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Comment by eloisius | Hacker News Reader

The concentration of wealth isn’t a problem so much for poverty, because without doing something to increase the production of things people need, having more money would just result in higher prices. Like you said, the 0.001% aren’t consuming half the world’s food production, so redistributing there money alone would not solve world hunger.

A bigger problem as that fewer and fewer have any say in the direction of society now. That concentrated investment means they get to shape the world we live in. Years ago I had a more libertarian mindset about that as well. “They’re more likely to make better decisions with it because they made the money to begin with.” I no longer feel that way. It increasingly looks like the most wealthy are happy to destroy the world for everyone in their quest to become ever more elite.

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I agree with your overall position but I disagree on the first point.

Wealth is ownership, ownership is control of value. Allocating more (not all) value away from SaaS companies and into food security or education is a good thing and would make things better for everyone.

I agree with that. I only mean that it’s not as simple as “if we gave everyone Elon’s money then we could all afford homes.” But you’re right, the higher concentration of wealth means there’s less investment into producing more resources that people need, so indirectly it does mean there are less homes to go around.

I do agree with what (I think) GP might have been trying to say though. Conspicuous spending itself is not a problem. Way rather have the ultra wealthy buying yachts that deciding to be a wealth-proportional amount of everyday commodities.

> Allocating more (not all) value away from SaaS companies and into food security or education is a good thing and would make things better for everyone.

You are already doing that with your votes, the American government is already investing massive amounts into education and food security. Private investments would never do this, even poor people wouldn't invest in poor ROI endeavors, poor people invest in the same things as rich people they just invest less, so the wealth of the rich doesn't matter.

It's not about what non-0.001% people invest in, but what they spend on. More evenly distributed wealth would mean more money for people to spend on education, food security, and housing, which in turn would spur increased production of those goods. Below a certain wealth threshold, people aren't putting every additional dollar into "investments" in the financial sense of the word. There's more ROI by sending your kids to college or moving to a better neighborhood.

The American government gets that money from taxes. If wealthy people are using that wealth to avoid taxes and put the burden on to the worker then the worker is being hurt twice - first by the lost power in their vote, and second by paying an unfair share of public infrastructure costs.

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