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Comment by mcmoor | Hacker News Reader

Me in developing country sure see that billionaire's wealths already trickle down to developed country's citizens.

How can you be sure it’s not wealth trickling up instead?

I don't think you can consume your way to a higher standard of living. The only way to sustainably increase the standard of living is to increase productivity. This can only come from investment into hard capital and into human capital (education).

So to me, it would be very hard to make an argument that it trickles up. It has to come from investment. And investment in the private sector is usually done by rich people, because you need money in the first place to invest and also because investing well makes you rich.

Except for the fact wages and middle class wealth has not kept up with productivity for ages in most western countries.

Also considering that the super-rich in developing nations are not that far behind the super-rich in developed nations, why hasn't their wealth trickled down and uplifted those developing nations? The reality is that developing nations have even higher wealth inequality, so refuting your argument.

Wages won't ever eat up 100% of the productivity gains. That defeats the point of investing in productivity gains. If you have ten ditch diggers, but then buy a steamshovel, the operator of the steamshovel earns more than the ditch diggers, but doesn't earn 10 salaries.

I am from a developing country. There aren't a lot of super rich here. In fact there isn't much wealth at all. Having some greater gini coefficient doesn't mean you have more wealth, inequality really isn't a relevant measure.

If raising wages was the only component to development, Somalia could simply set their minimum wage to $50 an hour and watch the country soar. Wages follow development, not the other around.

Actually my realization comes when seeing that super rich in developing nations don't even compare to super rich in developed nations. Like there's sky above sky. My country's elites bow to world's elites.

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