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Comment by throwanem | Hacker News Reader

Well, using figures from http://time.com/money/4746795/richest-people-in-the-world/, if we take the top eight, sum their fortunes (conveniently expressed in billions), and divide by 3.6, we find that a maximally equitable redistribution would allocate, to each of the lucky recipients, the princely sum of $165.38 US.

So, I'm going to guess the problem may lie somewhere other than with eight really rich people. But we don't really need to do the math on this one, do we? It doesn't even pass the sniff test - "these eight people are LITERALLY THE WORST" is just far too uncomplicated a proposition to accurately reflect the reality of a human world which, though many things, is never simple.

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> So, I'm going to guess the problem may lie somewhere other than with eight really rich people.

Um, why? Because you're one of the lucky few to whom $165 is not a significant sum of money?

Because if this people gave away this money, the effect on the very poor might be noticeable for some months but not sustainable. In no time they would be very poor again and the ones that gave the money away would be unable to give more.

Paul Graham has an essay about this error, how people thinks that there's a fixed amount of money. Once you understand that wealth is created and how, you can't talk like that with a straight face.

Paul Graham's article on income inequality was of terribly poor quality (not sure if that's the one you're referencing).

He fails to even begin to discuss capital, return on capital, and capital ownership as drivers in economic inequality. Basically it feels like a piece written by a smart guy who has no idea what he's talking about but feels emboldened because "economists are all idiots".

A one-time gift of cash to the poorest may actually have more impact than you think.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/we...

> a $150 cash grant to poor women in the northern part of [Uganda] doubled their earnings within a year, while one-off $382 transfers to 16- to 35-year-olds were associated with 40-percent higher earnings four years later.

You're not extrapolating.

Thats just the top 8 people...Take the sum of the rest of the the global 1% or even 10% and do your math...

OH nm, the math has already been done.

280 trillion in global wealth / 6 billion people = 46k per person

And the top 10% has 86% percent of it, and the inequality is just growing exponentially.

I'm not advocating that wealth should be equally distributed OR that capitalism is all bad..however, that in-equality is STAGGERING....unregulated capitalism with no income redistribution is a one way ticket to a third world PLANET.

https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/articles/news-and...

It's not terribly controversial that anarchocapitalism is a bad idea. It's also an entirely different proposition from the one you previously advanced.

What idea did I 'previously advance'?

Unregulated capitalism is not what's causing the massive inequality we see today. It's the financial and monetary policies. I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulations but the ones we have are centralizing wealth into the biggest corporations. If you look this modern massive growth of inequality doesn't really start until the 1970's after we whet off the gold standard and theirs an uptick in inequality every time the fed decides it needs to pump a bunch of money into the economy.

Do you have examples of these 'financial and monetary policies' you're referring to?

What I see is that Wal-Mart makes a ton of money and their employees have to be on food stamps and still work 80 hour weeks while the owners reap all of the profit.

To me this is simply unregulated capitalism which nowdays has become thinly masked slavery.

Walmart employees don't work 80 hours a week...that's absurd, most can barely handle a 4 hour shift. All in all people get what they're worth, want to earn more money? Bring more valuable talents to the table.

False.

> Unregulated capitalism is not what's causing the massive inequality we see today. It's the financial and monetary policies.

Well, considering that financial and monetary policies are aimed at deregulation, and that financialization of the economy in developed countries is a thing, it would appear that unregulated capitalism is precisely what is causing massive inequality.

But income redistribution only adress the symptom. The capital assets driving the inequality would still be firmly in their control. You must put a price on ownership it self to really make a difference.

i remember when the panama papers first came out there was a story of a guy who bribed the leadership of some third world country to basically rob the country of its mineral rights. so with that $165 you'd also get relief from the damage they actively do with their money.

i'm not saying we should do it, but your analysis doesn't account for any knock on effects, and so is itself far too simple.

Would you get relief? One government can buy another, too.

To be clear, the billions controlled by these 8 individuals are not in the majority held in cash. The notion of redistributing this wealth is about socializing the benefits and gains from capital investments. As such, a restructuring of this wealth would not look like handing circa $165 to every person on the planet.

A somewhat more interesting calculation would be what you get if you divide the total rental value of their capital assets.

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