
The Richest Rich Are in a Class by Themselves - applecore
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-03/top-tenth-of-1-percenters-reaps-all-the-riches
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mmorett
Yet _another_ thread full of HNers sitting back and contemplating various ways
to take other people's money like a Soviet central planning committee. Can you
fuckers stop worrying about how much money someone else makes or whether they
got it thru inheritance. It's not your money. It's none of your business.

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ChuckMcM
Interesting, the magic number is $100M[1], at least in the Bay Area that seems
to be the number most folks are shooting for when they consider themselves
"rich". Clearly I have a long way to go and not much runway left :-)

[1] _" To be in the top 0.01 percent—that’s the 1 Percent club’s 1 Percent
club—required net worth of $100 million."_

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kenster07
I would argue that the wealthy are doing what they have an incentive to do,
which is to hoard wealth. The problem is, rather than their wealth "trickling
down" throughout the economy from their clouds, it is sitting in their bank
accounts or estates, earning interest. Can you blame them? They are simply
adapting to the incentives put in place by our economic system.

Rather than make any dead-end accusations about wealthy people being good vs.
evil, the focus should be on altering the system such that people are given
the right incentives to do what is best for the economy as a whole.

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gyardley
Like a lot of our political discourse these days, this is just dickering over
the precise definition of 'kulak'.

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jamesblonde
We are neither revolted nor have we revolted.

In 2014, the 85 richest people have wealth equal to that of the poorest 3.5
billion — half of the world’s population [Oxfam report 2013]. The wealth of
the richest one percent of people in the world is 65 times the total wealth of
the bottom half of the world's population. And history will remember the IT
industry as the poster-boy for the economic inequality that defines our age.

But, we, the workers of the IT industry, are neither revolted nor have we
revolted. Instead, we have happily bought into the myth that we too could
become as wealthy as Mark Zuckerberg. Our golden goose algorithm goes as
follows: (1) get experience (be poor), (2) found a company and work hard (be
poor for a bit longer), then (3) sell the company (get rich). Then we can
either retire or return to step (2) as an investor (the highest of castes,
exceeding even founders).

We are as stupid as the general population who believe we all can aspire to be
members of the one-percenters.

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pvnick
>We are as stupid as the general population who believe we all can aspire to
be members of the one-percenters.

Why would you want to be? You think having that much wealth would make you
happy? Why not be satisfied with living a comfortable life of plenty?

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jamesblonde
Plenty of social studies show that median happiness is lower in societies with
relatively higher income inequality. So, while you may be the exception and
can be happy while your neighbours have more than you, most people aren't.

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bowerbird
even 0.1% overstates the real number of the ruling class.

google tells me there are some 1600+ billionaires today.

those are the guys (and a few girls) who are really dirty. you can't get (or
stay) that rich without hurting people. this is the locus of greed that will
sacrifice the planet rather than "give in to someone else having more than
me". these are the high-stakes players, the ones who _really_ pull the
strings. everyone else is just their string-puppet.

it's also a small enough number that we can closely examine every single one
of these individuals to solidly _confirm_ that their avarice and power-broking
is truly despicable, so we can confidently brand them as an enemy of the
people. this will put them on notice, and give them an opportunity to "opt
out" of their bad behaviors and gain our reprieve. let them keep their money
and a lavish lifestyle, but only _if_ they can actually reign in their
destructive actions.

recognizing the value of a nice sonorous phrase, i suggest "the filthy 1500",
so we will set our focus appropriately.

and, given that these are world-class competitive bastards, i'd predict that
many will work so they can _make_ the list.

-bowerbird

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bowerbird
-3 on that one.

i forget this is the tech hangout for the wanna-be-rich.

so now i'm sitting here trying to decide whether i can come up with something
that will make you all understand how the super-duper-massively-rich have
rigged the game.

poisoned the planet in their winner-take-all grudge-match, killed off animals
like they were pit-bulls in a dog-fight, treated the polar ice-caps like ice-
sculptures at a party, and kept throwing bigger rocks (a.k.a. bombs) at each
other.

and by the time the split shifts the span, and you _might_ figure it out (or
maybe not even then), it'll be too late.

way too late.

but i can't come up with anything, except just to say it, and since (as i just
said) it'll be too late anyway, then i guess it doesn't even really have to be
said at all, eh?

so yeah, chase your dreams, kids, and try to become rich...

probably best not to have any kids of your own, though, because you might find
yourself getting attached to them, and worrying about their future, which they
will never see, because the human race ran out of time before they got old.

-bowerbird

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zomgbbq
Is it more accurate to describe wealth ranges as standard deviations from the
mean rather than a linear percentage?

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applecore
Not really. Wealth is more accurately described by a power-law distribution.

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morgante
Personally, I don't have a problem with income inequality. If you work harder
and are smarter than others, it seems reasonable for you to enjoy the spoils
of that work.

I do, however, have a huge problem with wealth inequality. For the most part,
it's attributable to inherited wealth and dynastic fortunes. Even after
decades of hard work (and a salary well into the 1%), your net worth will
still be a pittance to the size of people's inherited fortunes.

I have not once heard a compelling argument for why inheritance is a good
thing for society. It's the opposite of social mobility and equal opportunity
(supposedly American ideals) and only serves to concentrate capital in the
hands of those with zero demonstrable ability to manage it effectively.

It might be politically untenable, but I'd support a 100% estate tax.

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pvnick
>I have not once heard a compelling argument for why inheritance is a good
thing for society.

You must not have kids, do you? It may not be good for society, but do you
seriously want to prohibit parents from being able to pass things down to
their children? That's a bit of a monstrous proposition, don't you think? Many
families attach emotional significance to tangible property (land, a house,
furniture, life insurance, etc), and stealing that from them because "you
didn't earn that" is morally reprehensible.

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morgante
> You must not have kids, do you? It may not be good for society, but do you
> seriously want to prohibit parents from being able to pass things down to
> their children?

I don't have kids yet, but I do not intend to leave anything to them once I
do. I'll make sure they get a good education, but will be donating my estate
to charity.

> Many families attach emotional significance to tangible property (land, a
> house, furniture, life insurance, etc), and stealing that from them because
> "you didn't earn that" is morally reprehensible.

It's no more "morally reprehensible" than any other taxation. In fact,
compared to "stealing" my personal wages (ie. income taxes), it's
significantly more moral—it was never there's in the first place.

~~~
crusso
_but will be donating my estate to charity_

I find that people throw out that line and keep to it about as well as people
keep to their diets.

They make proclamations, but when it comes time to actually NOT put their kids
in their Will, they balk. Once you have kids, they become a part of you. And
jeez, wait until you have grandkids. That completely upends what you think of
as "important".

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hooande
Focusing on the richest can be more gratifying than focusing on the poorest.
Everyone likes to hear stories about people with lots of money. It's
aspirational in the "some day, that will be me" or "can you imagine?" forms.
But it's not the most productive way to understand income inequality.

The real metrics we should be looking at are how poor are the poorest people.
How many gallons of milk or loaves of bread can someone buy with minimum
wages? Does the current level of social mobility allow someone to escape from
poverty within their life time? The issue isn't about how much more money the
super rich have than the rest of us. It's about how we can help the poor to
have enough to survive.

Counting other peoples' money is a vulgar pursuit. It's sad that typing a
celebrity's name into google often leads to a "how much is ________ worth"
autocomplete suggestion. Being fascinated with the rich is understandable, but
just a little more focus on the poor would benefit us all. Our startups and
apps need paying customers, and there's only so much that rich people will
buy. If we can configure our economy in such a way that the middle class is
larger, more people will have money to spend on all kinds of things. Then
maybe more of us can move into the top 2% or 3%, while leaving the megarich
alone to focus on their own funds.

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jal278
When talking about income inequality it may be too narrow to only look at "how
poor are the poorest people," because what's important in an inequality is the
increasingly vast disparity between the poorest and the richest.

Focusing on the disparity is important because it highlights that there is
systematic concentration of wealth, i.e. that the economic game seems to be
stacked for the wealthiest: the rich really do get richer, while the poor
really do get poorer.

Otherwise, when you look at the poorest of the poor, the knee-jerk rebuttal of
some is just that, sure, some people are really poor, but they deserve it --
e.g. they are the deadbeats of society, or they should work harder, or they
should get better educated. In constrast, the increasing disparity between the
rich and poor gives evidence that something larger is going on.

I do agree that social mobility is important, as is expanding the middle
class. But more than expanding the middle class, the income of the middle
class should increase with the overall increase of wealth, which has not been
occurring as of late.

Also, the concept of "more of us can move into the top 2% or 3%" is
tautologically impossible :)

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ebfe
The poor don't get poorer, though. The poor today are the richest they've been
at any point in recorded history- they live longer, are more likely to own a
home and cars, and are more likely to go to college than the kings of 100
years ago.

Inequality is, in and of itself, a meaningless metric- what we really care
about is the absolute quality of people's lives. If the social structures that
result in the highest absolute quality of people's lives (by driving economic
and technological progress) require inequality, then it's absurd to suggest we
abandon them for a more equal society with a lower absolute quality of life.

~~~
jal278
I agree that overall the modern poor are likely doing better than they have
historically -- although I disagree that they "never get poorer"; the trend in
the last few decades as minimum wage has remained the same is would seem to
indicate a decrease in their wealth due to inflation.

But in any case it is a non sequitur to say that because the poor are doing as
well as they ever have, that we no longer need to worry about them: If we have
a surplus of planetary resources such that no one need starve, and people
still starve, it is remains a moral situation we should want to remedy.

Just about any indirect metric is meaningless by itself, yet we still use
them, e.g. GDP, literacy rate, etc. And in the case of income inequality, it
is likely only indicative of something nefarious when it becomes _extreme_.
I'm not suggesting that we should aim for absolute equality in income. But,
when income becomes extraordinarily concentrated in the hands of a few, it
spells problems for society -- money often equals influence, and incredible
concentration of wealth becomes equated with incredible concentration of
influence, which is worrisome for a functional democracy.

Finally, I agree, if somehow the perfect social structure that most raised the
average overall quality of people's lives _required_ incredibly inequal
distribution of income, then we should not simply discard that system on
principle. While I could imagine a certain level of income inequality being
necessary for a functional capitalistic society -- I do not see why extreme
inequality would be necessary, or how that extreme inequality in itself would
increase the average citizen's quality of life.

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ebfe
If a scientist discovered a cure for cancer tomorrow, inequality would
increase drastically. Millions of people would each be tens of thousands of
dollars poorer, and one man/corporation would be billions of dollars richer.
Surely you would not consider this a bad thing?

The same was true for the invention of electricity, the telephone, cars,
planes, computers, and every other device that reduced the labor needed to
perform a given task. Inequality is the inseparable byproduct of technological
progress.

~~~
jal278
Right, I am agreeing that innovation deserves compensation, and as a result
you'll have inequality.

But the degree of that inequality overall in society is separable from
technological progress -- i.e. through progressive tax rates or other
intervention.

You might disagree about whether such intervention agrees with you personally,
but technological progress need not strictly increase the _degree_ of income
inequality

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marknutter
The 0.1% aren't sitting on stacks of gold bars. The money is still flowing
through the economy, it's just in the form of stocks, bonds, and real-estate.
I've never heard a convincing argument for why the 0.1% is harmful to society.

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hedges
As long as a more equal distribution of wealth would reduce suffering, we can
certainly consider wealth inequality harmful.

One would have to have rather alien values to think that luxuries for a few
are preferable to food and health for all.

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dabrowski
> As long as a more equal distribution of wealth would reduce suffering, we
> can certainly consider wealth inequality harmful.

First you would need to prove that.

Consider a world with perfect income equality. In such a world, there is no
economic incentive to work at all.

Second, how do you plan on equalising the income without committing an act of
aggression against innocent people?

> One would have to have rather alien values to think that luxuries for a few
> are preferable to food and health for all.

That's a false dichotomy. What if, say, everyone gets poorer in the process of
making it less desirable to be rich?

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mrottenkolber
> First you would need to prove that.

Right.

> Consider a world with perfect income equality. In such a world, there is no
> economic incentive to work at all.

Nobody needs an economic incentive to work (please prove me otherwise). In
fact, an economic incentive is the only reason we screw other people over and
produce shitty work.

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ahomescu1
> Nobody needs an economic incentive to work (please prove me otherwise).

"Nobody does X" is too strong a statement; when you say something like that,
the burden is on you to prove it (by asking everyone in the world, for
example). I personally know quite a few people who wouldn't work if they
didn't need to.

It's true that some people don't need an economic incentive to work, but
others do.

