Comment by matterhorn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by matterhorn | Hacker News Reader

Good ole socialist wealth envy class warfare blah blah blah.

Wealth is produced. If there were a fixed amount of it, we'd all still be nomadic hunter-gatherers. Therefore, the gain of wealth is NOT a zero sum game. When some CEO (good, bad, or hopelessly incompetent) makes 14 bazillion dollars, that does nothing whatsoever to take anything from you. You don't need to worry about what that CEO makes. You need to worry about what YOU make.

Consider the White House Chief Calligrapher makes $96,725 per year. What a complete and utter waste of tax money. If it were not for the fact that its our tax money, it wouldn't matter a hill of beans. If Microsoft or Apple wanted to hire a Chief Calligrapher at $96,725 or $967,250 it wouldn't matter a hill of beans except to the shareholders of each company who might not think such an expenditure is going to pay off all that well.

I recommend reading Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson: http://www.fee.org/library/detail/economics-in-one-lesson-pd...

The underlying issue with inequality isn't that some people are rich (although many progressives fall into the trap of making it about this), it's about how to alleviate the unfortunate fact that some people will always be poor because they aren't capable of generating much wealth.

It doesn't take a 'socialist wealth envier' to realize there are serious problems with large imbalances in wealth. This turns into the classic liberal (as in libertarian) vs modern liberal debate. A classic liberal will claim inequality is a natural consequence of an open market and therefore doesn't need to be fixed. This is an increasingly fringe opinion that even most economists disagree with. A classic liberal believes in redistribution of wealth, which unfortunately doesn't fix the underlying issue.

The sad fact is, there may be no clean solution. But that doesn't mean people shouldn't discuss it. Inequality is getting worse, and it looks like it will continue to get worse. This is a problem.

Of course There isn't a fixed amount of wealth. But when a small number of people possess a vast majority of the wealth that is currently in existence, they also possess the means of wealth production and therefore control. By worrying about what the CEO makes, I'm worrying about what I make, too, because their influence directly affects my ability to create wealth for myself.

Please don't tell me that I shouldn't worry about the telecom CEO because I can just start my own telecom. I know the start up culture allows certain adventurous and well-funded white people to take a stab at their dreams, but let's not pretend there aren't a handful of very wealthy pulling the strings.

The question isn't whether wealth is zero-sum or not. It is already super-obvious that wealth is not a zero-sum game.

The issue is that a certain small percentage of people are using positions of political power and influence to capture an unjustly large share of the wealth that is created by others.

Or do you honestly think that a Fortune 500 company CEO's yearly marginal product of labor is actually an 8 figure amount?

The GDP of the U.S. grows, generously, at 3% per year. Wealth is a zero sum game in that the 3% gain must be distributed amongst the 300 million people in the country.

When wealth is concentrated in too few people it does take away from others. Particularly since they get an inordinate share of the gain (in usual times). The distribution of resources, consumption of resources, and benefits of resources in the world is grossly unfair.

In your example of the Calligrapher the shareholders of Apple play the same role as taxpayers. It's just a matter of scale. It makes no sense to see a difference between the two situations. U.S. government is a corporation for purposes of the analogy. It has a revenue, shareholder, and expenses. It's not possible to say in one case it doesn't matter if such a position exists but it does in the case that it's government providing the paycheck.

> Wealth is produced. If there were a fixed amount of it, we'd all still be nomadic hunter-gatherers. Therefore, the gain of wealth is NOT a zero sum game.

Sure, but if the 1%er have gains above average growth, they taking it from the rest. A simple fact, that has a lot to do with interest Tt doesn't make them bad people. It ist just a mathematical fact.

The US have a big problem with wealth distribution (the biggest in the western world). The US has a higher GDP per capita then Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Netherland, Sweden, etc. Do you really believe the US has a higher avarage living standard?

> Sure, but if the 1%er have gains above average growth, they taking it from the rest. A simple fact, that has a lot to do with interest Tt doesn't make them bad people. It ist just a mathematical fact.

So by your logic if the 1% of runners run faster than the average person, they are taking running speed from the rest?

I would suggest to rather see it this way: If they are making above average gains they are probably better at investing their capital than the average person, but also helped by the increased bargaining power of the amount of capital that they have.

> The US have a big problem with wealth distribution (the biggest in the western world). The US has a higher GDP per capita then Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Netherland, Sweden, etc. Do you really believe the US has a higher avarage living standard?

The USA has a much lower GDP per capita than most of those countries you have mentioned.

> I would suggest to rather see it this way: If they are making above average gains they are probably better at investing their capital than the average person, but also helped by the increased bargaining power of the amount of capital that they have.

Again you ignoring mathematics. The interest function is an exponential function. It transfers money from borrowers to lenders - it's a law. It has nothing to do with wiser investment decisions. If don't have savings you can't invest.

> The USA has a much lower GDP per capita than most of those countries you have mentioned.

I am sorry, that is not right. All countries that I mentioned have lower GDP per capita that the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_... There are only 3 countries in Europe who have a higher GDP per capita: Lichtenstein, Luxenbourg and Norway. The economic power of the US is immense, but the allocation should be optimized.

You're mistaking wealth and the money supply. It's the good ol' "let's live in a scarcity driven economy even if we don't have to". Because schadenfreude.

"If there were a fixed amount of it, we'd all still be nomadic hunter-gatherers."

Exactly - how do so many miss this basic economic truth?

Inflation?

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