Topic: Wealth distribution, and tragedy of the commons. - page 3. (Read 712 times)

In a global order, I think it is almost impossible for this to be done because the top of the pyramid rulers are very few in number but they are solid to maintain wealth and maintain the system so that their wealth is eternal and continues to grow. In the “Top of Pyramid” the upper side of the economic strata, everything is centralized and consolidated.

But in a national and individual order, a consolidated bottom of the pyramid can still be done. We can start through a massive structured and systemic equity crowdfunding platform, with the principle of mutual cooperation. Creating exchanges for the lower middle class, in order to consolidate the lower economy and concentrate money at the bottom. This can reduce the gap between the rich and the poor. Maybe it is a solution and not anti-capitalist but capitalist in retail so that everyone gets a chance.

In addition, the role of an idealistic leader of a country and not getting carried away is very important to protect domestic businesses from foreign threats, for example in China, the state has control over the internet and intervened to block a lot of domains. China intervened to block Facebook, Twitter, and Google until Baidu and Weibo were big.

I was referring to spending their money more in retail. That way at least some extra money trickles down to employees.


Note that I said A lot of people, not all people. It's true that many people do not wish to learn any money management whatsoever so they make all these mistakes listed here https://www.providentpersonalcredit.com/money-matters/money-management/five-examples-of-bad-money-management/

I'll list a few:
- Buying more than you earn, now it should be clear that a lot of people in the world do this
- Impulse buying, being unable to resist the temptation of buying several other things in addition to their shopping list.
- Surprise bills because you didn't set money aside for them

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You are right when you say that giving cash directly to poor people is effective charity, and I should mention that a lot of poor people felt the effects of poverty for so long that they won't waste the money (they will spend it on things they need or want within their budget). But this is not true for all poor people, there are still a lot of them spend it all in one shot on items that will put them in debt instead of items they can afford. Some even borrow money or take a loan to do this.

Think of it this way:

- Someone poor, who did not study money management, takes a $10,000 loan
- They mortgage a house with it to live in
- Each month mortgage payments are made say $1000, this adds up to $12,000 a year
- Suddenly their loaned money is used up and have no way to pay it back.
- Here's what I think they could do instead: use part of that $10,000 to learn a skill that will get them a job that pays enough yearly to cover the mortgage and then pay off the loan over time.

This is what I meant when I said "A lot of people ... are reckless in money management".

Unfortunately, people don't think like that, they will not spend all of their money if they don't specifically need something. We should understand that if you are in their place, you will not let yourself spend a lot of your money to the things where you will not benefit of.

Some rich people are still wasting their money but still the economy have no improvements. Wealth distribution is not applicable to all types of government, especially if you we are not living in a communist country. People just want to become more richer and wealthier even if they already have it.

That's the mindset of people, that's why the most affected by the economic crisis are those poor people.

It doesn't have to be everyone having the exact same amount of money though, does it? That's just taking it to an extreme to make the idea appear absurd and unworkable. It's like people screaming that Obamacare is communism, when it's clearly not.

^{[citation needed]}
This sounds like a baseless accusation and lazy stereotyping.  Of course I am happy to be swayed if you have evidence to support this contention. But as far as I am aware, the available evidence suggests that direct cash transfers to the world's poor is one of the most effective forms of charity. Take the example of Give Directly, which is consistently rated extremely highly by the evaluator Give Well.
https://www.givewell.org/charities/give-directly#Does_it_work
Example study:
https://files.givewell.org/files/DWDA%202009/Interventions/Cash%20Transfers/haushofer_shapiro_uct_2013.11.16.pdf


Agree with the first part, but not the second. There are certainly notable instances of mega-rich individuals giving back hugely to society, the Gates Foundation being perhaps the most visible example. I would argue these are exceptions rather than the rule. We cannot rely on the rich to distribute their own wealth, we cannot rely on them to suddenly alter the values that have driven them to accumulate the wealth in the first place. This is for the same reason that we need laws against cartels and monopolies. It doesn't just police itself. Capitalism is great so long as government has the power to set the limits within which it operates. The best proposed solution I've seen thus far to the entrenched (and ever-growing) inequality is a wealth tax.

Till now I haven't heard about any such individual. I am talking about those who are so rich that they face issues in spending their money. Even the richest person in earth can't afford certain things. So we are not yet up to that level. But income inequality is increasing and within a few years, or at most a few decades we may witness such a situation. BTW, who will manage to become the first trillionaire? Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates may be too old by then.

I've been hearing this theory a lot from a few fellow workers from the most eastern (and poor) countries of the EU, mainly Bulgaria and Romania. In a few of their minds, the whole EU is a mechanism so that their countries become poor and are used as a market by the wealthier nations, of course, every time I ask them how the f word do you plan to sell something to a guy you've bankrupt and has not a penny left I only hear crickets.

And then wake up!

Norway affords that because of oil and gas and a very low population compared to the number of natural resources at hand.It's nothing magical, once those run out it's back to nothing is free anymore.


I will not touch the whole redistribution of wealth thing, it has proven a lot of times it doesn't work and it will not work, you have to be a total moron to think this is the solution, I'm really getting tired of it.

But some have touched a more important aspect, education! And not education as in maths and Latin but financial education, I really think this must be made mandatory at a highschool level, it's a lot more important than everything else for a guy who will not specialize in a certain work, if you're choosing to be an artist, a doctor, a mechanic, financial education will be more important than history or geography. A lot of people don't have the slightest ideas about how things in the economy work, a lot of failed businesses happen because they fail to understand basic facts, and the lack of knowledge is sometimes bankrupting just as many as a crisis. You don't need a master's degree in it, and you don't need a master's degree in anything to get a good-paying job and enjoy a pretty nice life, but you need to know the basics when shits hit the fan, and the most annoying fact is that when people with low education fail they tend to embrace conspiracies theories rather than acknowledging their own faults and with this, they start again with wealth redistribution because the rich....

In the past it was easy, all you needed to know it was that you have to sell the pig for 2 golden coins and that will get you enough to go through winter, you could do that even if you were illiterate, nowadays I think it's impossible to run even a lemonade stand without basic economics.

Because oligarchs and plutocrats always control the government in a country. Whereas the progress of a country is not due to democracy or its form of government, but rather because of the freedom to think, create and innovate for the benefit of human life. If politics becomes the benchmark for the state, then the oligarchs will move wild and maneuver in full lobbying. When politics is put forward, millennials also want to become oligarchs and influence the government by maneuvering power, as well as too many rules that limit the progress of the economy.

Use the right to vote as well as possible in the general election. Get to know your candidate and vote based on the facts of his work, dedication and honesty. Do not just choose, dare to take responsibility with the thought that, if there is mismanagement by the government as a result of our mistake, namely the wrong choice of our representatives.

We can imitate the policies of a country, not follow the policies of other countries. To fight corruption we can use extreme measures, for example Xi Jing Ping did by executing thousands of politicians and government officials who commit corruption, so as not to become an economic burden on the country.

The oligarchs and top rulers of the pyramid are very consolidated, although they are few in number, they are united and synergized to maintain their wealth and try to make their wealth immortal. They use banks to increase their wealth, and the government protects the banks with various policies which incidentally protect the interests of the oligarchs. Even though banks are intended for the rich who can take loans with low interest because they have collateral, while for those who do not have collateral or small and medium businesses the interest is very high. Banks are considered to be the saviors and lifeblood of the country's economy, even though it is banks that often cause economic disease in a country.

I can relate on everyone's ideas here and I just want to add one thing which I think would also be a critical factor in narrowing the gap on social inequality - the Government!

Take the case in my country:

* The Government has allowed big businesses to abuse ordinary people with unfair trade practices etc...
* The Government has rampant corruption including with government officials and politicians which in turn affects the delivery of basic services to common
   people.
* The Government write off on defaulted huge loans of big companies while they pressed hard on ordinary folks small time loans.

So in essence the Government lays the foundation and encourages this social inequality to further widen its gap making it a conducive environment for the rich to become more richer and the poor to become more poorer. I think good governance will narrow this gap eventually.Imho.
 

Actually, inflation creates a strong incentive to not store fiat money without any sort of investment. If it was like you say, rich people would become poorer with time. And you're talking about billionaires, but everyone knows how they became billionaires and keep growing their wealth - it's all because of the stock of their company.

Saying that economic problems come from a lack of spending is basically Keynesianism, and right now only some elements of it are a part of mainsteram economic thought. It had been tried many times and didn't miraculously cure a struggling economy.

What do you mean by "spend their money more" since it can mean a lot of ways. Like if they just spend their money in more kinds of investments then only the rich businessmen will benefit from such investment as well as the rich people who decided spending their money. But if you mean by "spend their money more" on raising salaries of their employees or something similar this won't really be beneficial for our economy as what will happen is if people will have a higher average wage then their buying power would just decrease as the supply of money has increased to a lot of people. Even the basic law of supply and demand can fuck up your solution.

LOL definitely. But how? You cant have 100 houses and 100 cars and 100 boats and 100 planes. Problem is that some are so rich that they simply cant spend even tiny part of their money.

Correct on that last sentence.

I actually think there's already many people burning through millions in gambling tables already and they're not the poor people. It's disingenous to pretend that everyone would just waste away the money, when many would actually use it for something productive, you know?

If we dumped 1000 people on a virgin planet within a few months we'd see the exact same disaparities. Some people are born to chuck their money away. Some are born to never get ahead. Some are born to scoop it all up from such people.

It appears to be innate to human nature so until you start rewiring us it'll never go away.

I feel for those in grinding poverty but my attitude to those who are not and nobble themselves has gradually evolved to - fuck 'em.

The thing about the rich people is that if they paid taxes properly instead of moving their money and profits to offshore accounts, the poor people would get incentives for working and they wouldn't be poor and everyone would be either below average or higher.

Think about a world where the students are getting education for free, healthcare is free, school meals are free, and there is guaranteed housing from government, and students even get paid scholarship money for studying for their regular life expenses (even though school is free) and there is jobs guarantee by the government.

Now that means nobody is really THAT poor right? Sure you can still be below average and not live a luxurious life but if you have these, you will live a proper life right?

Well, Norway is like that and they are fine, richest nations in the world incapable of doing that makes no sense if you ask me.

The era of free markets and democracy creates a dynamic with which the values of the human life system are waning. The most important thing is the market and how it is accepted by the market. Everything, from values, culture, art, to the norms of life, are all commercialized in order to be accepted by the market.

What is even more sad is that the lower and middle classes are only used as a market for the upper class and also as a motor of production (as consumers and as workers). So that the circulation of money is flowing fast upward in large and fast but dripping down slowly. So that money collects in the upper class, who is the ruler at the top of the pyramid.

We should start doing a consolidated bottom of the pyramid, so that the economy rotates horizontally in the middle and lower classes. Indeed, large corporations with all of their established global supply chains have plagued every country and provide products that look cheap. But if the bottom of the pyramid is compact and consolidated, even large corporations can leave (for example, Unilever).

Not true imo, those in the poor class value any money they can lay their hands on, I do not know where you got the idea above from, but people I know who aren't wealthy are prudent with how much money they spend, down to the last dollar bill, if you spend recklessly while in poverty, you'll definitely run out of funds and inevitably, food. It's the rich class imo that can afford to be reckless with how much they spend, it's a normal human trait, you can afford to spend money with less caution, when you know there is a large inflow of income for you and you do not have to worry about basic needs like food and the rest.

It'd be good if society can be classless, but in the world today, it's a case of the rich getting richer, while the poor, poorer. The gap is wider than ever atm and more impossible to breach.

Those countries don't let anyone to speak out about the situation and most of them were poor means they have to be obedient to their lords to get the money what they make or they will go into prison for the rest of their life.Inequality in wealth distribution is everywhere and it is not the modern day problem it exists from the ancient age, kings will have the money and the people only had very little money but still they are the one have to pay taxes to the king.

Exactly. They act as custodian but uses depositor's money to make more money. The only money that sits there are the "reserves" which probably accounts for a few percent of the total amount deposited. The better comparison would have been rich people's money sitting on their personal vault instead of depositing in banks.

Like what @davis196 said, fiat inflates because governments can print money out of thin air. If people hoards bills, that will only force government to print sooner than expected.

Rich people spending more won't necessarily make poor people become rich. What could possibly happen is that a country's economy could be more robust because of the increased consumption.

Let's try to illustrate the flow:

• Rich person constantly buys stuffs from the store of a middle class...
• Store owner makes profit which helps him keeps his business for long term and pay its employees...
• Employees continues to enjoy their salary which they use to buy their needs and wants from businesses owned by that rich person...

Can you see what I mean from the illustration?

Rich people can spend as many as they want but none of them would want to go bankrupt. I just don't see them splurging without thinking of ways to earn them back in two or even three folds.

The better solution would be to educate the poor people how to eradicate the problems which you enumerated here:



 

The the fairest distribution of wealth is just: let people earn it. With few exceptions.

Communist countries, where their rulers came to power with a discourse against the rich, are also unequal. There are very few rich people, those in power, and then there's the rest of the population going hungry. Castro, Maduro, Kim Jong-un are all multi-millionaires and I never hear a discourse against inequality in their countries. There seems to be only inequality in developed countries.

I would agree to @davis196 that money does not just stay in the bank. When rich people deposit their money in the bank, it will still continue to circulate, but their assets will remain the same unless it will increase from the interest rate or decrease from spending it. Banks even promote depositing money in the bank than saving it at your houses to keep the money circulating.

And I also think rich people are spending their money more than the middle and lower class because they have more money to spend. It's just that, the way they spend it, it also comes back to them by gaining income just like what you have said "money management". For me, even if we keep on redistributing money to give everyone an equal amount of wealth, it will just come back to what we have now. Rich and poor people will always be there, not only because of money but also because people don't have the same opportunities in life.