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Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

>Wealth needs to be redistributed

I'm still not convinced that it's possible to successfully tax the rich enough to ensure that the poor isn't poor. The redistribution (and taxation) always comes up as "the solution" to inequality. I think that's overestimating how rich the rich are, and underestimating the number of poor people.

It's easier to make the rich poorer, and close the wealth cap that way, compared to making the poor richer. Sadly that's not going to help anyone.

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Is this backed up by any stats? Last I saw the stats on America showed the top % is unimaginably rich and the inequality is massively worse than other countries like Australia where the average person is much better off.

No, and I might very well be completely wrong. My reasoning is that some one like Jeff Bezos is worth $150 billion, if we take all his money (which we can't do, because most of his wealth isn't exactly in cash), then each American could receive something like $500. That's not really helpful, and we can only do that once, if we take ALL his money.

Maybe I'm underestimating how many rich people the world has, and how much money they have. It just doesn't seem like did have enough to make much of a difference.

The $150 billion sitting in bezos bank account does very little for everyone. If it was distributed among the population of America, most of it would be spent very quickly and there would be huge benefits for everyone. Preventing hoarding would do a lot of good for society.

On the contrary. Most of that money is the capital that makes up Amazon and its subsidiaries, which has consistently grown faster (created more wealth/benefit) than almost any other entity in our society.

That's your neoliberal take. Personally, I'm a little dubious that wealth created is 1:1 with social benefit created. But to say that his bank account benefits nobody would be a misrepresentation.

> (created more wealth/benefit)

For whom?

For society, by making the distribution of goods/services more efficient. Amazon enriches our lives (compared to no Amazon) every time anyone uses it. The resources we all save, the delta, go partially to Mr. Bezos and owners of Amazon stock in the form of profit. They are rewarded for having allocated their capital efficiently. They can spend the money on whatever they want, but it is mostly allocated back into making Amazon more efficient -- not locked away as the gp suggests.

Bear in mind this is the extremely idealistic neoliberal take.

> Bear in mind this is the extremely idealistic neoliberal take.

Yeah it certainly is

Bezos doesn't have $150 billion sitting in a bank account. Net worth != liquid cash. Roughly $120 billion of his worth is Amazon stock.

Fine, 30b in his bank account and 120b in his portfolio. All of that money was at one point in a consumers pocket and now sits removed from the wider economy in one of Jeff Bezos accounts for the sole purpose of furthering future growth of these accounts by further extraction of money out of the wider economy.

Customers engage in a voluntary transaction with Amazon. Where should these customers have spent their money instead?

I'm not sure I understand what you are proposing as an alternative. Taking Bezos assets to do something with?

How would the accounts grow if they weren't doing something that created wealth, i.e. generated value for the economy? They're re-invested in other companies, to be put to good use.

Generated value for whom? The size of amazon? To be put to good use figuring out more ways to eavesdrop information for advertising? They aren't going to pay their workers who piss in bottles any more if they beat earnings, although the shareholders might have some big ticket purchases in mind. It is still money removed from consumers pockets and used to inflate the company, and only very few people in the company benefit from that ballooning.

How does a company get bigger without providing value to their customers?

I'm sure amazon does provide value to it's customers, but it was at the expense of consuming and destroying local small business economies where the profit would have stayed and been spent there, not in Seattle, not on exotic mansions and watercraft, not on the latest Echo endeavor that may or may not ever come to fruition. Just as Nestle bottles water from local aquifers and sells that water elsewhere outside of that watershed, eventually depleting the aquifer, Amazon takes local wages away from the economy and either sits on this pile of cash or on lavish compensation for the few at the top of the company.

If people choose to purchase through Amazon, it's generally because they provide a better experience (i.e. more value per dollar spent) than their competitors.

Sitting on cash is expensive, due to inflation and taxes. It's generally better to re-invest. People are generally compensated as a function of the value they add to the company. If someone else can do a better job for less money, it would be in the board's best interests to hire them.

I do agree, though, that unwise expenditure of resources (mansions and watercraft, et all) should be criticized, though not high net-worth per-say. The problem, though, is that the common man is also guilty of unwise expenditure of resources. E.g. taking a vacation instead of providing life saving vaccines.

If you think rich peoples wealth is in a form that can be redistributed to the poor (ie cash), then yiu are seriously deluded. The wealth of someone like jeff bezos is essentially the amount us poor people are willing to pay to be in charge of Amazon. It does not refer to any kind of cash which he can give away. Moreover, giving away his shares would simply lower the value of Amazon since the reason why those shares have any value is the business bezos runs

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