Wealth inequality based upon productivity doesnt bother me at all. This accounts for a pretty small component of inequality, however.

Wealth inequality based upon "the magic of compounding" is essentially unsustainable legalized financial parasitism.

Rents, dividends, interest payments - when this component of the economy grows faster than the productive component (r>g) then the parasites are slowly killing the host.

The mask slipped off during covid somewhat when we saw how badly paid almost all of the workers labeled "essential" really were.

I think one of the fundamental problems is that wealth grows exponentially and taxes do not. We need to make wealth grow linearly. Otherwise the inevitable end is that one person will control half the wealth… and thus power.

It's, I think, more complicated than that.

Lack of wealth is lack of power, and with a sufficient lack of wealth one has no power even over ones own living situation. That kind of thing is bad for people-- because they rent they have continuous uncertainty and can't change or build, which I think are human instincts which it costs something to suppress. Think of it as being restricted to working only on the production branch of a software project, where anythings done incorrectly has consequences for others.

This is mostly a structural issue. The dollars amount that an individual has is basically a distraction.

The wealthy has that much money in part because they don't have to compete with anyone else. This is especially true if you consider land, which are basically horded by the upper strata of society, and we allowed people to build wealth through property ownership rather than efficient use of land.

You get strange words like "robust housing market" due to rising land price as if that's a good thing. Everyone who's looking to buy a home or rent get screwed by the market.

Once you introduce competition and reward the wealthy for proper allocation not land hording, the stark inequality will likely be lower while the pie itself gets bigger.

Totally.

Lack of sanitation, food, etc… do cause deaths.

Lack of equality is a fact of life. It cannot kill.

Thanks. I agree with you totally.

I get that you are slightly uncomfortable with the idea of mass death and suffering? Is that correct?

I'm rather uncomfortable with it myself I suppose but I never thought my own slight discomfort was ever worth bringing up in this context.

I have decent imagination, if someone dies in front of my nose or behind a curtain the emotional impact is ideally the same. I cant get there of course but my ambition is to experience those exactly the same.

In a world with finite resources we have to do a fair bit of rationing or accept that some will get it all.

Our discomfort is therefore caused by the complete lack of rationing and we should attempt to address the issue there. Then we quickly see what little we can do because bureaucratic power (to call it that) is also not distributed sensibly.

When the few oppose the many and there is no hope for sensible dialog the natural way to progress is to resort to mass violence.

If the 10 richest men can do something to slow or stop the suffering of billions and we cant it in my view becomes their responsibility. It becomes the direct result of their actions. It is as good as killing them yourself. say by shooting though the curtain.

Therefore one side of the war (the few) have already engaged in the killing of the other side (the many). We are so many that we've barely noticed it.

You can expect that if they chose to play their game against you they wont hesitate to take it all and you too will lose everything.

Your story would be as uncomfortable to read for others but that is just a symptom. We can safely ignore it.

I disagree with your assessment, it seems illogical. Your logic doesn't hold true in all cases, and to me it seems the case where it does isn't the current case.

The fact that inequality could exist without associated deaths doesn't mean that it currently does.

It is very possible that right now, inequality causes deaths, even if it could exist in a different context that didn't, except that's not necessarily the current context.

In our current context, it could be true that if we reduced inequality by distributing less wealth at the top and more at the bottom, that it could prevent many deaths, by providing many billions of people with the means to be mentally and physically healthy as you say.

Thus it's possible in our current context that we'd have the means for everyone to have enough wealth to be mentally and physically healthy, but that the inequality in the distribution of that wealth causes some not to have enough, and thus their premature deaths.

I still just say could, because this too is hypothetical. It is possible without the incentives of massive inequality that the wealth wouldn't be created in the first place, or that any other phenomenon would cause different outcomes.

How does democracy survive when a poker-table full of men owns and runs most of the country?

Eventually the amount of power and temptation for corruption will become too much for the system of justice and law to keep in check

I don't think this logic checks out. "If you have a lot of fire, it will burn down a house. But you can also have a little fire in a house and it doesn't burn down. Ergo, if fire can exist without a house burning down, fire isn't the cause."

To me that's the same logic, but maybe I'm wrong.

I agree to an extent, though it depends on to what degree do you consider economy to be zero sum. Are the resources required to make everyone physically and mentally healthy finite or not? If they are finite and cannot be scaled to provide for everyone, then someone must be left out. In that case you could print money (or transfer it from billionaires) and come to a temporary state of affairs where everyone can afford wellbeing, but if the labour and resources that provide said wellbeing don't scale accordingly, it just results in inflation on that sector and soon enough someone will be left out again.

Same reason why you can't solve housing shortage by just giving people more money so they can pay their rent.

Wealth is power. No, it's not that wealth leads to gaining power, wealth is power in of itself.

So your question reduces to: is power zero sum? One cannot be dogmatic, but it certainly seems so.

Totally. I don’t like narration around dividing between “poor” and “rich”. I rather see value providers vs nonvalue providers.

A billionaire investing his capital in the business providing work and quality products for society is great. What I don't like is underpaying employees, shady businesses with low value and abusing the legal system.

Does it depends on the definition of wealth?

Is wealth defined as: - enough resources for driving a Ferarri wherever and whenever you want unregarding anybody else

Or is wealth defined as: - enough resources for shelter - enough resources for food - enough resources to get an educated - enough resources for getting assistence when in need - having the possibility to reach something like self realization (to prosper)

Myself is thinking, that not having the posibility to go for self realization, will on average kill a lot of spirits.

Now being able to drive a Ferrari everywhere you want could possibly also offset the average life expectancy of those who the ability to do that (as in Ferarri cliff jumping), so maybe there are more things to compare.

And maybe wealth is exactly the correct summarizing word, if the opposite of wealth/abundance is scarcity.

> For example, claims that "wealth inequality result in X deaths" seem clearly manipulative. It's not "inequality" of wealth, whatever that actually means, that kills them. If everyone had at least enough wealth to be physically and mentally healthy you could still have massive wealth inequality. Ergo, if wealth inequality can exist without the associated deaths then wealth inequality isn't the cause.

> Do you agree with my assessment? Why or why not?

It’s a pretty obvious logical fallacy, though I appreciate the way you asked for more viewpoints.

The article itself argues the disparity is so vast that you could tax the 10 men to the point of them still having 8 billion more than when the pandemic started and solve a lot of global problems. It’s like saying someone having cholesterol problems couldn’t be from eating 10 cheeseburgers a day because when they dropped to eating 1 cheeseburger a day and the problems were fixed they were still eating bad food.

I can't agree. The simplicity of the statment is key and understandable by all. I don't see how any reasonable person can say "it's okay for the top 10 richest people in the world own more wealth than 3.1 billion least wealthy humans". That is just ludicrous to me and shows the system is way out of balance. I'm no communist but holy shit.

Let's say we start out with everyone having enough bananas (money) to be healthy and well for a week. When a few individuals in the group hoard (and not share) stratospheric amount of bananas, the rest of the group runs through their existing bananas and there will be far less bananas available for everyone else in the group (or if the gov prints bananas then loads of artificial bananas with far less nutrients per banana, resulting in the same net lack of nutrition for everyone else) Today's means of exchange is money and this money is based on artificial scarcity, just like nutritious bananas are not infinitely abundant, so if someone hoards huge amounts of bananas to themselves, the rest of the group will suffer as they eat thru their existing store of bananas.

If 10 monkeys hoarded as much bananas as 3.1B monkeys we would seek to exterminate those monkeys and wipe out their genetic footprint from the face of the earth (this latter part would be genocidal, not recommended, but some would harbor the thought) because it would be clear that they're causing a huge imbalance in the system, and a great deal of suffering. But if the monkeys are Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, we put them on the covers of magazines and consider them an extreme example of success.

Obviously, we're being manipulated to think that such extreme hoarding is what successful people must do and that it is a good thing. "Greed is good" and all of that.

Added later in response to the "pie is not fixed" and the "economy is not a zero-sum game":

There are limited resources on this planet. You can't have massive population growth with 10 people holding as much leverage to consume those limited resources as nearly half of the population and still have a balanced system. We can talk about systems that exist in non-equilibrium states but massive imbalance when it comes to the allocation of finite resources coupled with population growth is equivalent to massive suffering

Yet another clarification:

It's not just the actual consumption but also the leverage/power to consume and the power to give, which holds political power over the rest of the group, as they can use that as a carrot for politicians and non-profits. They have the power to do so much good as well as the power to do not much good, or even anti-good. It causes suffering for a few to hold that much power.

Try to transcend the metaphor and build your more accurate picture of what is being conveyed rather than just dismissing that there is anything wrong with the current picture.

One last thought on this:

The basic problem is that there is a massive imbalance of power/leverage due to the massive wealth gap. In socialism, the ruling class has that power. Neither capitalism nor socialism lead to fair and balanced allocation of resources/power/leverage. We don't have to settle for either.

...

Analogies like this one are exactly why all these headlines about the super-wealthy are misleading. When people see these astronomical sums they think in terms of actual things they can buy because that's the main thing money represents to most, but those big numbers don't represent actual goods and services consumed by the super-wealthy and their fraction of overall global consumption is much, much smaller than the wealth difference. In fact, the fact that the super-wealthy spend so much less of their wealth than ordinary people was originally one of the arguments people used to justify wealth redistribution especially after the global financial crisis in 2008 - and it might've made sense then.

The current crisis we're in is not rooted in the financial system but one of underlying supply, though, and it's not possible to fix this by redistributing the resources the super-wealthy are consuming to ordinary people because they're not consuming enough. If you think of money as a claim on scarce resources, almost all the wealth of the super-wealthy is not real money. It's just an imaginary figure produced by multiplying their shareholdings by what the amount of actual money they could trade a single share for.

Those big numbers do represent the potential things consumable if they were converted into new consumption. They’re not sitting as cash in the bank. But they are a great proxy for it. Cash gets borrowed nearly for free against it, for example. Absolutely not “imaginary”. Access to quality and luxury is not based on anything more imaginary than more money than someone else. Access to better land, to preferential treatment by politicians, police and health systems the same.

Wealth guards the opportunity to consume, as well. I really don’t understand what you mean by “not consuming enough.”

It is not the purchase power that needs to be distributed but the absolutely massive influence that comes with it for free in our system.

Our system is to have an elected government govern over a game of capitalism. By its very nature this combination accomplishes stuff by concentrating wealth in the areas where it accomplishes the most.

These accomplishments should be things like social progress, preservation of the eco system, quality of life, sustainability, resilience. We can trade some for something else for a while but the whole point of governing is to have a long term plan for everyone rather than a short term plan to expand gains for a hand full of people for a short while.

This entire screed seems to be based around a truly bizarre idea that the economy is a zero-sum game. It is not.

The verbal canary-in-the-coal-mine is “hoarding,” which indicates a misunderstanding of wealth creation.

Here's where your analysis is wrong:

Elon Musk doesn't have "bananas". He has shares of stock in Tesla, which are largely only of value because he is running the company. Him owning that stock doesn't mean fewer "bananas" for anyone. Taking away his shares of stock won't produce any more "bananas".

> If 10 monkeys hoarded as much bananas as 3.1B monkeys we would seek to exterminate those monkeys and wipe out their genetic footprint from the face of the earth (this latter part would be genocidal, not recommended

Yeah, we're not going to let you do that again. Sorry.

This would make sense if they pie were fixed.

There are limited resources on this planet. You can't have massive population growth with 10 people holding as much leverage to consume those limited resources as nearly half of the population and still have a balanced system. We can talk about systems that exist in non-equilibrium states but massive imbalance when it comes to the allocation of finite resources coupled with population growth is equivalent to massive suffering.

Evidence that these 10 people are actually "consuming" as much as the 3.1 billion?

I don't think they are. Not by many orders of magnitude.

What "limited resources" are billionaires hoarding compared to the everyone else?

Political influence. Speech. Representation. We revolted about something similar a few hundred years ago.

But it's not that easy. These 10 extremely rich monkeys provide jobs (which convert to bananas at the end of the month) to millions. And these jobs do generate value to million of people. This is how capitalism work, of course you can suggest different forms of economical and political systems like socialism, but so far history has told us that capitalism works quite well.

Ah, the heroic job creator. Deploying people and objects for a functioning economy is valuable. Keeping all the bananas because of a feeling that the bananas are to be kept by you, that the job of those people is to get you those bananas, not so laudable. Making sure that there are few bananas for anyone other than the ones you can provide them (nature and other people will assist you with this) helps this strategy.

DEMAND creates and provides those jobs. Those rich monkeys could be vapourised tomorrow and by and large the world would continue on without particularly missing their existence.

Yes, but you need someone with much bananas to build a big factory in order to match the demand.

No, you only need the cooperation of many banana-holders collectively pooling their resources. In fact, that’s how it usually happens.

The basic problem is that there is a massive imbalance of power/leverage due to the massive wealth gap. In socialism, the ruling class has that power. Neither capitalism nor socialism lead to fair and balanced allocation of resources/power/leverage. We don't have to settle for either.

> We don't have to settle for either.

Well that's easy to say, but what's your suggestion to the problem?