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Comment by ebbv | Hacker News Reader

> it's as if you're in this dystopian movie about the future where there's a 1:1000 difference between the haves, and the have nots.

In reality, USA 2013 the disparity is much, much bigger than 1:1000.

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Not it isn't.

In order to be in the top 1% of income your household needs to have earnings of around $380,000 a year. Unless your definition of "haves" excludes households like that, there is an upper limit of $380 a year for "have nots" in order for your statement to be true. There aren't very many, if any, US households with income of less than $380 a year.

Of course, on HN I wouldn't be surprised to hear that $380k/year is working poor.

That is for income. To be in the top 1% for wealth you need about $9,000,000

What do you think the net worth of the people he is describing is?

Net worth is probably not a great metric. There are a lot of well-paid people in the US who live expensive, flashy lifestyles that cost them just a little more than they earn every year, and consequently have a negative or near zero net-worth. I don't think most people would consider them have-nots.

Considering that you are "worth" what you "have", net worth is the only metric. GGP's coment is spot on, there is a 1:1000 difference between billionaires and millionaires, and another 1:1000 difference between millionaires and people worth 100k. Guess what? In the United States, less than 65% of people have a net worth under that [1]. So by this logic, the majority of the United States's have-nots are between a 1:1000 and a 1:1,000,000 difference compared to haves.

[1] http://www.nasdaq.com/article/americans-have-relatively-poor...

> and another 1:1000 difference between millionaires and people worth 100k.

1,000,000 (one million) / 1,000 (one thousand) = 1,000 (one thousand) not 100,000 (one hundred thousand).

I'd imagine most graduates of top medical schools have a negative net worth when they receive their degrees, and probably retain that upside-down status for several years. That doesn't make them "have nots".

You're ignoring the relevant math. Even if the income differential is 20:1 (380/19), what's the difference in wealth? The savings differential is bigger because life necessities don't increase linearly with income. The person making $380k can save $100k/year and still live comfortably. The person making $19k can't save at all. Moreover, you're ignoring the magic of compound interest. After 10 years, the net worth of the person making $380k is going to be much more than 20x as much as tue net worth of the person making $19k.

Holy shit, really? This is your argument? Talk about not getting it.

The average income in the US in 2013 is $52k.

The "haves" are not the arbitrary top 1% which starts at $380k, no, the "haves" are the people with millions or BILLIONS of dollars. It's not about yearly income, it's about net worth.

The difference between someone making $52k a year and someone with BILLIONS of dollars to their name is far more than 1:1000. Assuming just $1 billion to $52k the difference is about 19,230:1.

And that's assuming the people with $52k income "have" $52k. But they don't really, they're probably in debt.

This is silly though. There are fewer than 500 Billionaires in the US. Why is that your line for the "haves"? Really you can create whatever ratio you want by drawing the "haves" line in completely arbitrary ways.

It's not arbitrary, though. It's called wealth disparity and it's a real thing. Yes there's fewer than 500 billionaires, does that make it more acceptable or less that they have billions of dollars and the average income is $52k?

You don't seem to have any grasp of why this is a problem, let alone how to begin to deal with it.

I was just saying that your 19,230:1 ratio was arbitrary. You could just as easily have made it 192,300:1 by choosing 10x billionaires (of which there appear to be 41) instead of just billionaires. Or you could have made it 1,923:1 by choosing 100x millionaires (dunno how many of those there are I'm gonna guess 10k or so).

On the other side of the line that 52k $ is arbitrary. Why is "average income in the US" the relevant #? I bet the average income in Detroit is lower. Or what about average african american income which is surely lower than that? I bet there are people in Detroit who earn essentially no money? Surely that number is relevant when talking about a wealth disparity ratio.

I was just saying that there are much much much better measures of wealth disparity than the #s you came up with.

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