U.S. Wealth Distribution | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Wealth Distribution

joshworth.com

13 pointsadg9 comments

This visualization is stark, but I would love to dive into the real reasons as to why this could be a bad thing, and how we got to this point. Here are my assumptions, please let me know if any are interesting, correct, or wrong:

1. "Velocity of money" is a concept which appears to indicate that giving money to a non-rich person is far better for the economy than giving it the to the wealthy.

2. Humans are just not evolved for being on the rich side of this level of wealth disparity, and given how all that works, we never will be. Most individuals on the wealth side begin to act really strangely when confronted with the reality. I think many of us here have seen this change occur in most people who became very wealthy. It's natural, but does not appear sustainable at this scale.

3. As worker efficiency has increased with technology, nealry all the spoils seem to have gone to those with capital, which led to this stark graph.

I think you DO want a distribution in this shape, but we need to turn down the contrast. It needs to be smoother from the top.

I should have been a bit more clear. To me, a disparity is "normal." The problem is the current scale of the disparity, and especially its seemingly unstoppable rate of increase.

What is going to be the end state if we proceed with the status quo?

What spread do people think is ideal?

For context: currently, the median net worth of a US household is ~$192K. That means Elon is worth roughly 6 orders of magnitude more than the average household (not just person).

I have my own vague idea what order of magnitude difference I would target, but I'd like to think I could be swayed an order of magnitude or more up or down with good, well-reasoned arguments. As such, I'm curious to hear others' opinions before I pollute the discussion with my own.

I think this is related:

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com

and the answer is the Nixon Shock

Thanks! But you forgot about me (in the bottom 1%). My net worth is well below -$94.52K, which seems to be the floor of the bottom 1%.

I’ve been pushing it lower — just trying to find out how deep it could go! :)

Never thought my $3 makes me richer than 11% of Americans.

A lot of people talk about how the rich should not be taxed because the government isn't efficient at spending money, that it's a path to socialism/communism, or that the money will be given to people who haven't earned it.

Tax policy should not be argued about in terms of how the money gets spent, but the importance of individual people not having so many resources that they can buy news organizations, social media platforms, private intelligence, or to put them beyond the reach of law.

It's not important to redistribute other people's wealth. It's important to prevent people from getting so wealthy that they can individually challenge the power of the government itself.

Musk's net worth is greater than than Russia's yearly military, or the combined military budget of both India and Germany.

Elon Musk's net worth is about the same as Ukraine's GDP.

The US intelligence community budget, which is responsible for toppling governments, has a budget of ~66 billion. Elon musk could fund 3 entire American intelligence apparati for a year on his own.

I thought the graph was broken at the 100% level, it is not.

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