Topic: Wealth distribution, and tragedy of the commons. (Read 755 times)

Wealth distribution is a myth across the world and it's never going to happen. What we have come to know and we will know is that, the term is only used in other to keep the social order because when that consciousness is absent,, it gives room to anarchy which the society does not need. Since time immemorial, there have been the rich and the poor and the gap has continually been there which makes it possible for the rich to get richer no matter the extent in which they are taxed and the poor continues to get poorer no matter the subsidy or handouts they are given. It's the law of nature and any other process outside that will always end in futility.

To become rich you need to make profits but people here were taught to get salaried jobs amd that is become their eternal goal of their life.Most of the millionaires are started from pew dollars as their capital but they quickly converted it more with their smartness so to become richer the smartness is more important than hardwork.

Why can't you use simple language and just say that you want to rob the money from rich people (who became wealthy as a result of their hard work) and distribute it to the "poor" (i.e lazy welfare rats who would like to stay at home 24x7, drinking beer and doing nothing else)? This is not a permanent solution, because within a short period of time there will be no more rich people to rob, and the poor will remain as poor.

I will argue the fallacy that wealth is deprived by the continent of the race. The 3 races (Jew, Tribe in china and Igbos of Nigeria) rated to be averagely wealthy are attributed to their business acumen from long term culture. Although, I think the wealth status of the developed world countries are results of long term projection and process by their leaders. It is not cheap process as well.

Well, nations can be used for making more money by the bigger nations but it is a bigger trouble to do that compared to your own population. A big example could be politicians seeing their own people not doing very well while other nations are getting richer off their hard work and could put a lot more tax towards foreign companies for example, obviously most of them do take bribes instead of actually putting tax, that way instead of 10 billion extra tax companies need to pay, they just pay couple hundred million in bribes and they get away with it.

All of this of course is still risky because elections could change the leader and the new leader would want more bribe or they could be basically unbribebale as well. So it is always easier to take money from your own countrymen compared to other nations.

If something fails, it is not the goal that must be changed but the strategy that changes. As I said, one of the teachings of socialism is justice, and justice is not a bad thing, it is a noble goal for all human beings. And striving for truth and goodness is a good thing and must be appreciated.

Agree with your opinion, that the endless accumulation of material which ethically is called greed is human nature. But on the other hand, because we are human, we have a combination of a brain and a conscience and there are moral and religious values that we must hold in order to remain human. Capitalism provides a suitable habitat for greed to become savage so that exploitative (dominating) relationships emerge.

You are like a shaman who guesses someone's past wrong. 
My youth until now is quite fun, I have dated the most beautiful school stars, including exemplary students with several achievements and skills, I am a graduate of civil engineering at a well-known college. I inherited my father's body repair workshop, I started a seafood export business after I got married, I am a father of three children with a wife who has a hobby of sharing.

I am not a supporter of socialism nor anti-capitalism, because one of the roots of the teachings of each of these ideologies has a positive value. As the Venn diagram in the set of universes, A is a capitalist circle, B is a socialist circle, then I am C which has a circle of A & B.

The division in social classes (lower, middle, upper) are indications that there is really a variation of people's capability to have a capacity managing the usage of their money to lift up their social class or drag them down into the lower level class where they belong. Even if we state that the wealth would be equally distributed among people, still people with the highest capability of managing their wealth will always move up bringing themselves into the upper class for they do know how to make their money useful and profitable compared to the lower and middle classes.

Even if we always put it into that way, there would be still a way the upper class would be lifted up because they have the experience and the knowledge needed to manage their wealth which makes them a lot more richer and due to lower classes are lacking of such since they do not have always money to manage with, they will always end up dragged down to the lower classification of the society. The wealth distribution will not work out for we are diverse and we have different ways on how we make ourselves exceptional to be always on top of others which makes our social classifications not just dependent on the amount of money we have but also on how we manage it to make ourselves better.

I do not know why there are many people who thinks capitalism is bad and not good, actually capitalism is the reason why there is economic freedom. Look at the capitalist nowadays, they keep donating their money in different institutions and charities. They also implement free education and scholarships for many students. The world is only becoming unfair if you have negative beliefs. Beliefs are opinions that passed down to us, if your family thinks the world is unfair or your friend told you then it is the belief that passed down to you. There is nothing wrong about it because humans need and wants are unlimited after all so it is expected that many people wanted to become rich. In terms of becoming rich, it is true that the job cannot make you rich. Hardwork is not enough, you need to learn specialized skills in order to become one of the capitalist.

When you are born poor it is really hard to change your destiny that you are going to be poor for the rest of your life, but you really have to work hard and do something for you to rise. I'm sure gradually it will change your life and it is so hard to rely on the people around us. The idea of dividing money of rich people then distribute to the poor is very impossible to happen, rich people will never agree with that i'm sure, maybe many of them also come from poor families and work so hard to achieve what and who they are now.

The world is unfair. There is no real equality in this world, in race, in height, in work and in wealth.
This is how capitalism works. Poor becomes poorer and rich becomes richer. If you want to become rich, either you become a politician or a businessman. But if you depends on a daily wage, I swear even you are 20 years of working, you are still lack of financial freedom.

We can`t do anything from it because capitalism works throughout our society, if you want to achieve financial then be one of them.

It is a very small country and made their initial economy growth from their natural resource which is Oil and later they went to tourism which is one of the most preferred place to visit by the rich people.But we can't say all the people are rich, there are millionaires and also middle class people but most of the countries don't have much natural resources and also had huge population so the reach people manages to find the people for low wages and getting richer and richer.

So many disinformations and incorrect views of Smith's capitalism is probably the failure of our education system.

Smith:


https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adam_Smith

The self-interest in a (normal) human being includes the interest of him in the fortune of others.

Milton Friedman Speaks - Is Capitalism Humane?

Yes, you are, maybe you're not realizing but your ideas are pretty left hardcore.
That being said, it's your view on things and that's your choice on how you would want the world to change, although I consider your utopia a nightmare as I said before at the same time I acknowledge everyone's right of an opinion or a view on the world, that's freedom! The same freedom hardcore socialism has always in it's history tried to destroy.


Desire to dominate, and you think this is because of capitalism? No, it's because of human nature.
But I'm certain that when you were a kid you liked to lose at every game you played, you liked being the last in your class, you didn't try to get the best looking girl in the school on a date, right?  The need to dominate, the need to come forward, the need to have something is not a thing of capitalism or any other movement, it's what we are and it's the thing that bought us here, from the moment our ancestors got hold of a better stick than the other monkeys and exterminated them. Yes, it's unpleasant but the need to dominate over a million of year of our species is what made all you see around for us, their followers possible. And some try to go against it with a book...seriously?


A slight correction!
In my country it didn't worked. We had 40 years of socialism and communism, enough to understand the difference between theory and real life.

The problem of poor people is that the rulers of their countries do not plan strategies that allow them to get out of poverty. They are ignored for lack of policies so that the entire population is included.
A good example of leadership is the UAE, which manage its wealth by including its entire population under four pillars: trade, transport, tourism, and technology.

The problem is always that humans are so different. Even if the wealth would be distributed evenly to everybody, that would not last and we would see all traits coming back. There will always be people who want to consume more today than others, so borrowing and lending will take a big part in every society. Once people have to payback loans (for example because they wanted a bigger car than they could actually afford) wealth will be transferred again within the economy. So far this world has always seen poor people and rich people, but you also have to see that poor people are much better of in Western Countries that they have 1000 years ago.

I agree with the wealth distribution theory in the opening post. In fact, to become rich people only with the way we think about money,
usually rich people will always think about how their money can work for themselves. Meanwhile, poor people will think about how they
work to make money. Enough with a simple thought as it can be seen the difference in the way the rich and poor think about money.

That place where you said they should divide the money equally so that there will be no more poverty, you know that’s never going to happen, and if you bring up such idea the rich people are going to kick against it and will never agree; trust me, a lot of these people you are seeing today that are billionaires were once poor and they had to work very hard to build up their wealth and then got rich, and you expect them to let years of hard work go as charity? Lol, they will never agree to that. And some of these poor you’re seeing are the ones that keeps putting themselves in that poor position, because they are careless, and don’t know what to do with money, but keeps on spending on unnecessary things.

I don't think I'm socialist, but not all socialist roots are wrong. There is no single motive that applies to the entirety of human behavior throughout their history. Collectivity and simplicity clearly expose capitalism's exploitative power structure. The real reality of oppression, namely where oppression is rooted in an economic and political desire to dominate.

Maybe in your country, it may not work, but in my country, there is still a chance of it. I know actions and moves like this won't be easy or possible, but sometimes it's easier to grab than to defend. I don't want to take the wealth of a conglomerate, but there is nothing wrong if I want to improve the lives of the middle and lower-class people. Choosing the best of today's bad choices is everyone's right. In addition, the concern is not for the rich, but on how to improve the welfare of the bottom of the pyramid.

Giving is good but the benefits are only temporary, there is awareness and movement together to create bonds that strengthen each other.

ineffective at all but may have little impact because the rich spend their money with the aim of earning more and the cycle will continue to revolve around their offspring because their parents have taught them, while simiskin may be able to follow in the footsteps of the rich, however of course with extra effort because they have to learn how to independently, it is not easy but there is a chance that it will be successful.
but still, the chances of the rich to continue their descent to become rich again are greater than the poor.
as said the rich will inherit from their parents the genes of how to manage money this is like a hidden talent that must be honed and will develop more quickly than poor people who do not know how to manage money because they never have enough money to develop.
but actually if seen from another point of view, of course this is unfair, say 2 children are born simultaneously, 1 from a rich family and the other from a poor family, they both have the same chance of being successful but the opportunity for the children of a rich person is greater because get adequate knowledge and education, while simiskin will be difficult because there is no knowledge or money to help him develop.
that is why this cycle will mostly continue into the next generation.

All of us have different perspective so I understand what you just said, I see the world as fair as it is where there is full of abundance and prosperity; I will carry this belief until my last breath. There is really a socioeconomic status where the middle class stay to middle class where the poor become more poorer and where the rich become more richer. All of it starting with thoughts, middle class persons stay middle class because they have poor and middle class mentality. Poor people stay poor not because of lack of opportunity but because of their poor mentality. Rich people are becoming rich not because they are greedy but because they have rich mindset where they keep making money in any instances.

unfair and arrange , they arent the same . lifes not unfair but its arranged because there are poor and rich .

governments can make difference because other governments are fair and helps people to have a bettef life but others arent just like that  but we must not toally depend on the government but we can make a change from our self alone as long as you are going to work hard and stay on your plan to have a better life .

I know this argument is used a lot, but I'm not convinced. I think it's just scaremongering by the 1%. France has a wealth tax. Denmark has a very high top rate of income tax. Both countries still have resident billionaires.


Absolutely agree about increasing automation meaning fewer jobs available, and about UBI as a potential solution. Yes, I will be sure to contribute to that thread!
As for smart contracts, they can help to automate any sort of 'if A then B' type jobs, anything that relies on a conditional process. Ethereum for example is often seen as just a platform on which other coins can be launched... but really this only scratches the surface of what is possible. The usual example given of a job that can be automated through smart contracts is mortgage broker. But this is all in combination with the wider wave of automation of white collar jobs using AI.

This has been and is happening. This life from the beginning was not fair, there will be people like this and people like that, from there we will have a Society. I have always believed that those who strive to live for a career and for the country, they will be in the rich class. for spiritual people, they will create recreational services for the common community. in short, everything was arranged from the start, let the law of nature continue and government should not interfere.

In the end everything comes down to where the tax money is going! In corrupted countries politicians are filling their own pockets, and the pockets of the people close to them, some countries spend more on military and weapons than on health and food, social programs... There're few good examples how a country should look like, where tax money is used to make a better society!
I know what socialist countries looks like, I was born in one. Now we are something different, but it's not the point in the system, the point is helping each other out! What corrupted systems do is dividing people, people are divided and that opens a sport for rulers to rule, nobody is helping if they don't have some benefit from that, the most people watch only their own interest! In northern countries they learned what is the power of the people and to be good neighbors, to help each other and to stand together against injustice!
Here we all know about corruption, we hear and see corruption every day, but still nobody gives a fuck too much! Here and there some people get arrested! Week ago one woman (ex ministry of something) is sentenced 7 months of house arrest for embezzlement, she took 100M Dinars (around 100k euros)! What a joke!
To have a fair wealth distribution you need to have a fair system! And some countries are so far away from any kind of "fair system"!

I do not think that people flee from those "socialist countries" when they grow up there and it is always like that when they grow up and they start to think that it is quite fairly understanding that people should be helping each other out all their lives. Look at Sweden for example, they may not have a ton of stuff they sell to the world but IKEA is actually such a HUGE company, yet they pay every single cent of tax they owe to Swedish government because they know that their money will be used to help out people who are more in need than they are.

However you can't do that in governments that are corrupt, because people think that if you pay your taxes properly, it will not help out other people it would help out politicians and their families. So I do not think the problem is people who do not want to help out others, it is people who think their taxes do not go to right places.

The reason why there is a lower, middle, and high class is because not all people are knowledgeable about how to earn and manage money. People also are not knowledgeable about investments and all they want to do is to spend and spend until they have no budget for their necessities. Investments are needed and we need to understand that it will really make our money circulate, grow and become stable. If we have this mindset, being a business-minded person will really make you successful in life. It is really not that easy to have a million dollar but if you are wise, patient, and hardworking, your desired wealth will be yours.

Now I think with automation, less people are needed to control the same responsibility that many more people once had. Ford for example had entire production lines full of people a century ago, today much less people are needed to control the machines that replaced all those workers. So it leads to a little ugly scenario at the end where more and more people get unemployed and can't find a job because there are no more jobs to take. This can be mitigated with UBI (which by the way I made a thread on here if you want to discuss this more) to some extent.

But tell me, you state above the unemployment will be exacerbated by smart contract platforms. How are smart contracts going to automate things or otherwise make more jobs redundant?

Yeah, and not everyone agrees with this view. The rich who hate it and can afford to move to other countries that offer more freedom will do so after weighing cost vs benefit. So the government has to be careful not to kick most of the 1% out. The 1% might tolerate the situation if the taxes are not that "unjust" as a form of charity, but it has a limit before they move out.

There is a more subtle way to tax people (both the rich and the poor) and incentivize people to spend at the same time (with lesser risk to capital flight), that is, inflation. But then, the problem is, people spend to buy assets like gold, stocks, etc., and not to engage in productive activities.

financial literacy is very important. Most of the college graduate went actually looking for work and does not even trying to make money by doing a small business. It often lead to being always after a boss instead of being a boss itself. In doing business mostly other consider capital.because they wanted to earn big profits in an instant which is wrong.

Getting a job is good and one should know how to save and invest it in the future. The real quick formula to save is salary - savings = expenses. This is how I learn in financial literacy

Income tax is progressive though, it takes proportionally more from people who earn more. Progressive taxation is wealth redistribution, just via a central pot rather than direct to individuals. A billionaire (in theory) pays more for policing and street lights than does someone on minimum wage. And it is still taking money from people in order to spend it for the improvement of the whole society. And it is the government who decides what the priorities are, because (again, in theory) the government is accountable to the whole population. And it depends on what we mean by a public service. Here in the UK, health is a public service. In some other countries, it's not. Anything that people need can become a public service. For example, internet, water, electricity, gas. Or use increased taxation of the rich to remove VAT/Sales tax, which proportionally will benefit the poor.

Well, I don't see taxation is mainly for redistributing wealth, but for public services. The rich will still be rich, and nothing changes. So, when a rich guy uses public services, like road, sewage, traffic lights, street lights, etc. he got to pay.

Only when the taxation is not fair, you will see many rich people fleeing from those "socialist countries."

I agree with most of what you've put

My bold, which I think is a vital point. Automation of jobs has historically led to creation of a new type of job, so workers just need to retrain. Agriculture -> Industry -> Office. However this process can't continue indefinitely. The new wave of automation through AI is removing office jobs. This will be exacerbated by the rise of smart contract crypto platforms such as Ethereum. I would expect there will be fewer jobs available in future. But even if new jobs do arise in a new sphere, we will likely still have some level of unemployment. And if you have unemployment, if there are more people than there are jobs, then this means employers can drive prices down to the lowest level that at least one person will accept. Which is partly what you're talking about with the Foxconn example. In this sort of market, the employers have all the power, and the employees have to be grateful for whatever scraps are thrown to them. I'm not going to sidetrack yet another thread, which is what happens whenever I mention UBI... but something has to happen to enforce a greater degree of wealth distribution. I don't think we can rely on companies and rich individuals to do it all by themselves.

I am in favour of automation where possible. Efficiency makes sense. It's just that we need to do something UBI to ensure that a large chunk of the population is not left behind through no fault of their own.


It depends, though. Taxation is taking earned money away from people and deciding for them how it should be spent. But you wouldn't argue that taxation is bad? Society is structured, and we are indoctrinated, such that, from a financial perspective, whatever serves our self-interest is good and desirable. Taxation forces limits to this, and forces a balance with what is good for society as a whole. Simply increasing higher level tax, or (better) introducing a wealth tax, increases the quality of society and works towards equality of opportunity. It is in the long-term interest of the ultra-rich to give a small proportion of their wealth to fund a less troubled and more sustainable world.

In an ideal free-market economy and democratic country, the one who performs (job) better, earn more than others. They earn it so they can do whatever they want with their hard-earned money. Forcing people to spend is violating rights and people's liberty.

If you mean incentivizing people to spend, then it is partially correct. The question is, what kind of spending is more desirable? I'd say for productive activities like building new factories, shops, etc., so more jobs for the unemployed.

So the key is incentives. If you give incentives for doing nothing like redistributing wealth to the poor, then people will do nothing. Conversely, if you provide incentives for the poor people to work harder so they can get out of their poverty, they will work harder and eventually will get out of poverty by their own effort.

This  is where financial education comes in, some people think if they have a million Dollar they are set, but most people have millions of dollar and have lost all the money. The difference between a rich and a poor is what they both prioritize.

Right. I would not say it was their fault if they find themselves in the middle of a helpless situation beyond their control. The social environment people live in shapes their behavior. Some people find themselves growing up to these addictions so it isn't constructive to blame them for a problem they can't control It's like blaming a compulsive gambler for losing all his money from his bad habit, he won't receive that nicely.


We can't, and that is painfully obvious to most people who read the news every day, where stories about layoffs, wage scandals and politicians blocking budget spending on less developed communities make the pages regularly. Pretty much all countries are non-egalitarian and are going to stay like that as long as, one condition at least, there are low effort, low paying jobs around. And this takes us back to the problem described in the OP. Jobs like assembling circuit boards for Foxconn, frying fast food for some megafranchise like McDonalds and stuffing up toys for Walmart can all be automated, and there are machines, and here I mean things like mechanical arms, conveyor belts and the like, that can at least perform a rudimentary set of chores. In other places like car assembly lines, most of the process is done by machines thankfully with minimal human effort, but the other stuff I mentioned above is not automated at all. And that's a really big problem because assembly liners make just $17.20/hour, barely above the $15/hour minimum, the average fast food worker gets paid $8/hour, and a quick google search reveals Foxconn workers get paid an outrageous $2.5/hour.

I'd say, depending on where they live, these salaries determine the living conditions they can afford. In the US you can barely live off of $8/month but you might get a way with it in higher inflation countries, but even $2.5/hour is brutal for those places, it's almost slave labor in my opinion. It's likely not their fault that they ended up with these bad paying jobs that could've been automated because they must've had no other choice.

And most of this could be avoided if large international corporations with a manufacturing arm allotted a bigger budget towards R&D, to developing machines that can automate all this work. At the end to make ends meet those low payed workers would have to be laid off which is painful for them but if they get a modest severance package they won't feel the pain, and will be able to look for better paying jobs. Unfortunately I don't think any company is interested in this idea, not even assigning bigger budgets since it get subtracted from the balance sheet, especially the severance packages although they'll be able to afford it for thousands of workers if the amount is like one year's pay, the workers themselves resist being laid off even from these jobs because they don't know where else to find work.

TL;DR all low paying jobs should be automated to make economies better, it's 2020 FTW.

We start with money! Wow, you're building your socialist utopia with capital, and of course since this is a poor people project it will be done with other people's money, right?
Glorious collectivization of ' 48, here we go again!

Why do you stick to those ideas, those stupid things never worked, people have tried this a hundred times trying to get the money out of the rich and evil kulaks and every f* time in human history things went wrong and the poor remained poor and the middle class went poor but the rich survived, the gap will always be there, it has always been and no stupid regulations will manage to keep in check the things that trigger these differences.
I don't know why you're such a die-hard socialist and why you hate capitalism that much but trust me, you're fighting a losing battle, you're utopia is a nightmare!

You're concentrating all your energy in the wrong place, you can help the poor even if you don't take the money from the rich class, but it seems that you're focused on the latter rather than the first.


Hmm, so you would love such an idealistic leader.
What if your idealistic leader would block all VPN connections and also block bitcointalk in your country, till your nation develops an alternative, would you still praise him? I have a feeling you will not!

I don't agree with you, but I'm meriting your post because you are interested in a constructive discussion

How about we take the example of poor people blowing all their money on alcohol rather than spending it responsibly? Alcoholism is a severe problem in certain very poor communities. For example, Inuit in Canada, the Native Americans/First Nations in the US, the original settlers of Australia, Maoris in New Zealand... all of these are indigenous peoples in lands colonised by Europeans. Presumably you would never suggest that they are weak/stupid/lazy, you would never ascribe those characteristics as being due to race, and instead agree that the alcohol dependency is a consequence of the situation in which they find themselves? In which case, surely, the bad financial decisions are a consequence of being poor, rather than poverty being a consequence of bad decisions?

I do agree with you that some people are lazy, reckless, and take no responsibility for their actions or their situations... but I don't think we can pretend that our societies are egalitarian, with equal rights and opportunities for all, and that the people at the bottom find themselves there because of their own bad decisions. Imagine if Donald Trump had been born into a penniless family - surely he wouldn't then have managed to become president?

Billionaires such as Jeff Bezos pay a lower tax because most of their income comes from capital gains and dividends. Ideally there should be no tax on such income because it is already taxed once. But still long term capital gains are taxed at a rate of 20% in the United States. Similarly, there is a 20% tax on dividends. If you increase the taxes on these gains, then the billionaires may opt not to invest and then the economy may get destroyed.

The series on how people belonging to the lower classes becomes poor people once again and to those people in the middle classes becoming better off and for those people in the upper classes which is becoming getting richer to richest once money was equally distributed relies on how they manage to used up their money. Even if we will continue to do such process of giving everyone a chance to be equally distributed wealth or money but they do not know how to manage or even used up such money for making themselves improve to having a better life, then probably they would just get back from where they have started which results to poor people becoming poor once again, middle classes becoming poor or having better life and rich people making themselves rich once again.

The point is even if you let everyone have such money to be equally distributed to each and every individual but they are lacking of skills and knowledge to make that money grow and just use it up on unnecessary things, it will all be nonsense and the reality would just came back from where it used to be. The division of the classes has not been classified in terms of having a bunch of money, it has been classified on how people wisely uses their resources making them to improve leveling themselves up into a new level of individual capacity in the society.

US Billionaires gained 637 Billion USD thanks to #COVID19  https://youtube.com/watch?v=aoR5sniTnv4   40 million Americans filed for unemployment. The Matthew effect in all its dubious glory. If you ask yourself why this crisis continues though... And it gets worse! Poorest Americans unlikely to qualify for $400-a-week unemployment checks!  https://bit.ly/3kxmmrh   How much did Jefff Bezos and co invests in lawyers to not pay too much taxes from their recent gains?

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

---

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.

You are wrong.No money can "just sit around" in the banks.The banks are giving loans and investing that money to make profits and pay interest rates(which are very low,by the way).The amount of fiat money in circulation is constantly increasing,causing increased inequality and inflation.
There's no such thing a "fair wealth distribution". This is some utopian leftist idea.
Most of the rich people have skills,talents,education,inherited property and assets,motivation and will power.
If you impose higher taxes over them,they will still be rich,while if you increase the government aid for the poor,they might become lazier than before and more dependent on the government.
The tax system can't create equality.

The wide gap between the rich and the poor is usually a direct result of a divide in other areas like education and access to opportunities. The poor usually don't have access to education or to acquire a skill, this already puts them at a disadvantage, as the opportunities they are qualified for becomes limited and low paying, keeping them within their class range.
The rich on the other hand can access the best level of education, putting them in a privileged group on which they can leverage for support and get connected to even better opportunities. Reason why people would spend lots of money to get their wards into Ivy league schools as it helps to build their network.

Access to education would improve their management abilities.
Wealth distribution would not work by simply taking from the rich and giving to the poor, it's also an unsustainable idea. The society can rather be built to give people from different classes equal opportunities and help close the gap

Locked up bitcoins reduces the supply and at equal demand this increases the value of Bitcoin rather than deflating it.

The products bought by the rich is of a certain quality, and if they improved spending it would affect brands who provide such quality, whose owners are likely also in the rich bracket. It may open up more lower class jobs, but they are usually underpaid and overworked. The workers at iPhone factories would benefit little from rise in Apple stocks, but guess who would...

I agree. If today all the money in the world is confiscated and then immediately distributed back to them evenly, as early as tomorrow there is already rich and poor. That is how the reality of humanity works.

And so I am not a fan of wealth redistribution but I am always in favor of mechanisms which somehow bridge the gap. I simply cannot fathom the wrong side of the human race when people burn millions on gambling tables, shoes, signature handbags, toilet bowls, and so on while their fellow humans can barely eat even once a day, and on scant food devoid of any nutrition.  

Anyway, spending drives up the fiat economy. It helps money revolves around. But I don't think that is different with a Bitcoin-based economy. Businesses will only thrive when people are buying. The more the people are hoarding, regardless if it's fiat or Bitcoin, the more the economy shrinks.  

The difference, however, is that hoarding will inflate the value of that limited Bitcoin while fiat will continue to lose it.

Money is divided unequally among people causing some to be rich, others in the middle class well-off but not not rich and others in poverty. Due to the richest people now having tens of billions of dollars, compared to the richest ones a century or so ago, the social divide has become so great that people are calling for rich people's money to be broken up, and distributed to the poor. Their assumption is that if everyone has the same amount of money then there will be no more poverty, hunger and homelessness. But here is why this plan won't work for most people.

A lot of people, especially those in poverty and this includes the poor in third world countries as well, are reckless with money management, due to never learning how to manage money (for they never had any money to manage in the first place), and spend all their money on cigarettes, entertainment, and commodities that drain people's wallets over time. Then there are some people who gamble their money away. Then you have other people who'll buy a sports car or a ship or a fancy house on credit and are unable to repay their debts so they keep paying large amounts of money every time period, lose more and more money and eventually become insolvent. So if you distribute money to these kind of people, they will end up becoming poor again quickly. The rich people with money taken from them still know how to make big money, so the cash flow from the poor to the rich becomes POOR PEOPLE --> MERCHANTS --> OTHER MERCHANTS --> RICH PEOPLE, rich people will be rich again, poor people will be poor again, and the middle class perhaps a little better than they were before.

• Wealth distribution to poor people --> most become poor again
• Wealth distribution to middle class --> most become better off
• Wealth distribution *from* rich people --> most become rich again

How all this relates to the tragedy of the commons is that that theory emphasizes that if each person collects more good for themselves, then it deteriorates the common good for everyone involved.

A lot of rich people's money is just sitting around in banks not being sold, invested or traded with. This removes money from circulation just like how bitcoins get lost or locked up, but unlike in bitcoin where theoretically this scenario deflates prices, idle money inflates prices because there are less sellers and buyers.

So I think a solution to the social divide problem is to make rich people spend their money more, so that it goes back into the world economies.