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The usual HN response to wealth inequality is "why do you care how much they have?" The answer is, of course, that money is power and the power that many of the

The usual HN response to wealth inequality is "why do you care how much they have?" The answer is, of course, that money is power and the power that many of the wealthy are exercising is not to the benefit of most people.

MegaButts 1y ago
You don't even need to think about money as power, you can just think about money as money. There's a far simpler way to think about wealth inequality. If you believe it's a problem, by definition the people holding the wealth are the cause of the problem. This isn't some social or philosophical construct - it's just basic deduction. So quite literally, the wealthy holding the money means less money to go around to everyone else. The more they hold themselves, the more is withheld from everyone else. You can have debates about wealth distribution endlessly because it's subjective and complicated, but you can't argue that the wealthy getting richer is good for anyone except the wealthy. Trickle-down-economics has already been established as propaganda at this point. I understand that wealth is not static in the world and it's possible to create wealth for everyone, but my point is money hoarding is definitionally the cause of wealth inequality.
- analog31 1y ago
  I get what you say -- hoarded wealth is essentially idle. But I think there's more to it. The people who hold that wealth prefer to live in one country, and have inflicted themselves on the governance of that country.
  - stock_toaster 1y ago
    > hoarded wealth is essentially idle This is, I think, a blind spot for most people. Hoarded wealth isn't idle at all. At the _very least_ it accrues interest (and compounds!) and grows!
    - analog31 1y ago
      Indeed, and if it's hoarded in the form of land, then the land definitely accrues political power.
  - MegaButts 1y ago
    > I get what you say -- hoarded wealth is essentially idle. I'm not talking at all about wealth being idle in my previous comment. My point is entirely that the more money the rich have, the less money the poor have. What you're bringing up is how the wealthy use their money to change their political environment to benefit themselves. This is also a problem, but is parallel to the point I was making.
    - WalterBright 1y ago
      > My point is entirely that the more money the rich have, the less money the poor have. I'm curious how Google/Microsoft/Apple/Amazon/Netflix/etc have transferred money out of your bank account to their hoards. Personally, I've transferred money to them, but only for things I wanted to buy from them and thought was worth the money.
      - MegaButts 1y ago
        You are replying to every single comment - you seem really upset about this. I never said anything was stolen from me. I said wealth inequality is the result of rich people holding money, because by definition there can be no wealth inequality without rich people. It's an objective statement and you're projecting so much political vitriol onto it.
        WalterBright 1y ago
        I'm not upset at all. My question to you was a fair one. You did say "less" money for the poor. That implies the wealth is being transferred from them. > by definition there can be no wealth inequality without rich people That doesn't all mean they are "holding" money. Money is not the same thing as wealth. Personally, I don't have any money other than pocket change. > you're projecting so much political vitriol onto it. Am I? I thought my statements were objective facts, and not at all political.
        MegaButts 1y ago
        > That doesn't all mean they are "holding" money. Money is not the same thing as wealth. Personally, I don't have any money other than pocket change. I'm using money and wealth interchangeably here because there is no meaningful distinction in this context. I cannot take you seriously when you keep bringing up irrelevant things. It's obvious you don't understand my point. And I've had enough arguments with you on this site over the years to know it's a waste of my time to engage with you more than I already have.
- kiba 1y ago
  The wealthy aren't exactly hoarding the money under their bed. They buy treasuries and bonds so the money get used elsewhere in the economy to do something. The federal government's credit card is funded by the saving of the rich, which allowed us to run up huge debt. The vast inequality you seen is the result of undertaxation of monopolies and deliberate granting of monopolies. Disney wouldn't be as big if copyright actually expire some 20 years after the fact. Anyway, the billionaire are less relevant to you than the average homeowner next door. They are the one who hold further infill development hostage and are inimical to anyone who would depress the value of their home.
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    High housing prices are the result of a housing shortage. The shortage is the result of government zoning, regulation, and slow-walking building permits. (Apparently California has only issued 4 permits so far for people to rebuild after the fires.)
    - sien 1y ago
      Which worth comparing to Texas where building is allowed. Texas's population has also gone from ~20M in 2000 to ~30M today. With no zoning a place like Houston has shown what can be done by encouraging building. Austin recently has also done well with allowing more building.
    - kiba 1y ago
      Luxuries are cheap and getting cheaper. Basic necessities like housing are increasingly expensive. That's where most of the inequality is being felt by people. That's why we're in this predicament.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  > the wealthy holding the money means less money to go around to everyone else Wealthy entrepreneuers created their wealth, it was not transferred to them. It does not reduce the amount of money elsewhere. The wealthy do not "hoard" wealth, either. They invest it. All of it. Even checking accounts are not hoarded wealth, because the money you put in it is loaned out by the bank (less the reserve requirements).
  - sien 1y ago
    It's remarkable that even on HN so many people believe that economics is a zero sum game.
    - wqaatwt 1y ago
      It obviously to a non-insignificant extent. Only the proportion is debatable.
    - 20after4 1y ago
      Some items absolutely are zero sum - anything that is in short supply with a high demand becomes unobtainable for anyone who isn't rich. Some things that are effectively out of reach for at least half of everyone: Mansions and Luxury Condos in desirable locations Private Jet Private Island The best quality food 2021 Ferrari 812 GTS The best legal advice A favor from a US Senator These things are effectively zero-sum, only a limited number of people can have them and we can't expand the supply very much (or intentionally don't because that would hurt their exclusivity value).
  - const_cast 1y ago
    This is largely debatable and hard to measure. The thing about creation is that it's not black or white, it's gray. Everything relies on thousands of other things. Products and services are huge graphs that nobody truly understands and that span hundreds of years. How much is created, and how much is reused? Hard to say. At least some of the money is taken via exploitation. For example, if you opt to outsource product X to some third-world country and you drop labor cost 10%, and that in turn grows your company, you did not "create" that growth. You systematically stole it. Another example we see a lot today is cutting quality. A lot of goods today are produced more efficiently, but not as much as you may think, because some of the productivity gains is simply pseudo-monopolies using their market dominance to cut quality without recourse. It's just human nature that we can't perceive a, say, 1% cut in quality. But if you cut 1% every year for half a century, then congratulations, you "created" a bunch of wealth. But you didn't actually create anything.
- c22 1y ago
  If the wealthy held their wealth in money then there would be no problem. The problem arises because the wealthy hold their wealth in assets, the most productive of which become hoarded in fewer and fewer silos. Since the assets are desireable and increasing in scarcity their asking price increases. Since this price is paid in money, the value of money falls. This would be fine except that most normal people do hold most of their wealth in money so this reduction in buying power makes them poorer. This split is particularly difficult to address because money is easy to tax (redistribute) while assets that may or may not be for sale at some arbitrary asking price are a lot harder to break up in this way. Ultimately, to attempt to extract and redistribute this sort of ethereal wealth requires unpopular adjustments to long-held values of personal freedom and ownership that make the whole system possible in the first place. The problem may in fact be insoluble sustainably. Most of human history provides examples of extreme wealth inequality.
technofiend 1y ago
Particularly after Citizens United, money has squelched voter influence in favor of a few large donors. People don't seem to realize however imperfect the choices are, actively voting against this agenda instead of giving up and hoping it'll somehow work out will fail.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  Kamala outspent Trump by about 3:1 in the last election. Money didn't buy it.
  - stock_toaster 1y ago
    Are you sure? We certainly didn't end up with Bernie on the Democrat ballot. Just because team-R beat team-D doesn't mean both weren't being driven by huge amounts of special interest money from the wealthiest individuals.
    - WalterBright 1y ago
      I doubt Bernie is electable no matter how much he spends.
  - dmonitor 1y ago
    Elon buying twitter and changing the algorithm to support him probably isn't included in this calculation
    - WalterBright 1y ago
      Ironically, Elon tried to back out of the deal and the liberals forced him to buy it. Take into account that CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, NYT, NPR, etc., were all solidly in the Democrat camp, the Democrats didn't need to fund them.
forgotoldacc 1y ago
One easy thing you can do on HN is replace "they" with "we" in a lot of those instances. HN has a lot of good people. HN also has a lot of people who consider themselves supporters of meritocracy and see everything they've achieved as solely a result of their own hard work. HN also has a lot of people with absolutely mind blowing levels of wealth. HN also has a lot of people who, saying it as kindly as I can, just do not know what life is like for a normal person.

MegaButts 1y ago

You don't even need to think about money as power, you can just think about money as money. There's a far simpler way to think about wealth inequality. If you believe it's a problem, by definition the people holding the wealth are the cause of the problem. This isn't some social or philosophical construct - it's just basic deduction. So quite literally, the wealthy holding the money means less money to go around to everyone else. The more they hold themselves, the more is withheld from everyone else. You can have debates about wealth distribution endlessly because it's subjective and complicated, but you can't argue that the wealthy getting richer is good for anyone except the wealthy. Trickle-down-economics has already been established as propaganda at this point. I understand that wealth is not static in the world and it's possible to create wealth for everyone, but my point is money hoarding is definitionally the cause of wealth inequality.

analog31 1y ago
I get what you say -- hoarded wealth is essentially idle. But I think there's more to it. The people who hold that wealth prefer to live in one country, and have inflicted themselves on the governance of that country.
- stock_toaster 1y ago
  > hoarded wealth is essentially idle This is, I think, a blind spot for most people. Hoarded wealth isn't idle at all. At the _very least_ it accrues interest (and compounds!) and grows!
  - analog31 1y ago
    Indeed, and if it's hoarded in the form of land, then the land definitely accrues political power.
- MegaButts 1y ago
  > I get what you say -- hoarded wealth is essentially idle. I'm not talking at all about wealth being idle in my previous comment. My point is entirely that the more money the rich have, the less money the poor have. What you're bringing up is how the wealthy use their money to change their political environment to benefit themselves. This is also a problem, but is parallel to the point I was making.
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    > My point is entirely that the more money the rich have, the less money the poor have. I'm curious how Google/Microsoft/Apple/Amazon/Netflix/etc have transferred money out of your bank account to their hoards. Personally, I've transferred money to them, but only for things I wanted to buy from them and thought was worth the money.
    - MegaButts 1y ago
      You are replying to every single comment - you seem really upset about this. I never said anything was stolen from me. I said wealth inequality is the result of rich people holding money, because by definition there can be no wealth inequality without rich people. It's an objective statement and you're projecting so much political vitriol onto it.
      - WalterBright 1y ago
        I'm not upset at all. My question to you was a fair one. You did say "less" money for the poor. That implies the wealth is being transferred from them. > by definition there can be no wealth inequality without rich people That doesn't all mean they are "holding" money. Money is not the same thing as wealth. Personally, I don't have any money other than pocket change. > you're projecting so much political vitriol onto it. Am I? I thought my statements were objective facts, and not at all political.
        MegaButts 1y ago
        > That doesn't all mean they are "holding" money. Money is not the same thing as wealth. Personally, I don't have any money other than pocket change. I'm using money and wealth interchangeably here because there is no meaningful distinction in this context. I cannot take you seriously when you keep bringing up irrelevant things. It's obvious you don't understand my point. And I've had enough arguments with you on this site over the years to know it's a waste of my time to engage with you more than I already have.
kiba 1y ago
The wealthy aren't exactly hoarding the money under their bed. They buy treasuries and bonds so the money get used elsewhere in the economy to do something. The federal government's credit card is funded by the saving of the rich, which allowed us to run up huge debt. The vast inequality you seen is the result of undertaxation of monopolies and deliberate granting of monopolies. Disney wouldn't be as big if copyright actually expire some 20 years after the fact. Anyway, the billionaire are less relevant to you than the average homeowner next door. They are the one who hold further infill development hostage and are inimical to anyone who would depress the value of their home.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  High housing prices are the result of a housing shortage. The shortage is the result of government zoning, regulation, and slow-walking building permits. (Apparently California has only issued 4 permits so far for people to rebuild after the fires.)
  - sien 1y ago
    Which worth comparing to Texas where building is allowed. Texas's population has also gone from ~20M in 2000 to ~30M today. With no zoning a place like Houston has shown what can be done by encouraging building. Austin recently has also done well with allowing more building.
  - kiba 1y ago
    Luxuries are cheap and getting cheaper. Basic necessities like housing are increasingly expensive. That's where most of the inequality is being felt by people. That's why we're in this predicament.
WalterBright 1y ago
> the wealthy holding the money means less money to go around to everyone else Wealthy entrepreneuers created their wealth, it was not transferred to them. It does not reduce the amount of money elsewhere. The wealthy do not "hoard" wealth, either. They invest it. All of it. Even checking accounts are not hoarded wealth, because the money you put in it is loaned out by the bank (less the reserve requirements).
- sien 1y ago
  It's remarkable that even on HN so many people believe that economics is a zero sum game.
  - wqaatwt 1y ago
    It obviously to a non-insignificant extent. Only the proportion is debatable.
  - 20after4 1y ago
    Some items absolutely are zero sum - anything that is in short supply with a high demand becomes unobtainable for anyone who isn't rich. Some things that are effectively out of reach for at least half of everyone: Mansions and Luxury Condos in desirable locations Private Jet Private Island The best quality food 2021 Ferrari 812 GTS The best legal advice A favor from a US Senator These things are effectively zero-sum, only a limited number of people can have them and we can't expand the supply very much (or intentionally don't because that would hurt their exclusivity value).
- const_cast 1y ago
  This is largely debatable and hard to measure. The thing about creation is that it's not black or white, it's gray. Everything relies on thousands of other things. Products and services are huge graphs that nobody truly understands and that span hundreds of years. How much is created, and how much is reused? Hard to say. At least some of the money is taken via exploitation. For example, if you opt to outsource product X to some third-world country and you drop labor cost 10%, and that in turn grows your company, you did not "create" that growth. You systematically stole it. Another example we see a lot today is cutting quality. A lot of goods today are produced more efficiently, but not as much as you may think, because some of the productivity gains is simply pseudo-monopolies using their market dominance to cut quality without recourse. It's just human nature that we can't perceive a, say, 1% cut in quality. But if you cut 1% every year for half a century, then congratulations, you "created" a bunch of wealth. But you didn't actually create anything.
c22 1y ago
If the wealthy held their wealth in money then there would be no problem. The problem arises because the wealthy hold their wealth in assets, the most productive of which become hoarded in fewer and fewer silos. Since the assets are desireable and increasing in scarcity their asking price increases. Since this price is paid in money, the value of money falls. This would be fine except that most normal people do hold most of their wealth in money so this reduction in buying power makes them poorer. This split is particularly difficult to address because money is easy to tax (redistribute) while assets that may or may not be for sale at some arbitrary asking price are a lot harder to break up in this way. Ultimately, to attempt to extract and redistribute this sort of ethereal wealth requires unpopular adjustments to long-held values of personal freedom and ownership that make the whole system possible in the first place. The problem may in fact be insoluble sustainably. Most of human history provides examples of extreme wealth inequality.

technofiend 1y ago

Particularly after Citizens United, money has squelched voter influence in favor of a few large donors. People don't seem to realize however imperfect the choices are, actively voting against this agenda instead of giving up and hoping it'll somehow work out will fail.

WalterBright 1y ago
Kamala outspent Trump by about 3:1 in the last election. Money didn't buy it.
- stock_toaster 1y ago
  Are you sure? We certainly didn't end up with Bernie on the Democrat ballot. Just because team-R beat team-D doesn't mean both weren't being driven by huge amounts of special interest money from the wealthiest individuals.
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    I doubt Bernie is electable no matter how much he spends.
- dmonitor 1y ago
  Elon buying twitter and changing the algorithm to support him probably isn't included in this calculation
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    Ironically, Elon tried to back out of the deal and the liberals forced him to buy it. Take into account that CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, NYT, NPR, etc., were all solidly in the Democrat camp, the Democrats didn't need to fund them.

forgotoldacc 1y ago

One easy thing you can do on HN is replace "they" with "we" in a lot of those instances. HN has a lot of good people. HN also has a lot of people who consider themselves supporters of meritocracy and see everything they've achieved as solely a result of their own hard work. HN also has a lot of people with absolutely mind blowing levels of wealth. HN also has a lot of people who, saying it as kindly as I can, just do not know what life is like for a normal person.