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Comment by MentalM | Hacker News Reader

> It's hard for those who have no choice, and those who've made different choices, to relate to the insatiable appetite of billionaires.

If we talk about US, your statement is outrageous hypocrisy.

Median income world-wide is less than 50 cents per hour. Average American person "who have no choice" could start working for like 30+ times more at any moment they want and choose any US government they want.

And how much money from this 30+ times more they have "donated or paid enough taxes" that their several dollars per hour "would be distributed far and wide"? Zero. So we are talking about insatiable appetite of Americans, not Billionaires. Because average American person has literally the same choice you are talking about, and literally choosing "having more everything" instead of "distribute far and wide".

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Where did you get that 50 cent statistic from? The closest I could find was a dataset from 2006-12 where the median per-capita income was $4k. Even if you extrapolate to working 40h a week and 52 weeks/year (which you can’t, because there’s some correlation between having lower income in this dataset and working part-time), that is still around $2/hr.

In https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-hourly-earnings I could not find a single country even close to what you have said, except for Burundi at $0.6/hr. The rest are all $2 and up.

The average American struggles to pay rent, utilities, and food, actually. They can’t just go donate 99.999% of their wealth and still survive like billionaires could.

> The average American struggles to pay rent, utilities, and food, actually.

Do you think your average Billionaire do not struggles to pay for their 500m yacht or flock of supermodels and Hollywood stars?

> They can’t just go donate 99.999% of their wealth and still survive like billionaires could.

They totally can. An average American worker with 12 dollars salary in terms of excess cash is way closer to Elon Musk than to a tantalum mine worker in the Congo who earns 22 cents per hour.

Not 99.999% obviously, but they can easily pay 80%, 90%, 95%, or even 98% of their incomes as fair share to people, who really need it. But they choose not to. They choose to get more rent, more utilities, more food (even if they will literally die from that amount). Or even new iPhone, that has been created by those highly underpaid tantalum mine workers. From the point of view of the average human on planet Earth, average American just as much exploiter as any billionaire.

> but they can easily pay 80%, 90%, 95%, or even 98% of their incomes

Not american but I'd presume food, protection from the elements and healthcare costs arefor the vast majority higher than what's left over even if they only afford themselves the minimum no?

Where I live the absolute bottom segment of housing is proportionally more expensive and the price inflexible because smaller or shitier quite frankly doens't exist or is illegal.

> I'd presume food, protection from the elements and healthcare costs arefor the vast majority higher than what's left over even if they only afford themselves the minimum no?

Obviously no. What a hypocrisy and shifting of blame. "The minimum" you'd get if you are working for less than 20 cents per hour. When you are working for several dollars per hour, you are drowning in luxury comparing to the rest of the world and refusing to pay your fair share to other people, whose work you are appropriating.

> Where I live the absolute bottom segment of housing

That is the same as talking about "absolute bottom segment of housing in which billionaires are living". I mean, duh. Your bottom segment of housing (food, protection from the elements, healthcare) is literally a function of your bottom segment of income, it is not the "minimum".

>Obviously no. What a hypocrisy and shifting of blame.

Obviously yes. Your effort to equate the ability to scale down of billionaires to people who struggle to afford a shoebox appartment and lifesaving procedures if they were to fall ill is ghoulish. "

A lot of those a bit above the minimum do indeed spend more on what were historically luxuries because those luxuries now cost a fraction of their historical price whilst housing and such has typically gotten more expensive.

>That is the same as talking about "absolute bottom segment of housing in which billionaires are living".

It is not in any way shape or form the same because billionaires can go lower.

> it is not the "minimum".

The alternative is no housing (or often moving in with parents) so i'd argue it is. i'll remind you that a tent on the sidewalk isn't exactly legal everywhere.

If you’re going to go after Americans then I guess anyone around the world not living in a run down shack in the middle of nowhere without water and electricity is also taking advantage. Americans are well off compared to a lot of places but not the whole rest of the world, not even close. Get some perspective.

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