Comment by spikels | Hacker News Reader

Comment by spikels | Hacker News Reader

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You misquote the OXFAM claim. They actually say:

The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world.[1](p2 bottom)

See the difference? The richest 85 people have about $1.7 trillion in wealth[2]. To put that in perspective the world stock market capitalization is $63 trillion[3], world bond market capitalization is around $100 trillion[4], world investment grade real estate $26 trillion[5]. That already $189 trillion of world wealth and ignores most real estate, commodities, durables, government owned assets, etc. So the richest 85 people actually own much less than 1% of the world's wealth. The problem is that the bottom 50% also own much less than 1% of the world's wealth.

You will have a very hard time solving the world's problems if you can't even get basic facts straight. Gates, the world's second richest man, could give his entire fortune away to the bottom 50% and they would only get $19.00 each (=$67B/3.5B). Of course he would then have to shut down the Gates Foundation.

[1] http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-fo...

[2] http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/

[3] http://www.businessinsider.com/wfe-world-stock-market-capita...

[4] http://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt1212h.pdf

[5] http://www.investmentmanagement.prudential.com/documents/pim...

Agreed, I made a mistake. But I appreciate that you agree that we have failed miserable at distribution of wealth and I quote you "The problem is that the bottom 50% also own much less than 1% of the world's wealth."

Note that a newly graduated doctor from Harvard Medical School most likely has sufficient debt to put her very deeply in that bottom 50%, but she's still in an extremely enviable position.

Current wealth isn't nearly as important as potential future earnings.

The distribution of wealth is a symptom of a problem not the problem itself. We haven't failed at distributing wealth: poor people are not poor because somebody didn't distribute wealth to them.

Most poor people are poor because they don't have paying work (i.e. a job or business). In the poorest countries unemployment rates are always very high (50%+) and even if rich countries the poorest are usually unemployed. Without any income basic survival is difficult and it is almost impossible to save and accumulate wealth.

As I pointed out above you could take all of Bill Gates wealth away and only have $19 for each of the 3.5 billion in the bottom 50%. While this might help some in the short run because Bill Gates would have to stop his aid activities many would be worse off in the long run. But more importantly it does not solve the problem.

The only solution is to get the unemployed into paying jobs or businesses. Even the lowest paying jobs on earth, such as Bangladesh garment jobs, pay twice what redistributing Bill Gates fortune would - not just once but EVERY MONTH. Unfortunately making this possible is a lot more complex than writing a check but it certainly helps to better understand what needs to change.

1. I never said we should redistribute the wealth. I believe that will only create more problems.

2. I never suggested Bill Gates should give away his wealth.

3. All I am saying is whatever caused this (85 richest human have wealth equal to 3,500,000,000 poorest humans) extreme inequality is blocking the progress of poor. For example - In India corruption in government is making problem of inequality worst. If you spend sometime trying to understand the corruption problem of India you will be surprised to see it's extend and scale. Therefore if we agree that we have a problem we may find the cause and finally remedies.

I apologize if I misunderstood you - so much simplistic inequality talk lately.

I completely agree that government corruption (and simple incompetence) are a big part of the reason the poor are poor and many of the super rich are super rich (e.g. Carlos Slim and Latin American telephone monopolies). However these are two separate thing. If having a few super rich was the price of elevating tens of millions of people out of extreme poverty, I would be very happy. This is what has happened in China. If we could encourage this in Congo, it would be a big win.

Other than what is already being done by people like Gates the only idea I like is having government focus on things it can do well and avoid doing harm. But I think everyone knows this already and it must be almost impossible to do.

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