Re: Richest 2% hold half of world\'s assets
 

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...There will always be poor people, and rich people. You could take all the money out of everyone's hands, redivide it 6 billion ways, and in 5 years you're gonna have 5% of the people controlling 75% of the wealth again! That's because most people are stupid. Sorry, that's just how life is, and you know it's true deep down in your heart. In this world, if you want to you can make it happen for yourself. You can start a business, invent something... whoa, but that means creating value for our society...

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Great! Lets do that, redistribute, say, every generation. That will be a meritocracy, indeed, and probably very good for all!

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a) Generations are not synchronized, people are being born all the time. I see what you're getting at with everyone being born with the same 'edge' in life but this is impractical (although not a bad idea in theory, my underprivileged family definitely could have used something like this to help out).

b) It's not necessarily the best system incentives-wise. You've heard the old adage about how the first generation earns it, the second generation maintains it, and the third generation loses it? Sometimes being born with less capital than those around you, but otherwise having sufficient drive and intellect, can spur someone to achieve much greater heights than they would if they were born into financial comfort.

c) People are born with advantages and disadvantages beyond their family's wealth, i.e. some are tall, some are short, some are ugly, some are pretty. Some are born to parents who are rational and teach them attitudes that will help them succeed in life and some are born to parents who don't teach them such things. I would say that most of these uncontrollable factors have much more impact on someone's life than the amount of money they are born into.

d) I don't think wealth at birth is all that important a factor, because resourceful, intelligent people can be successful anyways whether they are born with money or not. Ensuring access to education is a much more important factor for example; one that can help a low-income kid achieve success anyway. The trick is to create an education system that doesn't double as a left-wing indoctrination camp... Seemingly impossible but perhaps it could be done somehow.

e) If you were referring to redistributing wealth among adults, that defeats what we are trying to achieve in society by incentivizing people to work hard and be productive in exchange for wealth. It's like a poker bankroll. If you took away a pro's bankroll every 5 years and made him start from scratch, yes he will be able to rebuild. But it will take him a fair amount of time underemployed at low limits doing this. The poker economy is negative sum but the real economy is positive sum. When you take money away from entrepreneurs and businessmen, you make them underemployed; they suffer but the economy also suffers.

And besides such redistribution would not do anything in terms of helping anyone achieve success who couldn't achieve success already. If there is access to education and a productive economy in which to sell one's labor or be an entrepreneur, any clever person can be successful and there is no need for redistribution tactics. And let's be honest, it would be much easier to be successful if these clever people didn't also have to pay massive amount of taxes along the way to pay for underachievers riding their coattails, all in the name of fairness. Frankly, we are taxed so heavily and soooo many groups receive handouts today that we are basically living under a modified version of your suggestion; it's just done more subtly and more frequently (every day) so that people are fooled into not really realizing the severity of it.

Re: Richest 2% hold half of world\'s assets
 

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i personally enjoyed Studies in Mutualist Political Economy by Kevin Carson (though he is something of a libertarian-marxist, whatever sense that makes...)


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As a joke?

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He's quite serious.

I don't think it totally works, but basically he combines "traditional" anarcho-libertarian views with some Marxist ones, most notably the labor theory of value (which of course sucks) and Marx's talk of exploitation (which I think Carson does well by showing how exploitation is alive and well today, and is the product not of free trade but of a partnership between Big Business and the State).

Hope this makes a little sense...

Re: Richest 2% hold half of world\'s assets
 

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Didn't the New York Times, (or the Economist?) run a story several months ago about average Scandinavian (I believe it was oil rich Norway) workers being unable to afford luxury items like eating out etc.. because costs were so high in these states? And that measured by purchasing power parity, the highest ranking European state, which I believe was Ireland. was ranked in the 40+ if comparing to US states, right around Mississippi and Arkansas.

[/ QUOTE ] This times article was largely empty rhetoric. Some things in these countries are more expensive, and he listed those off. However, some things are cheaper, and he completely ignored that. Things that most people would consider "necessities" are free (gov't provided) or the same price generally, which not only ensures most people can get the "necessities" but also have more money to spend on luxuries; a $28 pizza for somebody who has $150 after paying the bills is cheaper than a $16 who has debt after paying all of the bills.

THe PPP measurement is based on average, not median, real income, which is badly distorted by the fact that the very wealthy (top 1%) are more plentiful and far more wealthy (on average) in the U.S. than in Europe.

A multi-millionaire being able to buy more golden umbrellas in one country than in another does not mean that a country has a better economy.

Re: Richest 2% hold half of world\'s assets
 

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This times article was largely empty rhetoric.

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Having read this again, I actually agree with this. It didn't really offer much in the way of statistics, and was basically an author's highly biased recollection of Oslo. I'm sure if I went to New York city and found an utterly ridiculously priced restaurant, I could easily write "In America, even a simple cheeseburger costs twenty dollars!"

I've never been to Scandinavia, so I really can't judge. However, I don't care much for the method of arguing for capitalism by looking at the ill effects of socialist countries. Norway and Sweden are both high tax welfare states, but they are also very different culturally (and quite possibly for the better). I'm sure this has a remarkable effect on the quality of life there, possibly even moreso than the economic structure. It's also not unreasonable even for a capitalist to acknowledge the possibility that a certain socialist country has a better economy than America (considering our levels of regulation, taxation and waste, I wouldn't even say that it's terribly improbable). T7s crippled my AA for thousands of hands when I started using poker tracker.

Re: Richest 2% hold half of world\'s assets
 

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What do you think inflation is?

Note that there are *some* cases in which one person's having more *does* mean you have less (e.g. a person steals from you). That doesn't mean that *just because* someone has more, that you have less.


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I'm not gonna comment on this inflation digression. A poster stated "just because someone has more doesn't mean you have less." He had it backwards. The reason the rich have more is because other people have less. Bosses are useless parasites that exploit the labor of workers. They produce nothing, and deserve nothing. Shareholders are just thieves. There's no other word for it.

I'm excluding managers and owner/operators, because they coordinate labor. Anyone who denies the productive value of that is just being infantile.

Re: Richest 2% hold half of world\'s assets
 

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How many times do we have to explain that wealth disparity is an irrelevant and meaningless benchmark?

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It would be nice if you were qualified to explain anything to anyone ever, but you aren't. Wealth inequality quantifies the intensity of capitalist exploitation of the poor. Just like rich slaveholders represent exploited slaves and rich feudal lords represented exploited peasants. Every parasitic ruling class invents fictional nonsense about why their reign is necessary, and benign. Guess what? It never has been, and certainly isn't now.

Re: Richest 2% hold half of world\'s assets
 

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What do you think inflation is?

Note that there are *some* cases in which one person's having more *does* mean you have less (e.g. a person steals from you). That doesn't mean that *just because* someone has more, that you have less.


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I'm not gonna comment on this inflation digression. A poster stated "just because someone has more doesn't mean you have less." He had it backwards. The reason the rich have more is because other people have less. Bosses are useless parasites that exploit the labor of workers. They produce nothing, and deserve nothing. Shareholders are just thieves. There's no other word for it.

I'm excluding managers and owner/operators, because they coordinate labor. Anyone who denies the productive value of that is just being infantile.

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Even our resident leftists Propertarian and Iron81 should realize that this is utter crap. Someone else can explain why.

Re: Richest 2% hold half of world\'s assets
 

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Bosses are useless parasites that exploit the labor of workers. They produce nothing, and deserve nothing.

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I'm excluding managers and owner/operators, because they coordinate labor.

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Who does that leave?

Re: Richest 2% hold half of world\'s assets
 

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Bosses are useless parasites that exploit the labor of workers. They produce nothing, and deserve nothing.



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I'm excluding managers and owner/operators, because they coordinate labor.


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Who does that leave?



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It leaves owners who don't do any managerial tasks. Most capitalists are not in this category, however, most capitalists don't own much capital or employ that many people. The The vast majority of capital is controlled by very few people (cf. OP)

Re: Richest 2% hold half of world\'s assets
 

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It leaves owners who don't do any managerial tasks. Most capitalists are not in this category

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You should have said that instead. In any case, this seems like a big "who cares?" If there aren't that many, why is this much of a beef for you?