Deranged, these people don’t realize there are voice actors for the muppets
Eat the rich, embrace socialism, basically become a millionaire at some point
Vs whatever the fuck Reagan’s neoliberalism has got you
But the consequences - how we tell who is elite vs who is not? /S
People who do great works will earn prestige, honor and renown.
Yea
People could still be famous for being good actors, make good music or play sports well
They just wouldn’t be incredibly rich or multiple orders of magnitude richer than the common person
I’m curious to know, if the wealth was redistributed like this, but with no modifications to the underlying system, how long before the existing Pareto-style distribution returns?
It doesn’t take a genius to understand that if given a windfall of nearly half a million dollars, most people would instantly fritter it away on useless nonsense like drugs, alcohol, and luxury goods. Just look at the average outcome for lottery winners: nearly one third of them ends up declaring bankruptcy within five years.
I don’t know that lottery winners are a good representative sample. Playing the lottery isn’t exactly sound financial planning.
…but hoping for completely egalitarian wealth distribution someday is?
Who said they were planning on it? The real economic implications of that scale of payout are basically unknowable.
Contrary to pithy internet comments, cash windfalls have been shown to unlock the economic potential of that money very efficiently. Replacing food aid with one-time direct cash aid leads to higher quality of life for the poor. They actually do invest it in housing repair, transportation for jobs, necessary clothing, etc…
Yeah some people are just gonna do $400k worth of cocaine, but the myopic view of a stereotype lottery winner is pretty unfounded.
Which is it, is the outcome basically unknowable or almost certainly positive? Can’t be both, can it.
And what makes you think that the results of Bangladeshi or Malawian subsistence farmers facing the potential sale of their cows due to short-term economic shocks would directly translate to, say, homeless people in the US?
It doesn’t take a genius to understand that if given a windfall of nearly half a million dollars, most people would instantly fritter it away on useless nonsense like drugs, alcohol, and luxury goods
You made an over generalized statement that “most people” waste a windfall, which clearly isn’t true with our current evidence. Yeah nothing as outlandish as this hypothetical has ever happened, but I feel more comfortable projecting that ~173 million people getting a wealth bump will look more like those large scale programs than a few dozen lottery winners.
BTW there’s no evidence to even support your lottery bankruptcy stat. Multiple studies confirm that winning the lottery improves long term quality of life and most people spend their winnings over time with no evidence of extravagant waste.
there’s no evidence to even support your lottery bankruptcy stat
Literally the first article you cited makes note of the fact that all of the previously published literature found no evidence that people became significantly happier after winning the lottery (links are provided there so I won’t repeat them here). Unfortunately I cannot read the rest of the article since it’s paywalled.
In the second study, the vast majority of the sample consists of people winning smaller sums (over 80% won less than $200k, which is certainly enough to fix the most pressing issues in your life, like a leaking roof or being behind on rent, but likely not enough to build a foundation for long-term wealth). Also, consider that this happened in an environment where the average person did NOT win the lottery, which is important because a massive shift in wealth distribution could have a significant effect on demand curves and would likely cause a huge change in market prices for nearly every good on the market.
You will get hate but you are correct.
This comment has big “The poor can’t be trusted with money” vibes.
We need better financial education. On top of better wages
It’s not surprising that people who don’t have money never have an opportunity to figure out how to handle money properly.
The vast majority of them can’t. Those who can be trusted with it generally don’t stay poor for long.
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If it’s a one time thing, it wouldn’t take very long. Redistribution would have to be a continuous process.
Markets inherently create inequalities. You can also verify this for yourself by playing something like Eco (where all players start with the same wealth) for a like a week and then watching everyone complain about inequality.
Wealth inequality is our #1 issue in the world, and the root of all our other issues, climate change, politics, all issues. But y’all understand money doesn’t work like the meme, right?
Tried explaining this to my stoner friend back in the 90s. Mike was appalled that the government shredded worn out bills. “Man! They could just give that to people like us!”
OK Mike, you understand that the US government could give each one of $1,000,000, today? And you know I charge $20 to mow a lawn? If we both had a million bucks, I wouldn’t mow your lawn for $20. I’d want $20,000. I already have a million simoleans, what’s $20?! “You could still get a righteous meal at McDonald’s!”
If we all woke up with $417,465 tomorrow, we would instantly be broke. As dad used to say, “If getting money was easy, it wouldn’t be money.” We obviously need to tilt the table, radically, but just smearing all the money around is a childish idea.
Call me a downer, but I don’t see any hope of clawing anything back from the rich short of guillotines. Every one of our institutions is bought and paid for, and that’s still not enough. They rape us more everyday and demand yet more. (Call me bitter. Lowe’s is pulling this shit on me daily. Stock must have gone down a nickle.)
If we all woke up with $417,465 tomorrow, we would instantly be broke
That’s not true, though, fully equal wealth redistribution does create an incentive problem, but tax based redistribution, such as UBI, allows for ROI and Return On Time/Work. It’s fair that the slaver class must pay more for work if the structural desperation of accepting slave level wages is eliminated, but there is direct economic growth from UBI/tax redistribution, from higher money flow/velocity, and so Return on slave’s work can be positive, and certainly, the slaver/capital class still has all income/wealth trickle up to them.
I wouldn’t mow your lawn for $20
You might like me, or like society enough, to help me/society for a fair price. You don’t need to travel far if you’re my neighbour. The $20 might be equivalent to a few beers. But even if you will only do it for $40, that is more beer sales, and more brewing workers/income, and more demand for lawn mowing.
It’s not like the best way to do wealth redistribution is to just give the lump sum to every person. A significantly better way is to fund public goods: such as public infrastructure, universal healthcare, mass transit, social housing, public education, subsidies for healthy food, expanded protections for workers, and UBI to assist everyone’s cost of living. Jobs would focus on the quality of their output over the overexploitation of the workers.
You’re correct, anything communist of even socialist would take centuries to fully adapt to, even in USSR and China, it was state capitalism, not socialism
It says wealth, not money. Redistribution would not look like printing dollars, it would be ownership of 471k worth of assets and securities.
If 20 strangers get 1/20 of a 10 million dollar mansion what do they do? The most anyone could pay for it is $500,000.
Everyone is on here talking about how this would cause inflation, but I don’t think it would. A vast majority of this value is not in cash but in stocks bonds and property. I am more sure how you would divide up who gets apples shares and who gets 5% of their neighbors $600,000 home. But even if you were able, what is sure is that most people would want to convert their stock/bonds/property to cash so they can eat. Only problem is that no one in America would have any cash to buy up the assets. So in a market full of sellers and no buyers the value of everything will plummet.
To be honest we could use a little deflation right about now.
I think there’s a lot of distraction discussing the particulars of this hypothetical, when it’s clear that it couldn’t work that way in practice.
It’s really only helpful to illustrate the equity imbalance and just how much equity is in the system that most people don’t see.
I don’t disagree that the commenter was not calling for all wealth to be seized and redistributed. But I didn’t want to post my disagreement with all the other people who said this would cause inflation.
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Hmmm . . . as a lump sum the market would then react and everything would cost 1 million dollars. Money isn’t real. Food, Land, and property are.
I think money’s value is directly tied to its velocity of trade vs the scarcity of the item it’s being traded for.
However
IMO: What you are owed is 500,000$ worth of government services per person. The costs of things like public education, infrastructure, healthcare , social security and other social services should be covered by this.
This is what they want to take from you.
IMO: What you are owed is 500,000$ worth of government services per person. The costs of things like public education, infrastructure, healthcare , social security and other social services should be covered by this.
I wish the loudest, stupidest segment of our population, that is, the small sliver that somehow has taken us all hostage, could understand these kinds of concepts. I wish we had an opposition party that knew how to frame these ideas in ways that the stupid segment could understand.
No one said it would be 500k in money/cash. It could very well be real estate, gold, shares, bonds, or a mix thereof.
I assumed it was cash by “each couple would have a million dollars”.
You would need some kind of Thanos “money gem” to make that happen. Most of this “wealth” is tied up in a vast network of investments and in other countries and in defense budgets and so on.
The point is to tell you that you’re owed more for your labor than barely making it each day. If we all worked together and pooled and distributed our efforts, we would have that American Dream of being able to afford a house on a single job before you turn 80.
… Of networth. Given that we’re taking about the wealth of the US, most of which is NOT cash, assuming the post-redistribution would be all in cash is ridiculous.
Your definition is pretty close to theory.
V_{T} M = P T
V_{T} is the velocity of money for all transactions in a given time frame;
P is the price level;
T is the amount of transactions occurring in a given time frame;
M is the total nominal amount of money in circulation on average in the economy
Upvote to the moon. Lots of leftists seem to intellectually understand that money is a fiction that’s sometimes useful, but are bad at putting that into practice.
I’ll stick my neck out on something here: this includes donating to individual people in Gaza, even if they’re coming to you from a verified source on Blue Sky. Yes, a kilo of flour might cost $600. Giving someone $600 to buy flour might feed that family, but there’s some other family who isn’t getting that flour. You’re just choosing who starves today. The fundamental issue is that there isn’t enough flour or any other food. There is no way to solve that by donating to individuals. It can only be solved by telling the government of Israel to go fuck itself.
It can only be solved by telling the government of Israel to go fuck itself.
I wrote them a strongly worded email. Is it solved now?
I get the general point you’re making. But you’re not even recommending the money be spent on something else that will help. We can do both things. If you are going to donate money because you have spare and want to help, and then don’t on the basis you’re choosing who starves, you’re still just making an additional family starve.
I dunno. I haven’t thought too much about this. Convince me why it’s not better to try to enact change and donate money at the same time.
“Tell Israel to go fuck itself” in a broad sense. Yes, donating money to a cause that directly tells Israel to go fuck itself, in something more than a strongly worded letter, is worthwhile.
I just want billionaires and churches to pay their fair share and end citizens united. That’s a great start
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Haha you forgot about the trillions of debt. Thank you for coming to my Tex talk.
But those trillions in debt are literally held by private people as wealth. That’s what called bonds.
Chinese people
China isn’t even the largest foreign owner of US bonds, that’s Japan. But total foreign ownership as a whole is still less than domestic ownership.
So, no. Not China.
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Wealth is not money.
Nor can you redistribute the combined assets of a population, but that would be deliberate obtuseness in translating the point of the message if you think that’s what it’s advocating for.
Seriously, if someone reads this and thinks “we should literally redistribute wealth so everyone has a half million bucks” you have the civic acuity of a mollusk.
This is a point about how wealth/assets/value-from-work is being horded by a select few. This line is to highlight that inequality is much worse than you think.
Pretty much most Lemmy users are mollusks who are either 15yo skipping school or 35yo living in mom’s basement.
No really, you’re right, the reason this is never going to be a rival to reddit because this site network doesn’t have the diversity sauce to actually bring in large scale users. Reddit didn’t explode until they made it feel unified and comfortable for women and older people to join the conversations. This site is like reddit was about 15 years ago, a deep basement of nerdy little boys sperging out about linux and underground memes, the only difference is some of the communities here have a much further left slant and reddit appealed to… absolute scum incels and illegal porn traders.
Man, we just can’t win. I’d love a site where they just check if you’re a reasonable, sane adult before you can get in. Like how Somethingawful had a $10 gate at the front which kept the bullshit down, and when someone did decide to burn their $10, it was a public spectacle and they were driven in shame… to form 4chan which is partially responsible for the destruction of democracy.
There were multiple attempts to gatekeep a nice community with a payment, but the majority of people today don’t want to pay for anything. The only huge exception is Suicide Girls.
And it’s the same everywhere! Lemmings like to talk about “enshitifications” and other bullshit, but the reality is that everyone is fine with slave labour and damage to the environment when jeans from Primark cost £15, but jeans from Hebtroco, made in the UK from UK garments and paying decent wages are £150+.
Cheap/free is the enemy of good.
Doing it over world wealth/population (454385÷8.2) gives 55,412 USD per capita, which tell how skewed is wealth in the US.
If we could figure out how to distribute food efficiently and how to build housing units efficiently – in the sense of actually getting that done – $55k ought to be a perfectly acceptable amount of money for everyone.
That’s not rocket science, we already have that figured out, we can supply food and housing to anywhere in the world.
We don’t because capitalism.
That’s why I said “in the sense of actually getting that done.” We haven’t figured out how to coordinate the effort to actually do it.
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Wealth is good and all, but the companies involved also lead to products being more expensive, that wealth would go a lot farther with either regulations on land ownership or total reform of land ownership, free universities, universal healthcare, zoning reform and work reform
So if that’s the median, you need about half a million to be considered “Middle class” now?
Looks at housing prices… Yeah, sounds about right.
Incorrectly conflating class with income level is exactly why working class Americans have believed they’re “middle class” for decades.
