Debunking Narratives on "Wealth Inequality"

It's different because you mentioned accessibility and cost. The information is accessible to anyone who wants it, and the cost is nil. It requires only effort and self-discipline, like anything worth learning.

The cost of investing itself could be exactly the amount of money you spent the previous 5 years on 'luxuries' (fast food, holidays, phones, cars, clothes, furniture, appliances, excessive consumption of utilities, cosmetics, big city rents, etc etc) - had you chosen to save that money towards investment.

 

Excellent post. Couldn't agree more.

 

Who 'earns' that rich person's wealth? Who determines that? And on what criteria?

Will you take it from the rich man and give it to ... junkies/gamblers/alcoholics rendered poor via their choices? Will you give it to the morbidly obese families on welfare who spend every cent they receive on fast food, hair stylists, and iphones?

 

What are you not getting? If they DON'T use it to consolidate their own position, then they have lost it to the system anyway.

Confiscating wealth before it can be inherited will net you exactly one single round of theft. Not a person alive will bother holding wealth until death. That means no one will bother earning more than can be spent in their own lifetime. Good luck with that. You're going to need it.

 

Keeping it as simple as possible. Wealth is stuff. Money is how we measure the value of stuff. Wealth is a lifetime achievement award, it is what you manage buy and hang on to after taxes.

The actual value of any item in your own stack of stuff is highly variable and almost entirely subjective. Making stuff expensive to own, as Lizzie Warren would do with her wealth tax, invariably lowers the value of stuff or removes it all together.

 

Here's more:

 

McKesson is the last person on Earth who should be complaining about "exploiting" people. What a creep.

The voluntary market that creates billionaires enriches everyone. The involuntary government that creates misery, fraud and waste exploits everyone.

 

DUH!When the top 1% have as much accumulated wealth as the bottom 90% you cannot get much more unequal.

 

The real inequality exists in people dumb enough to believe that the above is true versus the rest of us.

 

As if “wealth equality” is a good thing.

 

Here's more:

 

Claim - Wealth inequality narratives are false
Support for Claim - those claiming that this inequality exists use a flawed definition of wealth - and so this claim is a lie.

Your claim is silly and unsupported by reality. Most studies on wealth inequality define what is meant by wealth.

The inference that there is no wealth inequality of any significance - is preposterous nonsense.

 

Your posts to this forum are silly and unsupported by reality, also inaccurate in the above case. You quoted what I posted and then immediately mischaracterized it in print for all to see. Why am I not surprised?

 

What was mischaracterized ? - are you not arguing that the wealth inequality narratives are false on the basis of errant definition of the word wealth ?

If not - my bad.

 

The OP post was written in clear HS level English, not going to explain it further.

 

The fundamental conclusion that we are all entitled to a share of the wealth, is much like the concept we are all entitled to breath. However- Money is not air. It is something no person has until they have earned it, possibly inherited it from someone else who has earned it and wished to pass it to them, or won it by chance in the lottery, from other people who took the same chance. Money does not grow on trees, it is not a natural resource. It's made by industrious people who take risks, invest themselves and their money, and in the process- produce goods which are sold openly to others at a price those others voluntarily chose to pay. Point- while the concept of entitlement does apply to your right to breathe air- it does not apply to the fruits of your neighbors garden.

Those who demand a share of someone elses wealth; the fruits of their labor- are not asking for equality, but for the right to take what they have not earned from those who did- and who are already paying the bulk of the bills for the services of government that such people already benefit from. Hardly something that can be justified by any rational person who isn't more interested in self-serving than justice.

Long ago I heard this story-
A man said to his friend that it was unfair that some people had a lot of money. He said what would be right is to take all the money from everyone, and then divide it all up equally.
The friend said- But in a year or so, it would all be back where it came from.
To which the first man replied- No man, you don't understand! I mean every Saturday night!

If we try to create "Income equality", that is exactly what we would be doing.

 

Exactly. There is NOTHING equal about 'wealth equality'.

 

Wealth inequality today is worse than it was at the great depression in the 1920's.

 

Yes. But in those days it wasn't self-inflicted.

 

Not as defined in the OP. The poor in the United States today have a substantial safety net they can access to get food and healthcare. The difference in quality of life between the rich and poor is that the poor have fewer rooms to sleep in, fewer channels on their TV and an old domestic car instead of a new foreign one. The poor in the United States are far wealthier in virtually every way than their peers in prior generations and the amount of money the rich have (usually an estimate based on the momentary subjective value of their non-liquid assets) is completely irrelevant to the conditions experienced by the poor.