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Comment by spencerflem | Hacker News Reader

I find this visualization of wealth where every dollar is a pixel a lot more compelling: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/?v=3

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> Every single person in America could be lifted above the poverty line with a one-time cash subsidy of around $10,000 per impoverished family (and about $7,000 for impoverished individuals). The total cost would be $170 billion, a little over 5% of the wealth currently controlled by 400 individuals.

The visualization is good, but the content is ... fraught.

I'm all for wealth redistribution and ending inequality, but analyzing wealth 1:1 with cash isn't a serious way to think about the issue. We should all realize that liquidizing Amazon shares and turning them into cash that floods the market wouldn't do anything other than gut pensions and create inflation.

It's better to think of ways of getting wealth (not cash) out from under billionaires. And it's something we should do because we believe this kind of wealth is bad for society, not because we think it will magically give us free stuff.

Empower the family businesses again, move power away from the super corporations. Encourage and invest in small business owners, giving them all the tax breaks while raising the taxes on the giant corporations. Basically, start recreating the middle class wealth, and then strive to bring everyone to that level at the cost of the giant corporations and mega rich.

More so than family businesses, co-ops, but otherwise I would agree this would be a huge help

Progressive tax rates for companies!

Really nice, thanks for linking this!

OK. Respect for that one.

That was hilarious!

This one is rather preachy. It is unintentionally arguing the existence of Amazon itself is bad and that everyone would be better off without it, including all the people it employs and serves, directly and indirectly.

I see only demonstrated difference between exactly how wealthy one single man is versus things you also can't imagine but we can understand their relative size.

How many mouths Amazon feeds is not on-topic. Imagine that he got his wealth by magic. Poof. He has it. The data would still be the same.

His wealth, as of 2021, is literally unimaginable the same way that counting the number of stars in the universe is.

Wow. It's just... so... overwhelmingly wealthy. Amazingly, spectacularly, unfathomably wealthy.

As it should.

Where does it argue against the existence of Amazon. Not that I disagree with it, but it doesn't even do that.

It is however, out of date. At the time of creation, the 400 richest people in the world owned $3.2T of wealth, now you only need to take the top 23 richest people to amass $3.2T of wealth.

"Updated April 3, 2021". Seems odd that 400 would go to 23 in less than 4 yrs, though.

Seems odd, but:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2023/12/19/the-10-...

In that year alone, Elon gained a hundred billion dollars. Most people did not

Wealth inequality is mind boggling.

If it is preachy it uses very few words to preach. In fact it only mentions Amazon once, and that's to highlight the average pay of an Amazon warehouse worker.

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