HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Yep. Nearly everyone but equity owners is either hurting or not going anywhere while delivering more for the same or less. Graph after graph Robert Reich has put out there shows the dismalness of the situation. Another infographic video about the distribution of wealth in reality vs. perceived reality vs. desired: https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM

Somehow there is also a systematic economic double-standard that works for some but not others: "free markets" of dog-eat-dog inputs (i.e., suppliers), but less free markets on outputs (i.e., monopolies, mega corporations, patents, proprietary-ness, closed-source). Unregulated greed fixes all problems by the "invisible hand", right?

The wealth transfer from the working class - who generate it - to the wealthy continues!

Things have gotten much worse since this was published: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

I wonder how much wealth the 0.1% has compared to the rest of the 1%, because I'm sure the problem is about that 0.1% or 0.01%. Very rich people must have a lot of influence.

This chart is always quite revealing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

I made this to summarize:

https://i.imgur.com/BgoGzrI.jpg

> Sure.

You missed my point that they're not counted meaningfully. U-3 is what is typically reported, so the others are irrelevant.

The "health" of the economy is a nebulous, academic abstraction when there are 100 homeless people camping under freeway underpasses outside my window, no federal livable minimum wage, workers gradually being paid less and less over decades while expected to work more and more, swelling ranks of billionaires cashing in on socialism they bought, and the burgeoning ranks of un- and underemployed who go neglected (maybe that explains part of Trump's base?) and undercounted. The MSM loves to parrot how "great" the economy always is because that's what advertisers want to hear, but it's tone-deaf when there was (and may still well be) more real unemployment than during the height of the Great Depression.

Wealth equality and employment are all most people care about. No one cares about the "health" of the rich people's casino "economy."

Wealth Inequality in America

https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM

That's a straw man, nobody asked that inequality should go completely away.

The question is rather what is a healthy level of inequality and should the government work on increasing inequality.

Most people under estimate the amount of inequality in the US, this [1] is an awesome video illustrating it. Also there is some interesting research on modelling inequality as a phase change process and that there exist some point of no return after which inequality only increases towards a oligarchy/plutogarchy without a revolution type event [2]

[1] https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-ine...

Outrage is clickbait gold. So, that is production in for-profit blogging or pseudo-journalism, and also in the business of social media.

That said, Bill Gates is both a public figure and a billionaire, so is fair-game for a lot of criticism. He does set a good example, in general, with immense contributions to global public health and policy.

Also, there's no U-haul's behind Hearses, so I would buy 50 Singer Porsches and a 747-400ER and crash them into each other with a trebuchet. If someone has more money than they could ever spend, invest or give-away in a scalable manner, then why the hell not buy an aircraft-carrier or a hydrogen yacht?

Furthermore, balance sheet inequality is beyond severe in many countries yet there are people in various economic strata who seem to blissfully revel in denying the real pain of others; "Upton Sinclair effect" (paraphrasing: It's difficult to get someone to accept facts when they benefit from pretending they doesn't exist.). For more details and because it's not worth getting into politics online, I suggest Robert Reich's channel [0] and his brilliant documentary Inequality for All [1] and the Infographics video on the disconnect between perceived distribution, desired distribution and actual distribution [2].

0: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuDv5p8E-evaRSh542hDV5g

1: https://inequalityforall.com

2: https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM

Yeap. And for average people, that leaves a hollowed-out middle-class and not-yet-automated/underpaid tasks like caregiving, teaching, nursing, police, retail sales, retail foodservice, Amazon warehouse stocking, TaskRabbit and Uber driving. People are rightly freaking-out because their existences are threatened while simultaneously others are discussing who's going to be the first trillionaire (much more of the wealth created is only going to the very rich). It seems rational to argue that incel and domestic terrorists, rising homelessness and opioid epidemics are indirectly influenced by the socioeconomic fall-out of rust-belt decay.

Infographic video of how bad it really is: https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM

It's capitalism: cannibalize and sell-out the commonwealth, extract monies to the detriment of externalities borne by citizens on the vague, unfulfilled promises of jobs and tax paying workers because corporations own the political class. Welfare for the rich, crushing austerity and paycheck-to-paycheck 3 jobs/sleepless "trickledown" lies for everyone else.

Income inequality is so obscene that it's far worse than the Gilded Age. Watch this infographic chart video showing the current distribution: https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM

⬐ thanatropism

Income inequality is not the issue here or in the Gilded Age. It's monopoly power.

Of course, in the Gilded Age monopoly power was enabled and defended by capital concentration. Not so now: global interest rates are at a historical low, often pushing the negative barrier, and capital is so swamped that its owners are begging any fool with anything that call itself an idea to take it.

The microeconomic issue in each case is increasing returns to scale, which builds huge protective moats around the big industrial players. But now increasing returns to scale are enabled by nearly-free technology - industrial production in the gilded age required expensive and heavily patented machinery, while now every relevant tool is at hand, either for $0 or for peanuts.

It's not "monopoly capital" as made famous by American marxists such as Paul Sweezy. It's quickly drifting away from "capitalism" as defined by K. Marx himself. We need to understand the differences if we're going to protect and improve the lives of those less empowered to escape drudgery and the rat race.

⬐ jopsen

Capitalism doesn't have to cannibalize. Often it works to everyone's benefit.

Unions is also a legitimate force in capitalism. In many ways it could be good for Amazon. If gives them a way to deal evenly with their employees.

Of course, a union has to recognize that it's not blindly serving its members, if it drives companies out of business. Like hindering technological advancement by refusing automation.

⬐ geezerjay

> Unions is also a legitimate force in capitalism. In many ways it could be good for Amazon. If gives them a way to deal evenly with their employees.

This. Capitalism is all about freedom of association. Unions only start to become incompatible with capitalism if they start to force themselves as a monopoly to control who may or may not work for a company.

⬐ cmrdporcupine

I like to make the distinction between guilds (limiting access to professions and employers and controlling seniority and positions) and unions (collective bargaining). In most western countries the line between the two is heavily blurred, to the detriment of the union movement which has suffered heavily over the last 40 years.

⬐ geezerjay

> It's capitalism:

Actually, it's not. It's a page taken out of the old soviet playbook, where factory workers were pushed to increase production through means other than pay increases or productivity rewards, and played with psychological tricks such as appealing to nationalism or even conformance with the regime's ideal.

The exploitation trick is as old as time, but it's not specific to an economic system.

⬐ ams6110

> means other than pay increases

Hence the saying: "they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work."

⬐ maxxxxx

I always tell people that working in a big Corp feels like walking around in Eastern Germany while the wall was still up. Same kind of posters, 5 year plans, top down propaganda that has little resemblance with reality, "rewards" like T-shirts with motivational messages.

⬐ jahaja

This is the reason why some people called it state capitalism, since the only difference for the workers is who's the boss.

⬐ geezerjay

> This is the reason why some people called it state capitalism

Actually, it's not. State capitalism has absolutely no relation to how workers were used and abused by communist regimes.

⬐ jahaja

Care to explain?

For example, the following is from "The Failure of the Working Class" by Anton Pannekoek in 1946:

The workers of the world nowadays have two mighty foes, two hostile and suppressing powers over against them: the monopolistic capitalism of America and England, and Russian state capitalism. The former is drifting toward social dictatorship camouflaged in democratic forms; the latter proclaims dictatorship openly, formerly with the addition "of the proletariat," although nobody believes that any more.

⬐ _jal

The tension between capitalism and communism is a dispute about the optimal size of the firm.

⬐ maxlybbert

Ronald Coase’s paper, “The Nature of the Firm,” compares companies with the alternative of everybody being an independent contractor cooperating with other independent contractors on individual projects. I think it’s an interesting thought experiment, and it focuses on why companies operate in a authoritarian way internally.

Occasionally, companies try to organize with market principles internally, with divisions charging each other for services performed. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it turns into Sears.

this video tells what the average american thinks of the wealth distribution, vs reality (vs ideal): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

it's very enlightening.

USA problems are well known for decades now

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

A glowing example of how a huge economy can also be a terrible economy . That 25% is only the tip of the iceberg.

If Russia is the fall of communism , USA is the fall of capitalism. Two extremely stupid economic and political models.

Is it a coincidence that both countries have the most rich in the world and a terrible track record on wealth and income equality, workers and human rights ?

Nope

⬐ AnimalMuppet

> Is it a coincidence that both countries have the most rich in the world...

It is not true that both countries have the most rich in the world[sic].

Russia was never a rich country like the US - not before Communism, not during, and not after. It could create a good facade and a strong military, but that's not the same thing...

⬐ ionised

I believe he meant rich individuals, billionaires, oligarchs.

⬐ AnimalMuppet

Ah, I see. I agree, that probably is what he meant.

Well if as a country you seriously suck at wealth equality and defending basic human and worker rights that 25% seems pretty low. Stupidity after all loves hard work.

Of all this is just old news for researchers

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

Piketty argues, from extensive historical data, that the hi growth of the 1950s-1970s was unusual, and low growth is the norm.

So we might want to look at another aspect, such as how wealth is distributed - the low growth rate tends to accentuate the accumulation of growth on capital, so those who inherited a lot of wealth capture even more of it over time, without having to do anything with that capital [ such as investing in startups, building next gen transport systems ]. Which means we most likely need a much more aggressive tax on uber-high incomes and uber-large inheritance wealth.

[ Im not saying don't look at wealth creation technologies such as - nanoscale 3d printing, VR-work-from-home, asteroid-mining etc. ]

Reading Piketty's Capital is a bit like waking up in the matrix after taking the red pill - the gradual torrent of facts hits you viscerally, because you really had no idea things were this extreme.

As preparation, I recommend watching this short vid on wealth distribution - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

⬐ jgord

Another way to get this point across is -

The overall growth rate is ~2%, but if you happen to be very wealthy, the growth rate you experience [ on capital ] is ~6% to ~10%.

⬐ Amygaz

Piketty is one of the rare to actually pinpoint the problem and call it like it is. This NY Times article definitely does not, even if has some of the elements. Even early on it writes: "This trend helps explain why incomes have risen so slowly since the turn of the century". Maybe it is the other way around. I mean, if our economy is based on increasing production for the sake of increasing production, so by the same vain consumption needs to keep up, but then people can't afford consuming, or whatever they are consuming wasn't the result of value addition.

Then there is the CBO farce, and the use and abuse of GDP, and also believing to know what other people actually wants to buy, while also omitting to include what is it that 81% of the people with declining income can buy.

Without saying where they live that's meaningless. In San Francisco they are not even upper middle class, if at all, and they will be struggling even with their 150k. But even in cheaper areas, 150k to me is middle class.

The problem is that wealth/income is not normally distributed! It is heavily - heavily! - skewed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

I would not worry about any family with <250k annual income when thinking about "what do we do about the uneven distribution of income", I would let those people be. They are not the problem. Look at the top 0.01% (see http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21631129...).

⬐ dragontamer

Median household income in San Francisco is $83k. See this for details: http://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/california/san-francisco...

Even in the Bay Area (which these two are NOT in), they are making DOUBLE the typical Bay-Area median household.

You can't make DOUBLE the amount of money of the median family and then claim to be "middle class". It just doesn't work that way.

And FYI: there's a reason why there's a ton of anti-gentrification going on in San Francisco. The actual middle-class, who is trying to live on ~$80k combined income in that region, is not able to find a house (let alone the lower-class, who will earn much less than the median)

⬐ henrikschroder

> You can't make DOUBLE the amount of money of the median family and then claim to be "middle class". It just doesn't work that way.

If that family isn't middle class, what are they then?

⬐ dragontamer

Upper middle class, if anything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_middle_class

$150k is a lower-estimate for this family, they probably beat the $165k to qualify for top 5% household incomes in the country.

High amount of autonomy in their work, advanced degrees (beyond college: masters degree plus continuing education), significantly higher wages than everyone else... yeah, upper-middle class.

⬐ henrikschroder

Oh, I agree.

Ok, I think we keep talking past each other, because to me, upper middle class is just a subset of middle class. I don't think it's wrong for people who belong to it to describe themselves as middle class, because if you're in the upper middle class, you have a lot more in common with the rest of the middle class, than you have with the upper class.

⬐ Ar-Curunir

My family makes significantly over 150k per year, and we still consider ourselves middle class. Class isn't about income, it's about values and culture, as numerous articles linked elsewhere in the comments explain.

"Lower the taxes of businesses so that they can invest" - That's been the theory behind decades of such experiments in many countries. Worked out great, we all can see how the money keep s"trickling down".

That theory is actually very un-capitalistic: It assumes that only a few people know what is best for the majority. Because it's built into the system (and with a certain perverse logic, not at all irrational of course) that those who've had success are more likely to know how to have more of it.

So the system is actually incredibly anti-risk with money - in an age when "money" surely is not a limiting factor. Not overall - it is because a few have so much they don't find good investment opportunities (when you have billions, only hundreds of millions of opportunity at once make sense to even look at), but for the vast rest of us it is.

So it becomes a tautology: The system is set up to make it far more likely that the successful succeed more, and that is then used as justification for itself, "see, it's too risky to give resources to the inexperienced, data prove it". So we get ever more concentration of control ("money", "power" are indirect terms, "control" is what it comes down to. Th eproblem of the 0.01% isn't their jets, their yachts, their mansions, it is their control of too much of economic life at the expense of most everyone else.): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

⬐ nagrom

> That's been the theory behind decades of such experiments in many countries. Worked out great, we all can see how the money keep s"trickling down".

Do you have an example? I don't know of any serious economist that backs trickle-down theory except as a strawman, but many point to lower and flatter taxes that can be used to support market-based economics as enabling high productivity. The obvious country that backs this - the US - has done pretty well from it, as have a multitude of smaller nations (Hong Kong, Switzerland, Singapore, the UK, Canada, Australia).

Some countries with higher taxes but also based around a free market economy have done well - Germany is the prominent example and Sweden and Finland. Some have succumbed to corruption and are failing, or on the brink of failure (Italy, Spain, Greece).

The opposite - high taxes, lack of a market and extreme governmental intervention - has certainly been tried in many, many countries. Most (all?) have failed badly in a way that has destroyed generations of productivity (North Korea, Cuba, The Soviet Union, Venezuela, etc.) and really fucked-up their societies that way - usually accompanied by secret police squads, the crushing of liberties and very low quality-of-life.

> That theory is actually very un-capitalistic: It assumes that only a few people know what is best for the majority.

That's actually very 'capitalistic' - the man with the capital makes the ultimate decisions as to where it gets invested. Perhaps you meant democratic?

I'm not convinced by the rest of your argument either. The capital owner usually employs many people to invest portions of the capital into smaller investment opportunities - it's not like Bill Gates has to invest all of his fortune into just one opportunity is it? If anything, this site is based around the idea of giving capital to the unexperienced to start businesses with promising ideas - that's pretty much the exact theoretical definition of angel investors, incubators and VCs.

One might argue that these institutions suffer from cronyism and don't do their job as well as they should, but their job is after all to re-allocate accrued capital to value-producers in a risk-balanced way across a broad portfolio which, I think, is what you seem to want to advocate.

⬐ Noseshine

    > Do you have an example? 

A not too large and not too small and recent example - using the whole of the US is more muddled also because of larger timescales which include the ability to blame other developments - see Kansas.

While taking neuroscience it occurred to me that one could make an argument - depending on what one wants to show, the usefulness of a model is always limited by the intended use - to see a similarity between neurons and humans: The system outcome is not the sum of what each neuron "knows", and each neuron is really "ignorant" and "stupid".

For example, why are people bothered that there are people who are into conspiracy theories? Or some who see dangers everywhere, while for others everything (everyone) is good? Maybe that's their role in the "humanity computer"! Some neurons' (humans') task is to be extra-paranoid so that the majority don't have to. and others are the opposite, nothing bothers them. What seems "crazy" is, when looked at from a higher plane, quite possibly a very reasonable organisation. Maybe "humanity" does not - should not - make sense on an individual level (i.e. ever single human be "sensible", "reasonable"), but on the level of "humanity". Why this obsession that everybody has to agree, and people who don't are vilified? If all neurons in the brain were to agree you'd have a very dysfunctional brain. What it needs are complex connections and (feedback) loops that enhance and suppress output depending on the overall input. "Overall" is important - not "what an individual (human or neuron) sees", but the sum of all inputs into the system. It does not have to make sense on an individual level.

I like how Sherlock Holmes says it (short, 30 seconds): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuIMmwJbnco

The attempt to understand "humanity" and what's going on on this planet on an individual human level is doomed to fail. The most you can get is a "feeling" that you get it -but if you do, it's wrong, and it's really bad. If you also happen to have some "power" (individuals having too much power is a bad construct) the outcome can be disastrous.

The things the linked article talked about I use to mention in the context of "magic". You know, what the fantasy books and movies are all about. They have "magic items" - whose main property is that nobody knows what they actually are or how they work, where they come from. Sounds familiar? I don't even have to look at an iphone.

This wonderful story sums it up very well I think (and please ignore the object that it uses, here "Coke", it's not about Coke, so no need to discuss the merits of overpriced unhealthy sugar-water): https://medium.com/@kevin_ashton/what-coke-contains-221d4499...

Quote:

> The number of individuals who know how to make a can of Coke is zero. The number of individual nations that could produce a can of Coke is zero. This famously American product is not American at all. Invention and creation is something we are all in together. Modern tool chains are so long and complex that they bind us into one people and one planet. They are not only chains of tools, they are also chains of minds: local and foreign, ancient and modern, living and dead — the result of disparate invention and intelligence distributed over time and space.

And look, I don't even have to explain my thoughts myself! Which, if I had been born in the forest away from thousands of years of human experience and exchange with other humans in time and space, I would probably never have developed in the first place. Instead I can go and use a few words of "glue" to link to pieces written by others - that they themselves owe to others.

Think about that in the next discussion about high-earning people "they earn it"! Do they? Back to the example "born alone on the forest". If someone develops a Facebook or a Tesla or a Dell computer from such roots, then I agree, they deserve billions. For clarification: I'm not talking about the 1%, I'm talking about the 0.01% (The Economist: http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21631129... Some charts in a short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM)

⬐ tomrod

> For example, why are people bothered that there are people who are into conspiracy theories?

I upvoted, because you bring up a good general idea if we consider all humanity as holonic items in a larger system. However, in the case of conspiracy, most individuals find their time wasted.

⬐ reitzensteinm

Or maybe the cynical and paranoid strain of thought that goes along with conspiracy theories has been historically important, but obsoleted by the sheer scale of our modern civilization and the complexity of the problems we face.

Being irrationally paranoid that the next tribe over is going to attack you might actually pay dividends.

Being irrationally paranoid that Obama is spraying us all with mind control chemtrails... not so much.

⬐ CharlesW

> However, in the case of conspiracy, most individuals find their time wasted.

I like this idea too, or at least it makes me at least a bit sympathetic to people I tend to dismiss. And I suppose, the key word is "most".

⬐ Noseshine

I refer to Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Black Swan events. Or fire insurance. Yes, it probably is wasted. However, that is the point: employ a few (few!) neurons on looking out for the "crazy", the unlikely, the improbable. Hope that it's all wasted.

But just like with insurance, when it is wasted you say "Thank god" (I'm an atheist but I can't think of an atheist phrase :-) ), you don't say "what a waste" (that I paid for insurance). You can be sure you have (quite) a number of neurons that if you knew what they do would think are "waste".

Also, the point is for you as someone not into that stuff to ignore them. Not like some of my Facebook friends (former colleagues) who seem to spend most of their day hunting for what they think are examples of the most stupid humanity can create. I'm not so sure that it isn't them who really are stupid. If they just ignored "crazy", nobody would even know such people exist. Instead more people seem intent on bringing the most obscure ideas and idiocies some human somewhere developed to the light that it would otherwise never even have.

⬐ pimlottc

I read something similar positing a positive role for aberrant behavior due to mental illness - if everyone eats the strange mushroom, the entire village might die, but if it's just Crazy Darrell then the rest of us can benefit by seeing what happens to him.

⬐ mwfunk

The problem I usually have with conspiracy theories is that typically they're not pitched as "what-if" scenarios for people to keep in the backs of their minds as remote possibilities. Typically they're pitched as things that people have absolute faith in because it allows them to give in to their worst fears and biases in the absence of evidence.

For a lot of people, conspiracy theories are the thing that lets them not just believe in their own personal boogeymen, but (in their view) can give them a moral obligation to go around making other people believe in their boogeymen as well. For example, 9-11 truthers generally don't just present a handful of odd facts and say "that's odd, I wonder if there's something more going on here". No, they will present a handful (at best) of odd facts and tell you that they are 100% certain about what really happened. They're not saying that the handful of odd facts supporting their argument is proof, rather they're saying that unless you can disprove their (unknowable and likely undebunkable) handful of odd facts, that they must be 100% correct about everything. There are a lot of parallels with religion, and IMO some of the same cognitive processes are at work.

Those sorts of conspiracy theorists aren't offering offbeat counterarguments to prevailing views- those sorts of conspiracy theorists are willfully injecting noise and superstition into the "humanity computer" (or the zeitgeist, or the collective unconscious, or civilization's ongoing internal monologue, or however we choose to think of it). That's my main issue with conspiracy theories (and a lot of religion, and a lot of political discourse...).

This is the primary problem with the discourse. People can agree pretty universally a tyrant, dictator, or emperor is a bad thing. You do not want heredity to determine power, and you do not want one individual to have violent dominance over anyone else, because you will often be the "anyone else" if you are not the aggressor.

But that is about the only difference between how the modern gears of power operate versus how they did millennia ago. Rather than just kill your brothers and claim the throne and execute the dissidents and having your firstborn son inherit the crown from you, your children inherit ludicrous wealth that translates into the same power to buy the violent arm of the state for your own ends.

Except now the peasantry cannot just storm the castle, behead the king, and replace him with another. There are kings from across the globe that control your society through its economy, and the present incumbents of radically concentrated power will argue everyone is king when they own wealth in the global capitalistic system.

That, in practice, is pure deception[1], but you will have people by thousands at the bottom congregating to defend those off the chart, despite the ones at the top constantly using their power to harm all those below them.

If we did have what the rich claim we do - democratized distributed power - we would need dramatically less wealth inequality, because that wealth, and the distribution of it, represents who has authority in the global capitalist economy. That is not an argument for socialism, communism, fascism, anything political. It is a reflection of tautological truths about having a global capitalistic market system that determines who is powerful by way of capital and fiat ownership, and that if you want to have a more democratic humanity you must first deal with the fact that money is power, and when power is aggregated into the hands of very few, you don't have democracy.

We are not at the point to argue practicalities, or dogma, or anything else beyond understanding. What we need is just for near universal acknowledgement that this paradigm exists, is how the world operates today, and that you probably would want to do something about it because we can already universally agree we don't like tyrants, and that we should not like tyrants in any form they take, even the ones that are not immediately and obviously apparent to most.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

⬐ morgante

> Rather than just kill your brothers and claim the throne and execute the dissidents and having your firstborn son inherit the crown from you, your children inherit ludicrous wealth that translates into the same power to buy the violent arm of the state for your own ends.

Except inherited wealth is at all-time lows.

If you look at the richest people in the world today, the majority of them made their own way into those ranks. They didn't inherit it from anyone.

⬐ Kinnard

Citation?

⬐ morgante

http://www.businessinsider.com/richest-people-in-the-world-2...

⬐ zanny

I should have worded it better, but it is not just strictly biological children. There is an entire cultural social class above what most call "rich" that encompasses the heads of major universities, companies, investment firms, and governments that represent a fraction of one percent of the population but have consistently controlled the vast majority of capital and have gradually increased their ownership stake since the most democratized periods surrounding World War 2 (though they were only so democratized because the pool of people in consideration was smaller - part of the problem in modern global capitalism is that almost everyone on the planet is now a participant, and thus there are now billions of people to exploit and bully than millions in industrialized western states that simply cut ties to the rest of the world with the death of classical imperialism in the early 20th century).

In reality, money might not stay in one families direct hands, but upward mobility is at generational lows in the west, and in particular the number of successful new businesses, and those which elevate anyone out of the working class into either middle or upper class, are diminishing significantly[1].

[1]: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2015/sdn1513.pdf

⬐ brador

Would a yearly single flat tax of XX% of total net worth for every human in the world solve the problem? Essentially a literal redistribution of wealth, but could it work?

⬐ zanny

Flat taxes do not work, because the established system is one where there are two classes globally - the consumer class, that is productive to consume resources with the fruits of their labor, and the capital class, that owns the means of production and use the wealth that creates them to make more wealth.

If you take 30% of everyones income, the working class loses standard of living and upward mobility while the capitalist class reevaluates their investments to insure that, despite a 30% annual expense, you are growing your wealth regardless.

It is also a dangerous precedent. If your intention to tax sufficiently high to start peeling back the democracy distorting wealth inequality, the wealthy will just flee you, and you must remember - as they exist today, they are the arbiters of society, and dictate who lives and dies through economics. If anyone outright attacked them like that, you should expect a war in return.

⬐ brador

That's why I said a global yearly total flat tax on total net worth, not income.

If that could be made to work and the pieces set up to work, would it be a solution?

And what, 80% of the income?

Nationally they have like 80% of the wealth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

⬐ dustcoin

Using the numbers in this article[1], 1% of the taxpayers make only about 24% of the total income in CA, not 80%.

[1] http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/article9349178...

⬐ elsewhen

the top 1% earned 28% of the income and paid 45% of the taxes: https://www.ftb.ca.gov/aboutFTB/Tax_Statistics/Reports/2013/...

>The analysis is broken by the focus on the top 1%. They should be looking at the top 0.1%, or smaller.

I think sometimes a picture really does say 1,000 words. This short info-graphic video makes is pretty clear how dramatically top heavy wealth distribution in the U.S. is:

https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM

It also does a nice job of comparing the "ideal", to the "perception" to the actual.

This is cool. One pet project that I want to do (one day...) is to generate what a wealth distribution graph based on answers to a questionnaire such as:

- How much more should a 50 year old earn more than a 20 year old on average ideally? - How much should the lifetime earning of someone holding a PhD be over someone with only a high school degree - there should be at least some premium for going through extra years of school right? - What's a reasonable amount of inequality due to people choosing a career in which they will be happier, at some cost to the paycheck? - Should people be allowed to work more (e.g. 50h/week) if they wish? This will increase inequality. - etc

A lot of those questions would be very difficult to model, but I bet the graph would look a lot more inequal at the end than most people envision their "ideal" graph to look like (which is shown in this classic video on wealth distribution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM)

For what it's worth, I agree, I think capitalism + some rule tweaks is fine. The culprit is really the beauty of capitalism: accelerating returns on investment. If you get to the head of the race you tend to start to accrue more and more wealth. The problem is that it's sucking the pond dry as there is a relatively stable money supply and much of it is circulating in the stratosphere (often as corporate stock buybacks). Hence the need for rule tweaks to enhance recirculation.

This is a cool video I saw a while back that shows the current issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

I also agree that movement between countries is a modern problem that probably invalidates the old solution (unless multiple countries coordinate - unlikely). So, we have a problem that wealth will continue to concentrate absent controls on the distribution.

The US has a lot of political problems right now, and the major commonality is that people at the bottom get the shaft every time. I think it's too much to try to solve every problem facing civilization in one conversation though, so I'll stick to distributions. ;)

For what it's worth, believe me, I'm not a hippie. I want to start a company and get rich one day like all of you. I just think it's important to pay attention to the steady state of the system we are participating in.

The youtube infographic video doesn't work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

I think the original source is on a youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM . The video aggregates data from multiple sources:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequalit... http://danariely.com/2010/09/30/wealth-inequality/ http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/03/334156/top-five-... http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/19/news/economy/ceo-pay/index.h...

How reliable these sources are, I'm not sure. If the information is wrong, I wouldn't blame it on Upworthy, it's a distribution channel after all.

⬐ zyx321

I'm not disputing the video. I haven't been able to watch it yet.

I'm saying we shouldn't be supporting the likes of Upworthy under any circumstances.

> because there’s no one in the system who has any idea what to do with the money

Hey look, validation of my outlook on basic income.

Links the go-to source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

For some reason, we seem to have forgotten that the best investment is in people. You want your innovation, all the potential is trapped living on scraps a day in soul crushing poverty or near-poverty, while you move around your trillions with nothing to spend it on - because you are literally running out of things to get you more money, because nobody else has any left to give.

⬐ None

None

That and the absolute horrible response to the word Socialism which is equated directly with Communism by large parts of the electorate.

The US system is very good at produce big winners at the expense of everyone else - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM astounded me even though I already knew the distribution was inequitable.

⬐ SNagai

Very enlightening.

This is a terrible website tricking me into liking it on facebook. Here's the video on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

⬐ jschulenklopper

Sorry. I guess my social media button filter is tighter than yours, as I didn't see Like-buttons at all. On top, the introduction on UpWorthy, mentioning the authors reaction when watching the story unfold, added anticipation for watching it.

Of course it's possible, wealth just needs to be redistributed fairly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

Good to see this presentation evolving.

Related graph:

"Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

+100 for corporations -1 for consumers

According to the book "Diet for a Small Planet" the beef industry gets $50 billion a year of free water from the federal government. Doesn't sound like fair market capitalism to me. It does sound like our elected officials can be easily bribed.

The super rich have won. Hopefully not too far of topic, but a friend just sent me this video link about income inequality - an eye opener! http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM&desktop_uri=%...

⬐ barbs

Nicer URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

⬐ batgaijin

Ever heard of the term 'bread and circus'?

⬐ mark_l_watson

Exactly right. And there are uncomfortable parallels with our situation and the last 100 or so years of the Roman Empire.

⬐ gamechangr

This is just silly, based upon only 5,000 peoples "expectations".

⬐ zizee

It's amazing to me that anyone could argue that this income inequality is the "way it's meant to be".

Some people suggest that people won't be motivated to achieve if they can't have more than a billion dollars. I can't believe that it would make a noticeable difference.