Distribution of America's Wealth: What the ideal should be, what we think it is, and what it actually is.

[MrFun]

[DinoDoc]

So?

[Cervical Gundersnatch]

We need to pass a law that requires poor people to save more money

[Sava]

I don't care how wealth is distributed as long as everyone has their basic needs met... "entitlements" like food, shelter, healthcare, education, etc. Getting this stuff taken care of in the most efficient way possible can probably be done for a lot less than what we spend overall on everything now. It's a question of allocating resources effectively. It's criminal that people go hungry or without shelter just because it doesn't jive with some idiot's worldview on how things should work. DURRRRR AMURICA

Conservatism is just a bunch of bumper sticker slogans. It doesn't work.

[Uncle Sparky]

Make graphs illegal!!!

[Alexander's Horse]

The ideal system involves everyone giving me their money

[Patroklos]

Who gives a **** what the average idiot thinks wealth distribution should be? Is this the supposed viral video everyone is creaming about?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Peasants getting uppity again?

[Dauphin]

I find the chart rather ridiculous. They're lumping Bill Gates in with a guy who only has assets of a few million. Bill Gates is over a thousand times richer than Joe Millionaire. Joe Millionaire has barely a hundred times as much as Poor Joe. The whole thing is stupid.

This is far more interesting:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/mar/05/prince-alwaleed-talal-forbes-rich-list

One of the world's richest men, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, has severed ties with the Forbes rich list, claiming it understated his wealth.

The Saudi investor, ranked 26th in the billionaires' list released on Monday, accused Forbes of a "flawed" valuation method that undervalued his assets and "seemed designed to disadvantage Middle Eastern investors and institutions".

etc

http://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/2012-10-09/aaa

[loinburger]

The logical follow-up question is, "how should we redistribute the wealth"? The simplest and most fool-proof answer is to take everybody's wealth (money, stocks, land) and redistribute it equitably (for a given definition of equitably), ensuring that everybody remains at their original percentile after wealth redistribution (it wouldn't be fair (for a given definition of fair) to move somebody at the 99th percentile to the 1st percentile and vice versa). Some things like land might not make sense to redistribute, in which case the government will maintain ownership of it while the former landowners are given some other asset as compensation. The only hiccup in redistribution is in how children should be treated for purposes of wealth redistribution - as non-persons, as full persons, as 3/5 of a person, etc, and whether this is on a sliding scale where e.g. a 16-year-old is more of a person than a 4-year-old. The problem then is that this is only a temporary solution, because some schmuck is going to immediately spend all of his money on cocaine while somebody else is going to win the lottery and now we've got an unequal distribution of wealth again. The latter problem is easy enough to fix with a 100% income tax rate with zero deductions, where a portion of everybody's collected taxes is then redistributed back to the populace at fixed intervals e.g. once a month or once a year. The former problem is more difficult to solve - we would probably need to put a cap on people's spending, perhaps by issuing everybody a credit card type instrument that maxes out when they've spent e.g. 5% of their wealth (and by eliminating cash we would make it more difficult for people to spend their money on the black market and thus unfairly deplete their wealth). The final problem is that some people won't max out their cards and will therefore unfairly accrue wealth via savings, but we can solve this problem with a proportional tax on savings (so e.g. if somebody in the top 20th percentile saves $1000 then it will be taxed at 99%, and if somebody in the 60th percentile saves $1000 then it will be taxed at 40%). We may still need to occasionally completely redistribute all of the wealth again, but hopefully we won't need to do this too often. We could also simplify the whole redistribution problem a bit by incarcerating people who keep acquiring too much wealth.

[regexcellent]

I find the chart rather ridiculous. They're lumping Bill Gates in with a guy who only has assets of a few million. Bill Gates is over a thousand times richer than Joe Millionaire. Joe Millionaire has barely a hundred times as much as Poor Joe. The whole thing is stupid.

This is far more interesting:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/mar/05/prince-alwaleed-talal-forbes-rich-list

One of the world's richest men, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, has severed ties with the Forbes rich list, claiming it understated his wealth.

The Saudi investor, ranked 26th in the billionaires' list released on Monday, accused Forbes of a "flawed" valuation method that undervalued his assets and "seemed designed to disadvantage Middle Eastern investors and institutions".

etc

http://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/2012-10-09/aaa

Forbes is a dumb magazine. It's People for self-important businessmen.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

The logical follow-up question is, "how should we redistribute the wealth"? The simplest and most fool-proof answer is to take everybody's wealth (money, stocks, land) and redistribute it equitably (for a given definition of equitably), ensuring that everybody remains at their original percentile after wealth redistribution (it wouldn't be fair (for a given definition of fair) to move somebody at the 99th percentile to the 1st percentile and vice versa). Some things like land might not make sense to redistribute, in which case the government will maintain ownership of it while the former landowners are given some other asset as compensation. The only hiccup in redistribution is in how children should be treated for purposes of wealth redistribution - as non-persons, as full persons, as 3/5 of a person, etc, and whether this is on a sliding scale where e.g. a 16-year-old is more of a person than a 4-year-old. The problem then is that this is only a temporary solution, because some schmuck is going to immediately spend all of his money on cocaine while somebody else is going to win the lottery and now we've got an unequal distribution of wealth again. The latter problem is easy enough to fix with a 100% income tax rate with zero deductions, where a portion of everybody's collected taxes is then redistributed back to the populace at fixed intervals e.g. once a month or once a year. The former problem is more difficult to solve - we would probably need to put a cap on people's spending, perhaps by issuing everybody a credit card type instrument that maxes out when they've spent e.g. 5% of their wealth (and by eliminating cash we would make it more difficult for people to spend their money on the black market and thus unfairly deplete their wealth). The final problem is that some people won't max out their cards and will therefore unfairly accrue wealth via savings, but we can solve this problem with a proportional tax on savings (so e.g. if somebody in the top 20th percentile saves $1000 then it will be taxed at 99%, and if somebody in the 60th percentile saves $1000 then it will be taxed at 40%). We may still need to occasionally completely redistribute all of the wealth again, but hopefully we won't need to do this too often. We could also simplify the whole redistribution problem a bit by incarcerating people who keep acquiring too much wealth.

Sounds like a lot of work for the planners of the redistribution. I think they should be entitiled to a larger share of the wealth and benefits accuring their hard work accordingly.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Not to mention, they're the only ones who should vote, as their tireless self-sacrifice shows that only they are the ones committed to the state and the welfare of the people. :doinow!:

[loinburger]

Sounds like a lot of work for the planners of the redistribution. I think they should be entitiled to a larger share of the wealth and benefits accuring their hard work accordingly.

They are the final arbiters as to the applied definition of "equitable redistribution," after all...

The next question is "Distribution of America's Power: What the ideal should be, what we think it is, and what it actually is." Did you know that federal judges have over a thousand times more power than homeless heroin addicts, even though people we polled thought that federal judges only had a hundred times more power and that they only deserved to have twice as much power??? I've got a bunch of charts that say so! Something must be done to rectify this problem!!!

Distribution of America's Orgasms: What the ideal should be, what we think it is, and what it actually is. People in the top 20% need to be given saltpeter in order to make things more fair for the ugly schmucks in the bottom 20%. And did you know that old people have only one tenth as many orgasms as people in their twenties? Yup, old people having orgasms. Good luck getting that image out of your head.

[Aeson]

I am not able to watch this video. MrFun is able to watch this video. How fair is that?