Wealth inequality in America [video] | Hacker News Reader

Wealth inequality in America [video]

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20 pointsspooneybarger11 comments

What wasn't mentioned explicitly in the video, but was clear from the graphics, is that the top 1% owns more total money than the bottom 80% put together.

Not the top 1% versus the bottom 20 or 40%, not the top 20% versus the bottom 80%; no, the top 1% versus the bottom 80%, almost the entire population.

The US is clearly not owned by the American people anymore. It's owned by a tiny elite that's completely separate from normal society.

The big problem is the 1%'s lobbying power, and lobbying to increase/lift political spending, or these super pacs

Money is just playing way too large of role in the politics of the people

I think if we could fix democracy to be more fair the inequalities of wealth would reduce, but that is a steep up hill battle given the power they have :)

What percent of the total money do you think the top 1% should own?

In before the flagging squad. Keep calm and remember: your job as a hacker is to eliminate as many jobs as possible and enjoy your cut of the productivity gains while you can :)

Edit: And sure enough, the story is getting penalized and is at the bottom of the front page :)

You call it "eliminating jobs", I call it "freeing up humans from doing pointless work"

The point of life isn't employment. There are so many incredible problems to solve in this universe. Humans are very smart and creative, and having them do any task that doesn't fully leverage their intelligence and creativity is a waste. That's why we automate.

At present time: job = need money to survive in our current society

In an ideal future (not here, not now): job = personal development in some desired activity

So in the current reality we live in now, not having a job is (still) not freeing humans, its almost the reverse - its casting humans out of economic power, which in turn is reducing the humans ability to have a normal life

Of course - freeing humans from their jobs reduces their economic power. But that's expected. Remember that humans aren't entitled to economic power by default. We need to earn it. If a machine has more economic power than a human, then that human needs to gain the skills and knowledge in order to regain their relevance in the economy.

I'm not saying this like this is how things "should be". This is how things are today, and how they have been since the dawn of the industrial revolution. The only difference is that today we have even better machines, so it's harder for humans to compete.

The country is no longer of its citizens, but is owned by an elite

The government works for the country's elite, against its citizens

Democracy is just all fucked-up... I thinks this is another sign showing that in the near future we will have to confront and evolve our society: our grandparents had 2 world-wars, we will have now our share of social change which I believe will be a "political-war"

Hope not, but all signs point into that same direction, all around the ocidental civilization

Inequality is a problem, but charts like these made with linear scales are disingenuos IMO. Power laws ppl!

I'd feel better about believing the content if information sources were supplied. I mean, anyone could just have made up any old graphs and produced such a video. Always source.

Americans really have a bad sense of numbers. The ideal chart is basically impossible. How could the top 20% only own three times of wealth of the bottom 20%?

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