top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 159 points 1 year ago* (20 children)

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.

  • source
  • hideshow 20 child comments
  • [–] 95 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    The difference between 1 million and 1 billion is roughly 1 billion.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] [S] 8 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    No. It’s a thousand. Which is closer to zero than a billion.

    Edit: You’re talking absolute values so the difference is 999 million.

    While I was talking ratios hence the ratio being 1:1000. My bad.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 49 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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.”

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................

    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?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
  • load more comments (9 replies)
    [–] 72 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    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

  • source
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • load more comments (4 replies)
    [–] 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I dont want the money evenly distributed anymore. Now I want things to change entirely.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Eat the rich, embrace socialism, basically become a millionaire at some point

    Vs whatever the fuck Reagan's neoliberalism has got you

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 30 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    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.

  • source
  • hideshow 9 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    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.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (2 replies)
  • load more comments (2 replies)
    [–] 25 points 1 year ago (21 children)

    Doing it over world wealth/population (454385÷8.2) gives 55,412 USD per capita, which tell how skewed is wealth in the US.

  • source
  • hideshow 21 child comments
  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (18 replies)
    [–] 21 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I just want billionaires and churches to pay their fair share and end citizens united. That's a great start

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    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.)

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago

    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.

  • source
  • parent
  • load more comments (2 replies)
    [+] 13 points 1 year ago (5 children)
    load more comments (5 replies)
    [–] 12 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 11 points 1 year ago (25 children)

    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?

  • source
  • hideshow 25 child comments
  • load more comments (25 replies)
    [–] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    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.

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [+] 6 points 1 year ago
    [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    $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.

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Sorry, you only get $400 thousand, not $400 million.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    I need these statistics for other countries. Especially Germany. We seem to struggle to understand it as well.

  • source
  • load more comments
    view more: next ›