
The 1% are getting richer and its not going to stop any time soon - pmoriarty
https://www.independent.co.uk/money/worlds-richest-are-getting-even-richer-global-wealth-a8297421.html
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makecheck
If you have tons of money to spare, you can afford to throw money “at the
wall” and see what sticks. For every case of losing money, there’s probably a
lot more that pays off, especially when a billionnaire can afford to have
entire staff working to minimize the chance of bad investments. If a great
opportunity arises, you can put much more into the pot (most people would have
to put their whole life savings in).

Also, any single problem isn’t likely to _completely screw you_ , you just pay
for it and move on. For many people, they are literally one step from
bankruptcy and can’t have _anything_ go wrong.

Also, if you can afford even _slightly_ nicer stuff, it is probably better-
made and won’t require outright replacement. You can afford more insurances to
avoid paying the full cost of what you _do_ replace. (Most people will never
do this.)

And the rich have way, way more time. They probably aren’t figuring out how to
juggle two jobs, taking many-hour commutes, etc., all of which gives _even
more_ opportunity.

And that’s just off the top of my head, there’s probably more. You can’t even
begin to equalize a system with so much advantage built in to one side.

My guess is that it starts by giving people more time. Fix the “need two jobs”
problem permanently. Make housing more affordable to minimize travel.

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skookumchuck
> And the rich have way, way more time.

The ones who make the money tend to be workaholics.

> If you have tons of money to spare, you can afford to throw money “at the
> wall” and see what sticks.

You can afford it, sure, but you'll lose pots 'o money that way.

> For every case of losing money, there’s probably a lot more that pays off,
> especially when a billionnaire can afford to have entire staff working to
> minimize the chance of bad investments.

If your staff is so great, they'd be making the money themselves. Besides,
anyone can hire such staff - that's what mutual funds are.

Any billionaire I've read about made their investment decisions themselves.

> My guess

I recommend reading some biographies of wealthy people and how they got that
way. Kennedy, Jobs, Gates, Carnegie, Buffet, Musk, Hearst, Getty, Walton,
Bezos, take your pick, etc.

~~~
cannonedhamster
> The ones who make the money tend to be workaholics.

Citation needed.

> You can afford it, sure, but you'll lose pots 'o money that way.

Which misses the point, anyone else _CAN 'T_

> Any billionaire I've read about made their investment decisions themselves.

That's a myth. They have the money to externalize things other people don't so
having money means you have more time to spend on yourself and others. Most
billionaires you read about that grew up poor are in the vast minority of
people who ended up in the top 1%

> I recommend reading some biographies of wealthy people and how they got that
> way. Kennedy, Jobs, Gates, Carnegie, Buffet, Musk, Hearst, Getty, Walton,
> Bezos, take your pick, etc.

War profiteering, Screwed employees out of their stock, born fairly wealthy
which allowed him access to tech others didn't have, Robber Baron, Talented
and Lucky, Talented and Lucky, Printed lies, Money from parents, Externalized
costs onto US taxpayer, Used investor money to build a company because he came
from a banking background.

Most of the people didn't get wealthy because they worked harder, were
smarter, etc. They either were in the right place at the right time and their
hard work enabled them to take advantage of their luck or they were born into
wealth and used that as an advantage. You're also comparing wildly different
time periods with different rates of economic mobility.

That's not to say these people were undeserving of their wealth or that they
are bad people, but realistically wealth for the vast majority of people is
something that they are born into, especially in top 1%.

This point is especially poignant when you realize that the families that are
wealthy in parts of the world such as Venice, Italy today are roughly the same
families that were wealthy in 600 AD.

Edit: To clarify I think we're all really talking about the top 1% of the
developed world. Not just the worth at large as others have noted most of us
reading this are probably in the top 1% globally when including undeveloped
nations.

~~~
skookumchuck
> Citation needed.

Read biographies of Gates, Jobs, Carnegie, Bezos, Rockefeller, Walton,
Buffett, etc. (More than just the wikipedia page.)

> Which misses the point

That isn't the point. The point is that method of increasing wealth (randomly
thrashing about) does not work.

> That's a myth.

For which of the ones I mentioned?

> Most billionaires you read about that grew up poor are in the vast minority
> of people who ended up in the top 1%

We're talking about middle class to the 1%. All of the ones I mentioned went
that route.

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qaq
Why articles about 1% keep getting illustrated with pictures of top 1% of
billionaires? 1% are lawyers, Doctors, Senior Software Eng. etc. If we are
talking about US top billionaires are in top 0.0000018%.

~~~
lainga
There's more clicks in "those dirty moneybags are getting richer at our
expense!" than in "we're getting richer at the developing world's expense!"

~~~
horsemoney
Why do you think we're getting richer at their expense? _They 're_ getting
richer by trading with us. I mean, it's not impossible to turn a profit from
some developing nation, but most of the value in the markets is from developed
countries. You can only make so much money off of low-end cheap foreign labor.

~~~
qaq
40% of US GDP is financial services by being the emitter of world's reserve
currency we get very large set of unique economic benefits that precisely let
us to "to get richer at their expense"

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curtis
I wonder how much of the "1%"'s wealth is in stock. My guess is most of it, at
least in the United States. If you think that's a problem, and most of this
wealth is in the stock market, then that may be a good argument for increasing
the tax on capital gains. I don't expect that to happen anytime soon, though.

~~~
horsemoney
If you really take the 1% (not just those billionaires) then a lot of that is
IRAs (which are stocks and bonds) as well as personal real estate. If you have
an IRA plus a house worth a million bucks combined, congratulations, you're in
the 1%.

By the way, it's nonsense to think that those 1% _control_ that wealth.
They'll be lucky to save more than half of it when the next stock market
correction is coming in, or when the Fed prints the value of long-term bonds
into oblivion. Yeah, maybe they get to vote on some shareholder meeting, or
they get to shoot trespassers on their lawn, _that 's_ their level of control.

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logfromblammo
How about a secret society dedicated to calculating the _de facto_ richest
individual in the world every quarter, then judging them? The "winner" gets to
live if they are judged to be a net benefit to humanity, and is assassinated
if they are not. Previous winners are periodically re-checked to make sure
they haven't fallen off the wagon.

First the monarchs start to disappear, then the corrupt heads of state, and
then rich people start spending their money to either escape the judgment, or
to improve their public image in case they can't spend their way down to #2.

If you try to tax it away, the rich will just hide their wealth and then buy
off the tax inspectors that go looking for it.

~~~
horsemoney
So, the richest guy in the world can pay off the taxmen, but _not_ the
assassins? You're vastly underestimating the IRA.

~~~
logfromblammo
That's why it's _secret_. If you don't know who to pay off, you have to pay
off everybody. And if you do that, you're either not going to be richest any
more, or you'll get a reprieve for your generosity and philanthropy.

~~~
horsemoney
fair enough: *guys

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uasnew
Perhaps an easy way is to stop legal lobbying - and all this stops?

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notheguyouthink
Does it? Generally speaking, you make money with money, right? So even if
playing "fairly", it would seem the 1% will still get far more rich far faster
than anyone else. Lobbying only slows that down some, if at all.

Don't get me wrong, I think Lobbying in its current form is disgusting. Yet,
directly I don't blame it for the wealth gap.

I suppose you could argue that lawmakers might have a chance at proposing
solutions if not for lobbying, so by taking lobbying away you eventually,
somehow, fix the problem. Even with that said, I'm still more curious to talk
about possible solutions to the problem directly, rather than hoping to foster
an environment where someone else will fix the problem.

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horsemoney
This is made to sound like something is being taken from the other 99%, but
that's probably not true.

First of all, most people down really own anything of value, if anything they
owe.

In proportion to practically anything else, stocks have gone up like crazy and
those 1% own a lot of it. They also are explicitly and implicitly the
creditors of that debt. Stocks going up creates even more debt via the wealth
effect.

The _real_ redistribution from the bottom to the top will happen as follows:
Stock market crashes, massive defaults on debt and massive dollar devaluation.
Lots of IRAs will be _fucked_. Don't be left holding the bag!

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tici_88
I have a feeling the wealth distribution in the years prior to WWII was pretty
similar to where we are or are headed. I wonder if there were comparable
data/studies done back then.

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bassman9000
These articles never mention how many of the 1% were in the 1% 5 years ago,
and how many have left the 1%. Always focusing on the bracket, never the
individual.

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RickJWagner
As programmers, we tend to make a lot of money.

If you feel guilty about it, give some to poor people. But please don't
pollute Hacker News with articles.

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rhaps0dy
The title should be "it's" because it's a contraction of "it is".

But that's exactly how it's written in the headline :(

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vannevar
Unless there is some kind of political miracle and the governments of the
developed world can devise a wealth tax that works, per Piketty, it won't stop
until there is another major world war.

~~~
cdmckay
It’s not going to happen because the majority of the governments are run by
the 1 percenters

~~~
jerf
Yes. I find the idea that we can solve this problem by giving more power/money
to the .1% and they'll take that power/money and (step two of underpants gnome
plan here) and then the .1% won't have so much power/money is kinda silly.

In fact isn't it rather convenient that the solution that everyone proposes to
money/power inequality is to give the .1% more money and power?

Weird how that inequality just keeps going up, huh?

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shivamroo
Why it is flagged?

