Is This Really Desirable?

[Kromovaracun]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/07/global-inequality-tipping-point-2030

The richest 1% of the world's population are, on current projections, on course to own 64% of global wealth by 2030.

Of course, making projections into the future is notoriously unreliable. But assuming for the sake of argument that this proves to be accurate - do you think this is a problem we should be trying to solve? Can this really be dismissed as "fair rewards for hard work"?

Even if you do consider this to be a problem, is there anything that can be done or is it too late? Are the rest of us doomed to forever live in the shadow of the wealthy?

[mushroom25]

not sure what you could do - short of a Robert Mugabe style land grab......

[-Talbot-]

World leaders urged to act as anger over inequality reaches a ‘tipping point’


Has it?

[Khandro]

Kromo; //Are the rest of us doomed to forever live in the shadow of the wealthy?//
We always have and we always will. Lenin had ideas about changing it and look what an effing disaster that turned out to be.

[fiction-factory]

Figures like this are often quoted but deeper investigation shows them to be flawed. For example someone with zero assets and debts in a 3rd world country is deemed more wealthy tha someone in the UK who has a good standard of living but negative equity. And many of the ABers, particularly those with London properties are probably in the top 5% in the world but don't consider themselves particularly wealthy. Radio 4s More or Less made a good analysis of this a few years ago in response to some Oxfam stats

[fiction-factory]

Yes, in world terms we are the wealthy. There are a few billions people across the world who feel they are living in the shadow of wealthy nations like us

[ToraToraTora]

desirable? maybe not, inevitable? certainly. The figures are misleading though, anyone on about £70k is in the top 1% of the world, hardly "rich". Even the poorest person in the UK is in the top 5% in the world. To equalise the world everyone would have to live on about £2k a year, basically we'd all be poor! ( I plucked the 2k out of the air but I reckon that's about right)

[Old_Geezer]

Powerful individuals that were not elected by a democratic process is always a problem for the masses. It has little to do with rewards for hard work, although hard work helps; it's more to do with having the skills to attract wealth created by others to oneself. Society relies on individual countries ensuring one can not overcharge for goods and services, and taxing those that do to return wealth to the community again. Markets only work so far, it takes a decent framework imposed by the government for commerce to work within to ensure obscene inequalities don't arise, and inheritance taxes on excess to ensure power isn't just passed on in a nepotistic manner and the rest of society kept from the world's wealth/power.

[fiction-factory]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03gj7h9
This 10 minute programme shows that teh figures are meaningless. A city high flyer who earns £200K pa net but spends it all on good food, hotel accommodation, taxis, entertainment and holidays yet has a credit card debt of maybe £5000 is deemed to be less wealthy than someone starving in the 3rd world who has a net wealth of zero. The programme shows the folly of using net worth/wealth as a measure. Have a listen

[EDDIE51]

I saw an artical a while back that said if all the world's money was distributed equally to all,everyone could live at the standard the USA achieved in 1950. Would you go back to 1950 if it meant everyone in the world had the same standard of living?

[naomi24]

If you shared the world’s wealth out equally between all its inhabitants, very soon you would once again see the rich and the poor because some would use it wisely and some wouldn’t. Socialist ideals fail to consider the influence and aspirations that are human nature.

[jim360]

That's probably true, although I would suggest that there would be quite a few "ex-poor" people who ended up rich, and "ex-rich" people ending up poor -- it doesn't always follow that people who have the money did the most to deserve it. Inheritance is, after all, also a thing.

[-Talbot-]

An article or Quora, EDDIE?

[naomi24]

Jim, // it doesn't always follow that people who have the money did the most to deserve it. //

Deserving doesn't come into it. Some are just smarter than others.

[Kromovaracun]

I don't mean to suggest that there should be *no* gap between rich and poor - I think history shows quite decisively that it won't ever go away and even comparatively egalitarian countries have some level of gap. I do question, though, whether having such an egregious gap is a healthy or desirable thing - such a huge concentration of wealth effectively guarantees dynasties of enormously wealthy and powerful people, vastly disproportionately powerful special interests, and declining social mobility and equality of opportunity.

On the other hand, though, this development seems so extensive and so entrenched that it looks too late to do anything about it. So chances are we will slide slowly into a modern equivalent to feudalism...

[jim360]

And some people were born lucky. It helps to have rich parents, and it hurts to have poor ones. It's also a fact of life, in other words, that how well-off you are isn't all about who you are as a person.

I'm not advocating equal remuneration any more than Kromo is, but it seems rather naive to conclude that being rich and being smart are correlated with each other.

[naomi24]

Spath, the people today's fortunates inherit from, or those their benefactors inherited from, as far back as you want to take it, were perhaps the smart ones. No?

[naomi24]

Jim, see above.

[Kromovaracun]

/Some are just smarter than others./

For sure. But there's also being more ruthless, more lucky, or more cunning. Wealth doesn't always correlate with talent.

This isn't really about whether wealthy people are good human beings or deserving of their wealth though. It's about the consequences of having such an extreme level of inequality.

[jim360]

I really don't see how that justifies anything, N. If Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington IV is rich because he inherited his great-great-grandfather's wealth then that would, if anything, surely undermine the point you are trying to make.