550,000 USD.

I think many would earn that much if they work in Magnificent 7.

And it is surprising because frankly speaking $550K isn't a lot.

That is not how this article explicitly defines “the 1%” in the first few sentences.

> the top 1%, defined by the Fed as those with wealth over $11 million

The article is talking about the top 1% in the US, not worldwide.

That makes for about 335k people, having 130M USD each on average.

At some stage, it needs to stop. Whether by some type of natural economic disaster or political intervention. This is wild.

Seems like an out of control infection at the moment.

It needs to stop but won’t be by either of those methods. They have enough money to build shelters to evade the economic disasters, and if they can’t evade it then regular folk don’t really stand a chance either. Political intervention is also unlikely because they bankroll the politicians and money is not coming out of politics due to citizens united.

A revolution might be a good bet, but it probably will be thwarted like in China or Russia. Too many people also believe the money is well earned.

Well the only thing that protects the top 1% wealth is the poorer people that will continuously be affected by this. By poorer people I mean police and all of the delicate systems that enables police to exist.

Without law enforcement, there is absolutely no way these people could hang on to their wealth.

You're not winning hearts and minds by implying poor people would be violent lawless creatures raping and pillaging the world on a whim.

I'm not implying this, but there is no way that one guy should have hundreds of billions and the next person should have zilch and starve. The only thing that protects such an unfair system is the law. If those enforcing the law are poor enough, they will take what they require. So they should IMO.

> I'm not implying this

> If those enforcing the law are poor enough, they will take what they require. So they should IMO.

I guess we'll never know what words mean.

People have been forced to eat other people in dire situations. If a lot of people got into a situation like that, they will take what they need through whatever means necessary. That is what it means. No need to pretend I'm saying all humans are criminals, but it's how it is.

If inequality gets to the stage where there was 1 million starving people, or a billionaire who owns a lot of farm land with food on it, I'm pretty sure the 1 million are going to take some of the farm land and food. Maybe all of it.

Is it the starving, or the one who does not share the actual criminal?

The law should be enforced but if things became severely skewed towards protecting a few and letting the rest suffer, then I think the law needs to be adapted. Maybe through taxation or something else.

Is that a difficult concept to grasp?

Apparently you haven’t seen the TikToks in fast food joints, malls, and the like?

Let me describe it; poor people looting and beating up employees.

America today is living the problem at a small scale.

I’m not saying it’s their fault. 100% the fault of a the general public as a whole for continuing to buy into promises of arbitrary meat suits projecting non-existent authority (society’s laws are not immutable physics).

IMO the Tim Leary approach is 100% the correct approach. Less than 1 million sworn LEO inclusive of local, county, state, federal agencies. That small a police force in the land of 2A rights has no chance. Probably not even needed, just a sincere threat and the gerontocracy would have to pay attention. It does not so long as the market bears it.

160 million of Gen Alpha, GenZ, and Millennials have little to lose since they can’t afford anything and the vigor of youth on their side. They have little to fear from a handful of aging rich.

(society’s laws are not immutable physics).

This is a great way to put it.

It's not just law enforcement, it's the political system that controls the law enforcement, and the voters who elect that political system. Most Americans really believe that wealth is earned and that strong measures to reduce wealthy peoples' wealth are morally wrong, so anyone who tries such a thing by political means will fail quickly at the polls, and anyone who tries by extra-political action will fail because the whole system, including law enforcement and a large chunk of American society, disagree with them and will oppose them. Heck, a significant portion of American society actually believes that wealth shows that God loves someone, and wealthy people are blessed by God!

IMO, if you really believe that high wealth inequality is a bad thing for society, your best bet is to simply move to another society where your values are more in-line with the people and social structure there.

The wealth is so unimaginably high that for practical purposes like that, building things etc, I suspect they long surpassed the needed capital. You could take 99% of Elons wealth from him and he could still build disaster bunkers or commision a long term yacht to flee on, and live comfortably for the rest of his life. I suspect you could still influence politics too.

I guess the trick would be timing your exit properly, and choosing your new country carefully.

One has to realize these people can afford a small army, and together probably afford an army stronger than what the govt has. Not a ton different than what happened in Mexico, but for different reasons.

One viewpoint to consider is that how liquid is this wealth overall as totality. It is high, but if it is tied to valuations of public companies or even real estate... The wealth can very quickly go away... In one sense quite lot of it is not real.

So they really cannot go against larger global economy, as without it they have quite little purchasing power.

Reducing poverty is a commendable goal, but I'll never understand why people care so much about the 1%. Is it just envy? Is the idea of cutting others down to size so appealing?

The critique of the 1% is more of a call for a system that is doing less exploiting of labor of the many for the benefit of a few, which has been leading to these huge social, economic, and political disparities.

I've found that envy is like faith. If you haven't experienced it then you can't grasp why other people do.

Those in the 1% got rich via cutting millions of others down to size.

Society should pick a target gini coefficient and manage towards that.

Today, in the USA, it's roughly ~40. Versus ~35 in the 1970s.

~35 would be pretty sweet.

GINI Index for the United States https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA

The Gini coefficient is a terrible measure to target.

It measures income distribution without regards to absolute measure. For example, Tunisia has a much better Gini coefficient at 33, than the US which is 40.

As a poor person, or even middle class, would you prefer to be in Tunisia or the US?

Perhaps Tunisia and the USA would choose different target values, to better reflect their own circumstances.

What is a better measure?

More importantly, how would you address inequity?

None of them. The article (the title) is political propaganda that people like hearing. They can blame all their problems on the rich.

The article even says:

>Since 2020, the wealth of the top 1% has increased by /.../ 49%.

>Middle-class Americans have also seen a rising wealth tide, with the middle 50% to 90% of Americans seeing their wealth increase [by] 50%.

What really matters is absolute wealth, specifically what goods and services you have access to.

Who else should we blame, if not the rich?

One could argue that Gini coefficient can be one of many important measures.

Median income is a very important one. As well as cost of living.

Agreed. Ditto unemployment, literacy, food security, life expectancy, wellness, birthrate, and so forth.

Managing to target inequity value, by whatever measure, would moot the endless food fights over the tax code.

We should be arguing about the kind of society we want. Not fighting over implementation details, divorced from outcomes.

The rest, however, will own nothing and (be forced to) be happy about it, or at least ok with it. Those margins have to come from somewhere...

Nothing as in, no house because the prices are out of reach, no stable jobs because late stage capitalism/AI/the current crisis/whatever, no good furniture (IKEA, if we're lucky), no quality goods (because enshitification), no public infrastructure (becase late stage capitalism), no healthcare (because exorbitant charges and, in countries that had it, the slow killing of public healthcare), no voice (because politicians could not give less fucks for anybody who is not a sponsor), and even our software we don't increasingly own, we just rent...

But some on HN make $250K/month and higher, so "everything is fine", it's not like there is a huge majority in the situation I describe. Why even acknowlegde the rest of the population exists, unless it's for virtue signalling about caring for the underprivileged on some status update?

I think people are so much more capable then we're told we are. I know that it's easy for me to say this because I do have a decent job, I don't make anywhere near ($250k a month btw) but I came from a family who lost everything in World War II and rebuilt their lives in another country with practically no money. They were resourceful. They could build furniture, houses, restore and fix things, grow food raise chickens etc. Mostly they learned this out of necessity because prior to the war, they were farmers and living pretty self sufficient lives.

I'm not saying everyone can do this but I think a LOT of people, no matter their situation, can improve things a lot out of their own hard work, ingenuity and determination.

Your comment about relying on rubbish like IKEA is what spurred my comment. There is so many cheap second hand super high quality tools and building materials available now that you can practically build anything you need for very cheap. So much knowledge available for nearly free about how to stay healthy that it's ridiculous.

Just because most people rely on modern convenience and buy into that system, doesn't mean you need to.

When it comes to housing the problem is land in an area where you get jobs. Hopefully remote work will spread that out more fairly.

> I don't make anywhere near ($250k a month btw)

Is this a typo? 250K/mo is filthy rich money.

There are, in fact, many filthy rich folks on here.

I make a fraction of that, so don't try apply it to me.

The parent wrote that, not me. I was replying to that.

Sometimes I think about the 16th century monarchs in France and England. About the people they were surrounded with, the rituals, and primarily about the inequality and unfairness.

Map that to today and I am sure 500 years from now, people will look with the same disgust on todays society.

I am pretty curious what will come in between.

With inflation and economic growth, won't the wealth held by the top 1% always be a new "record"?

Even if wealth distribution doesn't change?

Yes. The "record" part, is beside the point.

* Most people are unaware of the scale of disproportionality at all.

* The average income of Americans has not scaled at the same rate.

* What kind of (purchasing) power that is at odds with any sort of social reform.

There is an implication that US capitalism has bred what economic models always do. A caste system.

You can't expect the content of an article to be summarized completely in a short title, or this response. I have not summarized the article either, just some casual implications. There's an expectation that you read about the article to understand the context, but I can understand not wanting to read a CNBC article.

> Yes. The "record" part, is beside the point.

If it's besides the point why make it the headline?

> Most people are unaware of the scale of disproportionality at all

The biggest issue is that the top 1% is not a static group! People move into it and out of it all the time - the churn is quite high.

There was an analysis of US tax payers and most people will only enter the top 1% for one year out of their entire life.

if you taxed Elon Musk, Warren Buffet, and Bill Gates at 100% including all their wealth, assets, you would barely reduce the US deficit in one year. You would also be shit out of luck in the next year. I'm sick of the thought process which essentially says we would be in a mode of 'post-scarcity' if we simply ate the rich.

What should the effective tax rate on wealth (assets) be?

The deficit is a red herring. We issue capital in the form of bonds. We don’t “pay it off” or there would be no money or we’d have to structure the whole system differently.

I am just comparing the potential revenue from taxation to the overall size of government spending via the deficit. I don't really understand what you are saying with this comment. Do you think government spending can be unbounded? Why tax at all?

> You would also be shit out of luck in the next year

Nonsense. In theory, any one person can pay off all the debt, given enough favors. For example, if I was hypothetically $2 in debt to you, but there is only $1 in existence (which was owned by you), I can do you a favor in exchange for that $1, and immediately pay you it back for 50% of the debt. I can repeat this a second time with a second favor, and there is now 0 debt. (It doesn't matter if I started with the $1). In other words, having less money than the debt owed doesn't really matter.

Debt is really just the flip side of money; both a measure of who owes whom a favor.

Now that said, we could go on to debate who owes what and what is fair, but we all know that won't get anywhere...

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