Yet, strangely, there are lots of countries with more equitable societies and less inequality than our own. So apparently, there are some viable solutions of that type.
“Some people are poor, therefore destroying extreme wealth concentration is impossible and frankly absurd” is definitely a take.
Yes, because that’s what I said. What I take issue with is your constant, vague posts that are basically nothing more than variations of guillotines. It’s so simplistic and tone deaf and honestly does nothing more than amount to a “fuck yeah”! You might as well just find a guillotine emoji and spam that all day.
Yes, there’s no value in expressing righteous anger as we watch Republic slowly collapse into Empire. You’re right. I should really take my responsibilities as a checks notes guy posting on a video game forum more seriously.
In the future I’ll do my best to constrain myself to thoughtful commentary on whether it’s ever justified to punch Nazis, or if the powerful subverting democratic institutions to loot the public coffers while literally poisoning the entire planet is something we should actively encourage or perhaps form a task force to look into considering options to present non-binding resolutions.
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I’ll just leave those two sentences there together, the way you wrote them, so you can contemplate the chutzpah inherent in 1) complaining about a straw man while 2) engaging in one.
Timex
4498
You are way richer than 99% of the other humans on earth.
You gonna give up YOUR stuff?
Actually, to be in the top 1% of wealth globally, you need about $750k. But don’t let that stop you, sparky.
CraigM
4500
And cross national comparisons become extremely fraught, bordering on meaningless.
In absolute numbers I get paid about 8-10X what my Indian colleagues at the same level do.
I am not, in any meaningful sense, 8-10x better off than them.
On a global scale, an individual must have upwards of $744,400 in combined income, investments, and personal assets to rank in the top 1% of the world’s wealthiest individuals.
Honestly, based on the number of middle aged professionals on this forum, I would not be surprised if more than 10% of members met that benchmark. If you are a technical professional aged 50 and don’t have a half million in assets and retirement accounts, you are way behind in retirement planning IMHO.
edit: saving 10% of income is hard to conceive for most
RichVR
4502
Good. Another reason to feel like I’m a total failure.
Timex
4503
Sorry, my mistake, apparently if you have more than $10k in wealth, you are only richer than 70% of the earth.
The fact remains, everyone on this forum is way richer than most of the world. There are billions of people who live in crushing poverty.
So where is the line where people are allowed to have their money, and everyone above has to get their money taken away?
Probably… Right about wherever we are, right? Everyone richer, is too rich.
RichVR
4504
How about those of us with less than $5000 in the bank, otherwise living from paycheck to paycheck? Usually behind on some bills. :)
Given that we have negative wealth and my wife’s career is very possibly irreparably fucked thanks to COVID, well, I got two specific fingers for this particular assertion.
But please, tell me more about my life and my values and the intersection thereof.
CraigM
4506
Timex, comparing international wealth levels in absolute terms to say everyone here is in the richest X% globally is bullshit. Again, I refer to this:
Now if I took my savings and moved to Mumbai, then it becomes relevant. But if, instead, I live in Michigan? Then the fact my absolute savings are greater means jack shit. You can’t just compare numbers internationally like that, cost of living as well as living standards matter.
Now if you want to say most of us are better off than someone living in Mogadishu due to access to food, water, sanitation etc? Thats valid. But that is far more difficult to calculate than simple $x values.
CraigM
4507
And, actually, I’m going to flag @scottagibson since he is an American living most of the year abroad. Perhaps he can give the Ecquadorian view on wealth.
Do you feel that you are able to have a higher standard of living with your savings in Ecquador than you would living in, say, Florida? Simply because relative costs for things like housing?
Having lived most of my adult life as an American, with American wages, in Asia and Europe, the answer is it depends entirely on if you are living in a poor country or not. There are many sites that provide cost of living adjustments, it’s pretty trivial to assess how much further the same salary will go in a different country or city.
In my experience most expatriates have an improved quality of life relative to what they’d have in their home market. It isn’t necessarily sustainable for an entire career, but that period is often one of lower costs, freer spending and more savings nonetheless. This is partly selection bias - most professionals will not uproot themselves for a worst quality of life elsewhere.
CraigM
4509
Exactly my point. The answer is highly variable, and depends extensively in circumstance.
I mean we have to put big, 100ft high neon signs here for things like healthcare costs. Even though, objectively I make more than some percentage of people, the percentage of my income eaten up by housing and healthcare is so massive as to eat all, and then some, of that numbers advantage over so many people.
So saying Americans are so much better off without any nods to that context, as @Timex did, is missing the point so much as to render the entire argument he made irrelevant.
Timex
4510
Dude, even if you want to spin it that way, you’re still left with the fact that most of the world lives in conditions that would be considered intolerable to Americans.
There are people to walk tens of miles every day just to get water, and then carry it home.
We’re all sitting in our houses, with electricity, talking on computers.
If you are in America, you are rich.
It’s so weird to see folks deny this kind of thing. Some of you guys have seen real, crushing poverty, right? Not The kind of poverty we see in America, but the kind that you see in the developing world that affects a huge chunk of the global population. It’s a different world.
I’m completely puzzled by where CraigM is trying to go with this. If the name of the game is wealth redistribution, through seizure to normalize equity, Americans are CLEARLY on on the “giving” side of the equation.
Note that changing policies to reduce inequality, moving forward, is a whole different thing than class warfare redistribution. Working to equalize opportunities to succeed, and reductions in generational wealth transfer, are much less prone to abuse than someone deciding who is on one side of the equation and who’s on the other, for redistribution. Many of those clamoring for redistribution only do so because they see the pool defined a certain way, usually a way that doesn’t have them on the wrong side.
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