U.S. Wealth Inequality [video] | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Wealth Inequality [video]

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22 pointsRinzler899 comments

My solution: Every year we identify the wealthiest individual and liquidate their assets to redistribute through UBI. To be honest, they likely have the network and skill set to immediately bounce back and this policy only impacts a single individual every year. Plus it makes being ultra wealthy a more interesting game, where you'd want your investments to do well, but not too well.

It's too easy to hide wealth so you'd need to choose some other metric such as private jet rides, then have some kind of lottery.

We could just tax them more heavily like we did a few decades ago, when they were as high as 90%.

Maybe draw a line where society can create millionaires and hundred millionaires but not billionaires.

As for the n+1, does the sequence stop?

Does the same happen for the government and other organizations, or just natural persons? Are there other organizations besides the government you will exempt?

After everything has been equalized, how much (about) will everyone have, and would that be enough to invest in something as simple as an ice cream machine?

I think a version of this video that used a semilog plot [1] for wealth, included specific suggestions for how to overcome economic inequality (like [2]), and skipped the snarky tone would be useful. I am all for reducing economic inequality, but found this video annoying and not useful.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-log_plot

[2] https://taxjusticenow.org/

Isn’t this shape just the inevitable outcome of the more sane distribution from 50 years ago if you simply add time + compound interest? Wouldn’t it be more surprising if wealth didn’t grow faster based on how much wealth you already have?

If this is the what the richest economy in the world looks like, imagine the rest of the world.

Well, the United States ranks 23rd in happiness, so I imagine many of them are quite a bit happier overall!

https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2024/happiness-of-the-young...

Maybe they are more equally poor? Anyone wanna chart that as per capita GDP vs Gini index, as a loose approximation?

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