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Comment by kabouseng | Hacker News Reader

Everybody can't be rich (que incredibles quote: "if everyone's super no one will be").

So for every person who moves up, someone must move down. So here is a thought experiment, instead of thinking about improving upward mobility, rather think about improving downwards mobility. Make it difficult to occupy the top echelons, make people work for it and deserve it, instead of just inheriting a fortune and riding the advantages of passive capital working for you.

Just a thought, I have no idea where it could lead but it could perhaps provide a fresh perspective...

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> So for every person who moves up, someone must move down.

Standards of living and wealth are not a zero-sum game, there are plenty of situations where changes benefit everyone.

The article is about relative mobility (getting from the bottom quintile to the top), not absolute mobility (having cool toys that didn't exist in 1980).

Relative mobility is a zero sum game.

Standards of living isn't zero sum, I agree. Wealth, or rather relative wealth or a class society is zero sum.

Again, everyone can't be rich (relative to other people), unless you want to go the direction of communism / socialism / classless society. So as a thought experiment...

PS. Why did you downvote, seriously you downvoted a thought experiment meant to stimulate thought.

Communism / socialism / classless society doesn't escape the zero-sum game you mentioned. Relative wealth is zero-sum by very definition. If everyone has exactly the same wealth, no one is richer than others.

I agree.

>Wealth, or relative wealth or a class society is zero sum.

Relative wealth is zero sum. Wealth is not zero sum. You shouldn't muddle the terms like this.

This is nitpicking, but please go and read my post again and tell where I used the word wealth?

-edit - I mean my original top post. You introduced the word wealth and then call me out for muddle'ing its meaning :D

I was referring to the comment I quoted:

>Wealth, or relative wealth...

I mean, I think we've got a pretty good idea of where that line of thought leads. High estate taxes, confiscatory or near-confiscatory levels of taxation above a certain income level, serious increases in capital gains taxation. All of which I'm in favor of, despite the fact that, thanks primarily to family circumstances, I enjoy a fairly high net worth. But enough people in my same circumstances hate that idea, and have the wherewithal to fight it politically, that it's unlikely to ever happen.

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