This is how we should be selling redistribution
This is how we should be selling redistribution
150 comments
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Mathematically, I think it's hard for people to truly understand the obscene wealth that some people have accumulated. 100 billion doesn't sound that different than 100 million.
100 million is magnitudes closer to ZERO than it is to 100 billion.
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Imagine life was a game. You lived for 2025 years. You worked 260 days / year. You made the median US salary.
You would need to relive that process 3,145 times to match an Oligarch.
That amount of wealth is unethical while humanity suffers. No one can really fathom “1b dollars.”
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Without spending
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I found people are receptive to the idea that $1 billion is 10,000 $100,000s.
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The net worths are outdated but it's still a shocking way to show how much billions are...
Wealth shown to scale
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.................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................
This represents 1 Billion.
Each dot . represents 1 Million.
Now for the question: how many hours a day would you work to get more dots if you already had one Billion?
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If I had 6 of those dots I would retire and have still have 12 dots leftover when I die.
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I think it helps to convert the same ratios to easily understood dollars.
So $1 is to $1000 (one thousand) what $1000 dollars is to $1,000,000 (one million) is what $1,000,000 (one million) is to 1,000,000,000 (one billion).
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Best illustration I had read was the "stairwell" analogy.
Each step is a net worth of +$100k.
10 steps on the staircase, you have $1M. Imagine being 10 steps up on the stairs - higher than most, but really you can still see them, relate..
Now if 10 stpes = 1M, 10,000 steps = 1B.
The empire state building is ~1500 steps. 1B is about 6.5 Empire State buildings of height.
Musk has a net worth of 450B.
That's 450 x 10,000, that's 4,500,000 steps, or about 3,000 Empire State buildings, or comfortably in low earth orbit.
So when you look down at those on ground floor or those 10 steps above ground, the difference to you is not only inconsequential, it's literally unnoticeable
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The USA will nod and smile at this simple and straightforward explanation then complain that no system can possibly be intuitive if it's based on multiples of 10
Give me 5280 feet to the mile and units that may represent weight or volume depending on context, or give me death
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Even with all of the examples here and that I've seen around, it's still something I know I don't fully grasp. I'm also confident this is the same kind of limitation that flat earthers use when they say "Well I can't comprehend the Earth being a sphere, it just looks flat to me."
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Just to be pedantic isn't magnitudes in this case referring to order of magnitude that basically means in this case 1E X so 100 million would be 1E8 and 100 billion would be 1E11 so a difference of only 3 while difference to 1 would be 8 and to zero the difference is infinite
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Yes, 100 billion is 3 orders of magnitude bigger than 100 million.
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We don't need to redistribute any wealth. We only need to disappear the wealth of the billionaires, and the billionaires themselves just to be sure they do not rise again.
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You gotta grease the wheels. Americans are very self-centered, they won't put in effort for somebody else's profit (knowingly), but if they're told they themselves can get almost $500k they'll be more inclined to do it.
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You're absolutely right and I wish we had an opposition party that knew how to frame this messaging. Liberal Democrats are stuck in "civility politics" and messaging that everything is fair and good and we need to all "do our fair share" and that slides off the backs of most self-centered people, which is like... all of them.
The right has won so much ground because they have both fashioned a selfish base, and nurtured them and sent them messages of what they're entitled to. Even if those entitlements are batshit and stupid, they still successfully got a loud enough segment of the population to make demands that we're now in a hostage situation where about 20% of us represent all of us.
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We don’t need to redistribute any wealth
I think part of the problem is that we confuse "wealth" as "money" and not "capital".
We don't need to raid a bunch of bank accounts and hand out big checks to everyone.
We do need to give workers equity in the companies where they work. We need to give them transparency with regard to how the businesses operate. And we need to give them lines of credit such that they can operate these businesses independently of the private banking sector.
That is the real wealth of the modern American economy. Not the Petrodollar.
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That's the point of the message. You can't "redistribute wealth" in the shape it's in now without some kind of thanos gem.
But if more people understand that if they work and contribute to society, they are entitled to getting more of that back, we make small steps towards people understanding that their local representatives need to attach themselves to making our labor actually count for something in our lives.
We work more than ever and have less to show for it than ever. This is something we could change if wanted.
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Even so, this is a good way to illustrate that the typical person is well below the average amount of wealth.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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I need these statistics for other countries. Especially Germany. We seem to struggle to understand it as well.
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That would be in equity, not in cash, but it would mean each person would have secure housing, a secure retirement, reliable transportation, and reliable healthcare
Imagine how much less stressful life would be if the average person didn’t have to worry about paying rent and whether or not they will retire at the end of their life.
I work in mental health and I guarantee you a lot of mental illness is not “mental illness” but resource management issues masquerading as such
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Imagine how much less stressful life would be if the average person didn’t have to worry about paying rent and whether or not they will retire at the end of their life.
"That sounds horrible, we can't make money in those conditions" is what the people standing in the way would say.
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Not sure how you get secure housing out of that. If everyone is in the market for housing then prices are going through the roof.
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I've got a wild idea, maybe if there is demand we can increase supply. Surely in this hypothetical communist world, we can also build some housing without every rich asshole trying to stop it in the name of maintaining their property value through scarcity.
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Increase supply if housing isn’t a commodity, reduce pricing if housing is no longer a vehicle for retirement, end housing as a vehicle for capital so there are far less empty homes doing nothing, etc
It doesn’t solve the problem overnight (zoning reform is a big issue to address, for one) but it would alleviate a lot of key issues
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I just want billionaires and churches to pay their fair share and end citizens united. That's a great start
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People who are complaining real life lacks money sinks need to be taxed more, not less as they still have endless amount of money no matter if they pay 1% tax or 30% tax. Religion is a glorified hobby, it should not be except from tax.
I have no interest in stealing what someone has earned one way or another rather them not paying for their upkeep in a proportional way. Someone who makes 1000 a month losing 30% of that income hurts a lot when rent is 500. Someone who makes 10,000,000 a month, losing 3 mil doesnt hurt when most of that money should be free capital anyway that can easily be used to generate more income.
Governments should find a way to make a cost of living adjustment.
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I dont want the money evenly distributed anymore. Now I want things to change entirely.
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I don't want their capital. I want their heads.
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I am on your side, Bortus
Synthesizers for everyone
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Doing it over world wealth/population (454385÷8.2) gives 55,412 USD per capita, which tell how skewed is wealth in the US.
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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.
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Now you know why redistribution won't happpen. The fucking tankies won't be happy with limiting redistribution to the nation. They don't want national, they want international socialism.
In that scenario, it's better to keep going as before. Whatever people have now, the ones who can implement the change have more than 55,412 USD.
Tankies even have a word for it, if workers earn more than the average: Labor aristocracy.
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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.
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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.
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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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To be honest we could use a little deflation right about now.
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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.)
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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.
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It says wealth, not money. Redistribution would not look like printing dollars, it would be ownership of 471k worth of assets and securities.
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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.
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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
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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?
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Like a week.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Incorrectly conflating class with income level is exactly why working class Americans have believed they’re “middle class” for decades.
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each person would have that exactly once... over time the concentration would happen again
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Except the wealth you're talking about is ownership, not actual money. Redistributing it won't give everybody a pile of Scrooge McDuck coins, it will give them stocks and other asset ownership worth half a million. To spend any of that, they would have to sell shares to somebody for cash and spend the cash, which they can only do once. After a flurry of liquidating and spending, you'd end up with a lot of people who have more stuff but are otherwise back where they were, and other people who spend less and gradually accumulate a ton of shares to become rich.
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"people would just have a little bit of more stuff, don't give the poors anything, they're not responsible with their money"
you're labouring under the just world fallacy
science disagrees, buddy
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You could see it that way, but those are your words you're putting in my mouth, not mine. The point is that most people (not just "the poors" as you choose to call them) aren't used to thinking like wealthy people. When most of us, including myself, see a number like $471,465 we think of things we would buy. Maybe move into a nicer place, for example. Why do you think OP is saying we should be promoting redistribution this way?
I've quoted multiple studies like the one you linked that demonstrate that most people who get Basic Income don't even quit their jobs. In one case the only ones who did were single moms with young children at home, and teenagers who went back to school because they had dropped out to work to help support their families. But I would be shocked if those people didn't buy more stuff with their newfound income, because that's what people do. The wealthy do that too, they just also think in terms of acquiring assets that produce more money. There are definitely people with that mindset (not even necessarily previously wealthy ones) who would focus on asset acquisition, and after a while they would end up accumulating most of the assets.
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Well, if everyone has equal shares, and trading them becomes as common as exchanging money, you could just use your shares (or fractions of it) to buy something at the grocery.
I am sure that people will find solutions for what you describe, if they want to.
But sure if you don't effectively prevent developing wealth-inequality after you redistributed it, it will slowly move back to a similar situation, but not sure what your point here is, you cannot simply fix capitalism by redistributing wealth one time and not changing the underlying incentive structure. But that is not what is expressed here.
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Fine then, create a mechanism that lets people spend shares at the grocery store. Some people will spend all or most of theirs and others will focus on accumulating more, which will result in a repeat of wealth inequity. I think dangling a big number with a dollar sign in front of it as a marketing tool is playing to the spending mentality, which bothers me. I would rather inspire people to look for an end of the scarcity era, when money will be either mostly or entirely irrelevant. I think making profits and greed obsolete through innovation is more realistic than proposing to take wealth away from the class that has almost all the power to resist that.
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His point is that a lot of people are really stupid and financially irresponsible and it doesn't matter if you give them the wealth in stocks or assets or cash it's going to be used up fast. Meanwhile those who are smart with their money will use it to accumulate more and in a few years you'll be back at square one.
Are you saying the solution for this is to continually redistribute wealth? Do you understand what you are saying?
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$400 million would allow me to build a tiny house completely off grid with all the equipment I'd need to grow vegetables in a remote location for the rest of my life... The other $398 would go to helping anyone and everyone.
Misread the amount but leaving up as a reminder of my idiocy.
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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
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Deranged, these people don't realize there are voice actors for the muppets
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Wealth is not money.
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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.
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The only way this fantasy would work is if it were placed in an annuity for people. As others have mentioned, the greed in the market would just send prices up rapidly to soak up the extra money, and people are generally idiots with money and they’d piss it away immediately.
So you’d maybe have to have carve-outs for medical debt or something so people could pay that off, the rest would have to remain restricted and offer limited payouts until maybe retirement, but frankly the public at large would completely fuck up any windfall, and the market would make suckers out of all of them.
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They do, it's called a house.
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Which everyone doesn't have, let alone one that's worth anywhere near $400k.
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ah yes let me just do buy some groceries with the house i totally own.
also most houses are actually owned by banks with a little thing called a mortgage, you might not have heard of it.
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