There will always be people who are the smartest and/or shrewdest and/or most ambitious and/or luckiest, in a population. “Just get rid of the people who currently have the most wealth” is extraordinarily naive.
Cool so we will remove the impediments of those structural changes (or rather the heads of those impediments) first and then we can have structural change :)
There’s kind of a difference between “whoever happens to be wealthiest at the moment” and “The 0.001% of the population that is three times wealthier than the bottom 50% of humanity combined.”
Over the long term, there really isn’t. Outside of a government imposing tyranny-tier control over everyone’s wealth, wealth inequality happens naturally, and inevitably, and the gap widens similarly.
What’s more important is making sure that even the poorest among us can have a decent standard of living. After all, if you waved a magic wand and now everyone in the US, for example, was earning $75,000 a year minimum, no one would be in poverty, right? And yet the size of the ‘wealth gap’ between the wealthiest and the $75k ‘minimum earners’ would effectively be identical; the gap between $0 and billions is basically the same as the gap between $75k and billions.
Toppling the wealthiest just because they’re the wealthiest isn’t going to solve any of the actual problems (especially when politicians get bribed for relatively-measly five figure sums, etc.).
Outside of a government imposing tyranny-tier control over everyone’s wealth, wealth inequality happens naturally, and inevitably, and the gap widens similarly.
Hmm, this tyranny idea sounds pretty interesting then.
Except that the only way you get everyone a baseline income of $75k is by taking it from the billionaires, thus reducing the gap much more substantially
you get everyone a baseline income of $75k is by taking it from the billionaires
Actually, no. That’s a hypothetical for a reason; the entire net worth of all billionaires combined (assuming a magic wand could convert the net worth figure into an equivalent amount of cash, literally impossible in reality) wouldn’t get everyone to $75k for even a single year.
There will always be people who are the smartest and/or shrewdest and/or most ambitious and/or luckiest, in a population. “Just get rid of the people who currently have the most wealth” is extraordinarily naive.
Structural solutions are important!
Massive understatement—they’re actually the only things that could truly be “solutions” at all in anything approaching long-term.
Cool so we will remove the impediments of those structural changes (or rather the heads of those impediments) first and then we can have structural change :)
There’s kind of a difference between “whoever happens to be wealthiest at the moment” and “The 0.001% of the population that is three times wealthier than the bottom 50% of humanity combined.”
Over the long term, there really isn’t. Outside of a government imposing tyranny-tier control over everyone’s wealth, wealth inequality happens naturally, and inevitably, and the gap widens similarly.
What’s more important is making sure that even the poorest among us can have a decent standard of living. After all, if you waved a magic wand and now everyone in the US, for example, was earning $75,000 a year minimum, no one would be in poverty, right? And yet the size of the ‘wealth gap’ between the wealthiest and the $75k ‘minimum earners’ would effectively be identical; the gap between $0 and billions is basically the same as the gap between $75k and billions.
Toppling the wealthiest just because they’re the wealthiest isn’t going to solve any of the actual problems (especially when politicians get bribed for relatively-measly five figure sums, etc.).
Hmm, this tyranny idea sounds pretty interesting then.
Except that the only way you get everyone a baseline income of $75k is by taking it from the billionaires, thus reducing the gap much more substantially
Actually, no. That’s a hypothetical for a reason; the entire net worth of all billionaires combined (assuming a magic wand could convert the net worth figure into an equivalent amount of cash, literally impossible in reality) wouldn’t get everyone to $75k for even a single year.
How about changing taxes so that it’s impossible for individuals to have more wealth than entire nations?
Ok. But what if we keep doing it? It’s good for the environment, and it’s a great source of steady employment opportunities.