
The 62 richest people have as much wealth as half the world - doener
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/17/news/economy/oxfam-wealth/index.html?sr=twcnni011816oxfam-wealth0125AMVODtopLink&linkId=20438205
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tmnvix
I wouldn't have a problem with this if that wealth were tied up in, say,
artworks and other 'intangibles'.

I do have a problem with this because that wealth is largely, I assume,
representative of claims of ownership of resources that are fundamental
necessities of human life (e.g. land, water, fish stocks/quotas, etc).

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fallous
How about breaking it down by nation in an attempt to show how lopsided
certain economic systems or legal frameworks are vs others? That would at
least seem to provide a more complete view of the potential problem.

I'd also be interested in seeing a break-down per nation regarding wealth
distribution in order to measure what appears to work and what does not from
an economic/legal framework.

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ratsmack
I might note that a lot of that wealth is in the unrealized labor of the many
people that are in debt. I guess you could say that if all of those indebted
people suddenly died, the wealth would evaporate.

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fallous
And then the question of "was it really wealth to begin with" must be asked.
Wealth is a function of added value.

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javajosh
I'm having a tough time wrapping my head around a) what this means, and b)
what it implies about the world economy.

Naively, it sounds really bad because how could any individual produce more
than tens or hundreds of millions of individuals? If they do not produce more
than nations, then how is it fair that they have so much? Another intuition is
that this is the product of technology being adopted much more rapidly by the
titans of industry than by others, to great effect decreasing cost and
increasing profit.

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autokad
see my comment above, they are comparing net worth which is meaningless in
most ways. while it sounds like the richest 30 or so people have more money
than the entire world, they couldn't even pull their money and buy Calcutta.

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autokad
they are comparing net worth, and even in america most people are worth 0 (or
less). so yeah, lowly me is worth more than half a billion people, but their
combined wages (even minute) would dwarf mine. but its not like you could take
the 1%'s wealth and give it to everyone else and it would make any meaningful
impact.

even if you took the top 10 richest people in the world and gave it to every
person in just america, thats only about 1600$/person. They'd still be poor
and there'd still be a richest 1% and apple would have sold a lot more
iphones.

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Gustomaximus
> Even in america most people are worth 0 (or less)

Wrong. In the US only about 4.1% of people in US have negative net worth (wiki
stat). The rest with debt such as mortgages and the like have assets against
this debt so while they owe the bank $300k type thing they have a $500k assets
against this.

> even if you took the top 10 richest people in the world and gave it to every
> person in just america, thats only about 1600$/person. They'd still be poor
> and there'd still be a richest 1%

There will always be a richest 1%. Also ideally in a redistribution sence you
wouldnt give to everyone, you'd redistribute to the bottom X%, and this would
drastically change the $1,600 figure oyu quote (I'll trust your maths). And
don't be distracted form the problem being addresses here is how much that 1%
(or far fewer %) own of a nations wealth, not that there is a 1% class. It's
not just the money either, extreme wealth can give influence and have other
negative effects e.g. power within the political system, unproductive hoarded
capital in a nation, and ability to monopolies by buying assets etc.

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autokad
you might want to fact check, about 50% of the US has <=0 net worth.

if you sent the top 1 % to the death camps, by the laws of math, there will be
a NEW top 1%. and guess what? because of my statements above, they would still
be exponentially richer than the bottom.

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sirmiller
The common misconception being that the poor are poor because the rich are
rich;

But there is no causality. Not even a correlation.

