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

[Ben Kenobi]

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

Have you tried it?

[OneFootInTheGrave]

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.

Being old I can confirm this statement to be true.

[Kidlicious]

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

It's called social security.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Send poor to Guantanamo Bay to be there with poor Cubans on the poor island, they are communists anway, occupy the wall street and other poor, simple solution.

[Kidlicious]

Send poor to Guantanamo Bay to be there with poor Cubans on the poor island, they are communists anway, occupy the wall street and other poor, simple solution.

Yeah, I heard that Cuba has a statue that reads, "send us your huddled masses."

[Tupac Shakur]

There is no ideal distribution of wealth. Stop worrying and let the market do its thing.

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.

[giblets]

How many of the people answering this survey were confusing wealth and income? Their answers about the actual distribution of wealth might not be so inaccurate if they were mistakenly thinking of income. Even the narrator seems to be confusing wealth and income since he mentioned the "poverty line" and how it supposedly stays almost entirely off the charts of the ideal distribution of wealth. Whether someone is above or below the poverty line depends on their income, not wealth and someone with no net worth is not necessarily living in poverty.

[loinburger]

A lot of my co-workers are making a decent income and yet are still living hand to mouth, with their wealth only consisting of the unmortgaged parts of their houses and boats etc. that they're going to keep upgrading in the hopes of never paying them off.

[Jon Miller]

Have a random function that occasionally (set so that the median length of time is ~5 years) gives you the option to sell all your assets and then have your debt 0ed out.

This will of course adjust what rates/etc that lenders give you.

Not all losses will go to the lenders, the government will contribute a portion (random function, median of 50%) above a certain limit (something like median income/5).

JM

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Have a random function that occasionally (set so that the median length of time is ~5 years) gives you the option to sell all your assets and then have your debt 0ed out.

I think this function already exists. They call it death aka your numbers up, bullet with your name on it, getting hit by the proverbial beer truck etc.

[Jon Miller]

That doesn't have a mean of 5 years and is personally extremely ****ty.

The real problem is that for most people if there is a significant shock they lose everything or more, and this can happen a couple of times in life negatively impacting their children/ability to work/etc/etc for a long period in the future.

As an example, a couple very close to me who were (late) middle aged were making over 120k a year. They had paid off everything but their mortgage and had started to have some significant retirement savings. This was after a significant negative shock 10+ years before which had left them indebted.

Then 2008 happened (and they were both unemployed), they tried to stay above but ended up having to sell of their retirement savings (which also lost a lot of its value) in order to survive (and also took out large debt). They ended up going bankrupt late last year. Now they are late middle age with nothing.

This happens pretty often to people. For people who are at the end of their working life when it happens, it is really bad, and the reason why we need things like SS/medicare/medicaid.

The only way to not have this happen is to be very wealthy. Most people can't do this, it isn't just a function of deferred consumption, and a lot of people go from negative shock to negative shock... and are never able to become wealthy. I know that at least the wife in the example couple had significant negative financial shocks from 80-84, 90-92, 97-01, and 08-12. I wouldn't say any were in any way due to not saving enough except possibly the 97-01.

Something must be done to fix this problem.

It is actually even worse when it happens to younger people. For younger people it negatively impacts their children due to not being able to afford good schools, a safe environment, good nutrition, and so on. This creates a horrible cycle.

A negative impact for both younger people and older people is that it removes options. Most people buy a house, when they lose their jobs and lose their savings (due to needing to spend money when the stock market is down), they are unable to sell their house (also in the bad market) to move to a location where they could find a job. This means that they lose a lot when there is a personal shock and a economic shock at the same time.

There is also strong evidence that in a negative downturn wages stay the same but the number of employed drop. This means that if you are lucky (or better or better connected), you keep your job. This leads to a significant difference between people who are lucky and people who are not, who end up losing everything during an economic down turn and are maybe far behind for several years after.

The solution to this is to make it so that people can't drop too far behind. Yeah, people will still lose everything, but they won't go negative (for too long). This will aid them in rebuilding and provide some equality of opportunity instead of the current system which provides a lot of advantage to those with wealthy.

The other part of the solution is to have a strong support program for children and the elderly. I don't mean retirement at 65 (67 or even 70 is reasonable to me). I mean enough to live on to the elderly and enough to children so that they can have proper nutrition. In obvious solution to the education problem is to make it free. This can be done with vouchers or public education, that isn't important.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

That doesn't have a mean of 5 years

We have yet to fully implement Obamacare.

and is personally extremely ****ty.

Thats a a matter for metaphysical debate. also

[DinoDoc]

It's called social security.

It's not their money once Social Security gets it. It's been ruled by the Court that there is no contractual right to receive Social Security payments.

[Kidlicious]

It's not their money once Social Security gets it. It's been ruled by the Court that there is no contractual right to receive Social Security payments.

It is their money when they recieve it.

[Straybow]

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.

So, it's criminal that people don't give away what they've earned just because it doesn't jive with your idiot worldview on how things should work?

Conservatism is just a bunch of bumper sticker slogans that don't work when you don't work.