https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2024/jan/15/worlds-five-richest-men-double-their-money-as-poorest-get-poorer
Oxfam predicts first trillionaire within a decade, with gap between rich and poor likely to increase
It's societal cancer, imagine an organism that allows a few cells to monopolize most of the nutrients. You'd cut it out to save the host, but this has metastasized. The immune system has been reprogrammed to defend the cancer.
Growth for the sake of growth is cancer. That's what it is. It destroys bodies and societies alike.
To keep within biology: the host dies and others with the same vulnerability. The ones immune to this survive and gobble up what remains of the previous hosts. Everybody stands around wondering how this could've happened.
This is not like when ordinary people double their money. They already have an unimaginable amount of wealth, so doubling it is adding another unimaginable quantity. This is a good illustration:
Remember that those boxes need to be twice as long now (but not our box).
This report coincidentally starts in the middle of covid when wealthy people lost about half their wealth because of stock declines.
yea doubling wealth for a couple of these individuals likely means significantly decreasing wealth for a big chunk of middle class people.
This is getting out of hands, economy and society are crumbling and everyone can see it with their own eyes. At this point is in the interest of any political party to stop billionares amassing wealth.
Personal upside maximization for professional sellers of ideas (aka politicians) is in using the power they attain through selling ideas to do favours for people who can pay them back the most.
Guess who can, in a money-centric society, be the most generous to friendly politicians... I'll give you a hint: it's not the poor, the working class or even the middle class.
Should classify people who hoard wealth mentally unstable. What’s the difference between hoarding fake little pieces of green paper and shoes? Evidently hoarding shoes won’t make you a powerful demigod.
There’s very little actual paper. It’s just numbers on a computer screen. They’re hoarding numbers made of light. Resulting in the rest of us getting screwed.
There's very little light. They're hoarding bits of electromagnetic patterns on silicon wafers and platters shoved into noisy boxes
One day, I’m going to dive and swim in a giant vault filled with my own hoard of electromagnetic bits. Then people like me better watch their step!
Its actually investments. Sure those investments are generally tracked by a computer but the computer isnt the important bit
Keep in going down layer after layer and you'll ultimatelly find it's all ownership claims on limited resources and the products made from such resources and trillions of man hours of work (which in turn also boils down to the resource which is "time", specifically "fractions of human life").
Also there's quite a lot of things directly and indirectly owned that whilst abstract and naturaly infinite, were made scarce by Laws, such as copyrighted materials (which could otherwise be freely duplicated) or brands who are only worth something due to trademark (as otherwise anybody could use any brand mark, so brand marks would have no recognition or trust value).
They're hoarding IOU claims on resources.
That's why it's a problem for everybody else.
It they were just meaningless numbers with no real link back to things which are scarce, it would be absolutelly fine (unhealthy for them but fine for everybody else).
They are not hoarding anything at all, the actual economic system it's sustained in nothing else than zeros into an electronic bank account, so basically all their wealth didn't physically exist, the modern economic system it's just a well made fallacy to keep all the shit working together cos probably no one knows what will happen when everything goes to the fuck.
IDK why people still believe wealth it's equal to physical shit like we was still in the XV century, nowdays wealth it's equal to a bunch of zeros in an electronic bank account which aren't real, they are just real at the level of keeping the wheel spinning and nothing else.
Fake or real, the mental urge for them to harm environment and society just to get a few more tick marks on that spreadsheet makes them mentally unstable.
I believe humankind should think about conquering other planets and expand the human dominance over the galaxy instead of exploiting each other to make unreal profit while the habitable condition of the only planet we have goes to the fuck.
Sounds like a reasonable plan to me.
No, we really shouldn't, not everything you don't like is a "mental illness" and using it in this way just makes light of real mental illness and deepens the existing stigma against those who actually have it.
Being a selfish and privileged fuck is not a mental illness, it is the product of a system deliberately designed to enable their existence and behaviour.
I think being selfish is a fucking mental illness, it hurts the person and society in the long run.
This is not meant in jest, and it’s not just because I don’t like it, there is really something wrong with someone who could buy the world multiple times over and still feel like they need more money. They are mentally unstable to want all of something. You don’t need all of something.
So again, what is the difference between someone who needs all the bottle caps in the world and someone who needs all the money?
Exactly. If we were researching monkeys and one of those monkeys was inexplicably obsessed with hoarding all the bananas away from everyone else, even through violence, even though the pile of bananas obtained could dwarf the Pyramids of Giza, and they were all going bad anyway, while the other monkeys starved...
We'd say there's something very, very wrong with that monkey.
But it wouldn't get that far, because the rest of the troupe would exile that one or beat them to death to preserve the rest of the community.
So again, what is the difference between someone who needs all the bottle caps in the world and someone who needs all the money?
Having all the bottle caps literally provides you with nothing while having all the money gives you ultimate and unlimited power over everyone else on the fucking plant, are you being serious right now?
Also, and again - "not right" doesn't equal mental illness, no matter how many times you repeat it.
I seriously doubt you're a trained psychiatrist or even psychologist, stop armchair diagnosing, and you are also wilfully and deliberately ignoring all of the systemic influences that create billionaires and their psychology, you don't have the knowledge nor the tools to make the assertions you're so confidently making and by doing so throwing mentally ill people under the bus, all because the world is too complex and uncomfortable for you to deal with without finding a scapegoat.
it's crazy how obsessed the american founding fathers were with protecting private property, as if it was the end-all, be-all value of the time.
It's a system fault. Nobody earns a billion. No matter how willing you are to screw over other people, a billion can not be earned. Even if you were stealing every cent from your dying grandmother and all the ophans in the world, you'd still have to actually do it. Nobody lives long enough to have time to steal all that money.
It's also meaningless to try to spend that amount of money. It makes no sense to even try.
The money is multiplying by itself due to some error.
I suppose we found out what happens when dividing by zero.
due to some error.
The error is people think this is how things should be.
Most people believe the disparity in wealth should grow, so that's what it does.
They also get mad when you point it out.
Publicly listing companies, it's not stealing when people are giving their money to you.
I explicitly said that it's not stealing.
It's an error in the evaluation of companies. The comparison to div/0 is a humouristic explanation of what happens. The worth is never divided. Even the owners are only capable in a lifetime to pull out enough money for themselves to use even a tiny fraction of the worth, close to zero percent of the totals. The money is simply multiplying faster than it can be divided. That's the error.
Ordinary people can't survive by using only 0.00000001% of their income.
They probably taste horrible, but if we all eat our share then it won't be too big of an issue.
Business idea: start selling billionaire sauce. Slogan: for when you have to eat the rich.
They're familiar with the phrase. That's why they have so much security detail.
One of these, though, one of them is going to slip up and be in the wrong place and the wrong time. Then it is only natural that they are killed.
I know we're not supposed to incite violence on this platform. What I'm talking about is simply an historical cycle and it will inevitably happen.
No, the more likely scenario is that one group of them convinces a bunch of useful idiots to kill their peers that make slightly more creating a brain drain and destroying the host country while the actual billionaires jump ship like rats.
the message needs to spread across the globe so there's no safe place for them. that's what the internet was supposed to do - connect all the people.
where in the fuck can we incite violence then? we need to be inciting some violence before the violence is incited upon us.
no, instead space billionaires. first of all any given person is rich when compared to a poor enough person. moreover spacing is much more fun.
And people still buy into "they're a business and they need to make money!"
Where does that money go? Big picture, where does it go?
They actually lost a lot of wealth at the start of the pandemic, which coincidentally is where this report starts... cant imagine why they would cherypick their dates.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Highlighting a dramatic increase in inequality since the Covid pandemic, Oxfam said the world’s billionaires were $3.3tn (£2.6tn) richer than in 2020, and their wealth had grown three times faster than the rate of inflation.
Mirroring the fortunes of the super rich, it also says business profits have risen sharply despite pressure on households amid the cost of living crisis.
The world’s richest 1% own 59% of all global financial assets – including stocks, shares and bonds, plus stakes in privately held business.
Aleema Shivji, Oxfam’s interim chief executive, said: “These extremes cannot be accepted as the new norm, the world can’t afford another decade of division.
Extreme poverty in the poorest countries is still higher than it was pre-pandemic, yet a small number of super-rich men are racing to become the world’s first trillionaire within the next 10 years.
Governments worldwide are making deliberate political choices that enable and encourage this distorted concentration of wealth, while hundreds of millions of people live in poverty.
The original article contains 698 words, the summary contains 165 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
They got the TV, we got the truth
They own the judges and we got the proof
We got hella people, they got helicopters
They got the bombs and we got the, we got the
We got the guillotine
We got the guillotine, you better run
Imagine thinking a natural biological expression of sadness and grief is an insult. Masculinity so fragile you can almost taste it right through the internet!
poorest get poorer
So you mean to tell me that those with no money or possessions have somehow attained negative value?
It's called debt and yes. People are turning to Credit Cards and Payday Loans to make the bills.
Also, wealth does not only come from the amount of assets yoi have, your net income plays a big role in that as well.
It does have a lot to do with total assets though.
Because at a certain point all assets(capital) generates its own money. It's the very basis of Capitalism.
Bill Gates total income didn't double during COVID. His assets just are worth a lot twice as much. Therefore he now is worth twice as much, and his assets generate twice as much wealth thereby compounding the issue.
How can you get a credit card or a loan if you have bad or no credit (aka likely someone who is the poorest of the poor)
Go look at places like cashnetusa. They're the only kind of places that will work with the people you described and they have like 400% interest rates.
You take out a loan of $1,000 and get trapped for years.
I saw something that said if you have $0, you are wealthier than X% of people in the US simply because you do not have debt.
Dang, I wonder if that money will ever come back into circulation with former taxation on their wealth. No? Okay just increase that money copier and keep inflation going BABAY!
Important to point out that their wealth is largely unrealized gains, that is, only exists in theory. If the stock market / bond market / whatever market crashed, this wealth would largely vaporize. Stock prices are essentially a mass agreed-upon hallucination, as they can be extremely divorced from real assets like industrial machines. It does mean that by controlling these stock etc assets, other people have a harder time getting into this slice of pie and they can do dumb shit like buying Twitter and summarily running it into the ground.
Why is this important to point out? Are you saying if they collectively decided to spend 10% of it to solve most of the country’s problems, they’d be “declined” at the bank? Because unless it somehow means they couldn’t do unimaginable good for fucking everyone and still only suffer 10% of a loss, why is this important to point out?
Jfc, you are angry.
I point it out because most people here don't seem to understand how it works when announcements like this are made.
Anyone not angry isn’t paying enough attention.
Again, though, I just don’t think the “how” is important. Sure their money isn’t in cash. The point is their financial means doubled, while the vast majority of the rest of us got / are getting fucked.
I would seriously look inward and figure out why you think your point is anything other than a veiled distraction, let alone somehow relevant to the root problem being discussed here.
Lol okay. I am apparently a bad actor for simply adding information to the discussion that always rapidly devolves into simple "eat the rich" rhetoric. Sure, go on with your sanctimonious lecturing, I'm here all day.
