Now, I think as long as everyone can live comfortably, retire before 70 and own a decent house, the ultra rich can do whatever they want. But this is currently not the case so yeah.
Food, shelter, health care, mental health care, medicine, and transportation is my minimum. Houses are nice but not the point any livable shelter works. *Retirement is also essential.*
Heres the issue, how do you define "live comfortably"? Comfort is variable between people. Just between me and my SO, my opinion of living comfortably is have the capabiliyy to go out and purchase a new car when i want to, my SO sees comfortable as just being able to afford the basic necessitied to live.
@Luís Andrade we're increasingly approaching a world where thousands of people will be unable to make a living at no fault of their own. There are already hundreds of people already that havent made "bad decisions". Just go ahead a think about that.
I think there is a problem with inequality that has nothing to do with economy, which might be the worst of all... the disparity of political power. As the ultra rich can divert more political power their way, the more economic power will be captured by these same ultra rich, in an vicious cycle. That's how their income and power has increased manyfold on the last decades and most middle classes have not moved much.
imho, economic and political inequality are the same thing. Lobbying, marketing, manipulation of news sources… It’s a vicious circle right now. EVERY big source of information is equally interested in protecting big businesses.
I get your point but thinking about it a bit more, I don't think my life is influenced that much by super-yacht-owning people. This "power" you speak of, what is it and what is it used for? It's clearly used to make more money, but like you said, you are not focusing on something that has nothing to do with economy right now. So beyond making more money, what is the problem? -- I'm not saying there aren't problems, what I am saying is that in order to deal with those problems, it would make a lot more sense to actually define them, instead of just pointing the finger in the general direction of a private jet.
Money aka wealth is power, that is why USA can throw its weight around the whole world, and yet very few go again them, mostly only those who so poor that they have nothing to lose.
@@SgtJoeSmith No, ones that cost much less than European “Private Hospitals” because they don’t have to compete against the State who runs at a loss meaning that people beyond the ultra rich can access immediate, high quality healthcare; because when your life is literally on the line it’s no time to wait around for a better price.
@@MonaLisaHasNoEyebrows i mentioned sweden cause they went the libertarian way and the gov pays tax dollars to 1 and only 1 private health care company to administer everything. but heres the problem. 2 middle men and no competition to be better or cheaper. go ask any nurse practitioner in america why they arent a doctor or no longer a doctor. and you will know what the problem is and why costs are so high. want cheaper health care in america? this is the only way: get insurance out of it: when you pay health insurance half goes to the middle man and their office and employees. get government out of it: same with insurance. also too many regulations keep new competition away. get lawyers out of it: give doctors qualified immunity from lawsuits. doctors are often subcontractors of hospitals and can be sued directly. Lawn mowing prices are up 80% in 30 years despite their overhead up 300%. cause market is flooded with lawn boys. health care overhead costs are up 500% in same time but prices up 2000% or something like that. like you said. when you might die if you dont get help and there is only 1 option you will pay anything. only other option to what i said.... guess more people need to just be willing to boycott treatment and die.
the thing is i dont view the gaining of wealth as bad but I do view gaining and centralization of power as the true driver of the problem. with enough money and know how a rich man can easily take over a small town and become a tyrant without anyone knowing they are the ones pulling the strings
@@hamatlante1280 money is not basically power it is a form of power. And there are many different forms of power many of which are a lot more malicious than money.
@@hamatlante1280 thats the thing i dont believe that money is a tool that can get u power but u need intelligence and will power to actually achieve power that matters
@@wilfredpeake9987 Yes, obviously. Blades can be used in different ways: for cooking, for war, ecc ecc. But humanity prefered using them more for war (or at least the wealthy kings). Blades aren't bad, but if the system encourages you to using them in a certain bad way (especially if you're a rich wanting to maintain his power), the system doesn't work well. For example we have enough money for living all splendid lives, but nearly 1 billion of people lives in extreme poverty, and like 2/3 of humanity lives in poverty. And the wealthy use them to corrupt politicians. So, money aren't bad, but extreme inequality is
I had a patent, and I was forced to sell it below price, because a billionaire literally told me: "I have time, you don't", and he was right, the creditors started to eat me alive. I had no choice, but to sell my patent to only cover my expenses, while he made probably more than a million dollar since then from it. The thing is, anything happens to others, or to the planet, they don't have to care. The point of money is to repay the work you give for other people. But they mostly only have capital, and the work is done by employees, who are not repaid. Also you haven't even try to debate the points made in social studies, how wealth inequality harms the education, health systems etc.
The point of money is social domination. It's control. It's primary purpose is not as a means of exchange. Currency exists to render life outside of the economic and political system impossible.
I'm getting my commenting in now, another month or so and there'll be far too many to be spotted! Yeah, this channel will grow just fine, you've got it nailed
You make some severe logical errors in your arguments: - You are treating consumption in the economic sense as the same as the consumption of resources but these do not always overlap. For example, insulating your home can be very expensive but will lower your energy usage over the long term. Certain goods can be very expensive but also use little resources (digital goods, high-quality items). Rich people consume proportionally less in the economic sense, which is bad for the economy, and consume more resources (often very unsustainable things such as flying on private jets or buying yachts), which is bad for the planet. A more equitable distribution would be better for the economy and would allow for climate measures to be easier to enact (since now most measures will disproportionally hurt the poor). - The wealthy are actively preventing others from becoming wealthy. The real estate market is a good example, many young people have to pay a large part of their income to someone else just to live somewhere without being able to save up for a home themselves. A permanent underclass of people without property is being created and more and more people fall into it as wealth concentrates more and more at the top.
You bring solid points; However, the wealthy having less of a carbon footprint than say your typical lowerclass is a bit farfetched. Sure, if you compare Beverly Hills with the Bronx since Bronx is highly with a niche for less high-quality products and more consumable objects , then you can somewhat see a marginal difference, but then again it has already been shown that Space Tourism - particularly that of the most recent one utilizing rocket propulsion to achieve such activity - emits 100 times more co2 per passenger than you average flight, a feat solely resevered for the financially rich. When this industry “booms”, imagine how big of an environmental impact this solely will have. To summarize this, what I mean to say is that the rich have exponentially outgrowned a preservative state of pollution; be it through leisures or businesses tied to the activities that fund their wealth.
I don't know why it is so hard to grasp but money and land are zero sum. Wealth isn't zero sum because you can create more as you need it. Building a second water distribution system in another city doubles global wealth without hurting anyone. The problem with land is that you can just buy it, squat on it and then extort people. There is no way to create new land. It's very unfair. Money is a public good and it is almost the same. If you don't create new money as the economy grows then people can acquire it through a profit, hoard it and then extort people because people have to be paid with money for tax and debt reasons. So money not only has to increase with productivity, it also has to increase fast enough to preventing hoarding. That excess increase is called inflation.
@@shushirakawa3182 How can you say money is zero sum, while you later acknowledge that inflation is an excess increase in the money supply. Clearly we can just print all the money anyone needs no problem, bro. The real issue is that all this surplus money is driving up the cost of the things that ARE zero sum, like land and housing. I would actually argue that inflation is making the situation worse, as its really easy to buy up vast amounts of houses and land, if there is both 0 % loans to buy the land handed out to the rich that are close to the new money spigot, and there is also always more money for everyone to be able to rent the land. Limited money would actually limit the hoarding of land, because if there were no way to earn easy rents on the land, the rich would have to sell it, because they would be eaten up by property taxes, and it would be a poor investment. Also, building infrastructure is in fact zero sum, because physical resources used to construct a water distribution system can't be used to build something else. The only things that are truly not zero sum are digital items. If I make 1000 Fortnight hats, I have not used any resources of society, as these art pieces take up only the tiniest amount of hard drive space. I suspect digital marketplaces will become much larger in the future, perhaps ushering a time of abundance in real life, since the rich guy 'hoarding' 100,000 Fortnight hats really isn't consuming any real resources, OR restricting anyone else from making or using their own hats, even if the rich guy has some high level of in-game status from his massive hat collation, it really isn't a problem for society.
I say the biggest problem with wealth inequality is the waste of resources to further redistribute the wealth to those who are already wealthy, without actually creating value.
The rich do create the value, far more that any consumer. Investment is needed for there to be anything for the consumer to be able to consume. They wealthy use investments to grow the money they have earned and use debt issued with the investment value to get loans to buy things you and I can't afford. By being a wealthy business man and taking stock options in your business instead of making more money you don't have the taxable (income tax) event like you would if you had taken it all in cash. Now that you have ownership in this business you don't need to sell the stock to get money (if you do you will have a taxable event, ie capital gains) you ask a bank for a loan using the shares as collateral. If you get a loan to buy an investment the intrest is tax exempt. Our tax code is set up for people to invest and buy doing so create more capital for businesses to expand and create jobs. Creating 100 new jobs equals 100 new consumers plus 1 wealthy one who consumes more. One thing everyone must keep in mind is wealth inequality is an indicator of prosperty. It is a sign that everyone is living a far better life than people did 50 or 100 years ago.
@@shawnaning101 You rely on the assumption investment is only possiblle trough wealthy indivuduals. No one person needs to be wealthy yet ppl can come together and chose to pool resources for a common goal (like goverments should function). The wealthy person doesn't create value for sociaty if most or all aditional value from those investments goes to that one person does he? He might even take away value from sociaty if he claims more then he created in the first place. (automation does allow this) Also the wealth inequality is a clasic case of correlation != causation.
@@someonespotatohmm9513 You cannot pool together with enough people to create the value (ie job) Mark Cuban can. Those jobs he creates provide more consumers which create more value for society. The government only steals value, they don't create anything. The government uses private industry for creation of products and services using your tax money meanwhile debasing the currency by printing more money making it impossible for you to buy a new car for $1500 or a house for $20,000. I find it funny you suggested the government is the answer when as I stated in my first comment that the government created the conditions that make it possible for these people to be uber wealthy through tax laws. If I were you I would be careful what you advocate, you could be the next Jeff Bezos. You could have the next big idea that changes the world for the better and deserve a piece of the value you created. What I'm saying is if you want to be rich, don't be a consumer, be an investor. Save and invest as much as you can. If you start in your 20s you WILL be a millionaire. Wealth is a mindset achieved through an optimistic view of life and our economy. Once again for someone to be wealthy and someone to be poor there must be prosperity and everyone benefits through job creation and innovation. You used to have to salt you foods to keep them from going bad. You used to have to walk or ride a horse to get to where you want to go. These goods that make everyone's life better were created by investors and everyone has benefited.
@@shawnaning101 Troll? I don't belive anyone can belive this "being rich is just a mindset bro". The entire history is the example of why this isn't true.
Just ask yourself when the last time a poor man gave you a job and you have your answer. The rich provide jobs. If you hurt the rich you hurt everyone else.
I remember reading what a Japanese industrialist once said: "The money game is never over until you die, you never 'win' the money game." Essentially he was saying that wealth can disappear, and that you, or your family can be doing well one decade, and in a very short time be impoverished the next. The wealthiest families may see their wealth evaporate in a generation or two. Some extremely wealthy athletes and actors became destitute fairly quickly after retirement. In short its natural to always seek a return, because if you aren't gaining, you are inching ever closer to living under a bridge.
Those athletes you mentioned have been ill served and poorly educated. They have been fooled into thinking that money should be spent. Money is a tool to generate more money, not something to throw away for trinkets. Freedom is worth infinitely more than luxury goods. If you want to use money, use it to secure freedom.
@@petermartin9494 People should spend money how they please, but should be educated in doing so. I have a step sister who has a fiancé and they simply have no clue on how to use money at all. One time they went on 2 different vacations in a matter of one month! Then they also try to reward themselves for saving money, by well, spending more money at the end of the week to get something they want. Now they're in debt, maxed out a shit ton of credit cards and are now trying to spend even more money to have a lavish wedding. They are asking for more money from my parents, who my step sister's fiancé yelled at my father for not giving her more money for the wedding just because he is well off. Tbh, I think a large part of the inequality is how people spend their money in general. For me, I have some money invested in blue chip stocks and had saved nearly 100% of the money I worked for 8 months and overtime to start my own business that I hope to benefit from even more financially while doing what I love to do. It is a risk I am willing to take and I even made plans further in the future in the event this may not work out at all. So despite the fact my step sister and I had the same opportunity, she is the one that ends up spending irrationally to even afford to move out of her house. For me, I ended up saving up nearly all my money to invest into my own business and I'm living a life with my boyfriend where we work under his income while I try to start this business for the both of us to eventually work together one day. We never spend irrationally and we can talk about finances responsibly because we understand that going out for dinner all the time isn't a good idea at all or taking on more debt by going to vacations when it isn't within our means.
@@doomersnek3878 Thanks for your message, Axo, it is very interesting. Somehow it seems to me that your step sister has not learned the lessons about money that a young person needs to learn. Giving her money is very toxic and your parents need to understand that. It is not good for her and it is not good for them. It is best for her if she learns the consequences of over spending. That way she will probably be more careful in the future. If my son in law ever yells at me for not giving more money, then that will be the last cent he sees coming out of my pocket ever. If your father is still giving them money, then he does not understand his place in the world and he does not understand respect. All the best to you.
The rich aren't hording resources... Does that include Nestle and Coke buying up all the water? Because they're doing that. I know it's not an individual, but their financial officers all make a pretty penny.
Top executives are just employees aswell. A salary of 17M (Coke CEO and Chairman) isn't too mutch compared to the 9BN revenue the company makes. Getting 0.2% from the revenue they are responsible for seems fair to me. Most of the money Coke makes goes towards their shareholdets. Waren buffet is making the big bucks by owning so many shares. But buying a share of Coke is achievable for everyone (at least in the developed world)
@Josef K "The high executive pay is waste." The same general public that makes statements like this think it appropriate to pay the person ultimately accountable for their clean water little more than the company that serves them their cat videos pays a mid level hire. Then those same people marvel at the fact that they can get their high quality cat videos in even the most adverse of conditions but somehow their water utility's performance is spotty. Leadership matters and good leaders don't come cheap.
@@i-never-look-at-replies-lol there are portions of the world that are experiencing water shortages. The southwest united states is already having to ration water in some areas. It will come to you, soon.
There’s also another kind of wealth inequality in America. Skilled labor vs unskilled labor within the middle and lower working class. It’s become almost essential to either get a college degree or go to vo-tech school and learn a trade. People with skills are very much in demand while people without them have actually seen their wages fall adjusted to inflation. My second point is about wealth inequality. Do we take it from rich people and trust politicians with its redistribution? The issue with this is obvious. Politicians end up lining their own pockets and only a tiny percentage ends up helping the lower middle class and the poor. Wealth just gets shifted around from one set of oligarchs to another
Best time to invest? thats funny tho because in the last four months I have lost more than $47,900 in stock market which is the biggest I have loss since I ventured into stock investment.
you could be right or wrong depends on your expertise, I once made such loss when i invested thinking i have gathered enough trading skills from youtube videos but now its a different ball game for me because I was lucky to have met "Tamara Diane Hagan", a financial manager and stock expert, I have made more than $165,000 in 6 weeks under her supervisions.
Really? people are cashing in from the stock market and frankly speaking its comforting seeing someone admit to the fact that they actually seek help from professionals. please how can i reach Tamara ?
I think there is value in providing "the other side of the story," but you ALSO need to present "the OTHER other side," ie the *actual* side. Present the counter-argument, but ALSO present the argument itself at the same time.
Yea, I'd actually agree. The issue I see is the video would be near double the length? Maybe needs a 2nd video? Because I agree, just giving talking points for a counter opinion that is already sold 24/7 on main stream media isn't useful at all. Like talking about asset allocation very vaguely as far as what is being bought and where(a "small" % in SanFran, Singapore, or NYC, has a massive impact), not mentioning how technology adoption gets harder when billionaires drive up all capital costs, how historically they seem to be worse and worse to animals on their farms, how capital asset acquisition relates(causes) to inflation, etc. He kinda just says stuff already pumped all over the place. Without a counter who is the video for? I don't know.
@@justcommenting4981 Right. I personally wouldn't mind a longer video, but there might be algorithm reasons not to make it longer, but at the very least there should be paired videos, "here is the devil's advocate position," and then "here is the actual reason why this _is_ bad." Maybe place them a week apart, but in the first one reference that the second exists (it should already be written before publishing the first), and cite it throughout "as I say in the other video, this might be seen as a bad thing because. . .".
There's a major difference between your definitions of rich. The spending power of a person that has $100k vs $100 million vs $100 billion is not something that is easily condensed to the rich. I'd like to see a follow-up specifically talking about billionaires as that would be more a more interesting in my opinion.
I think he does understand it, but you are also absolutely right that there's a vast difference between a so called millionaire (which is really just someone with assets to retire in a very average fashion because $1M does not last that long, especially for a couple that just started retirement) vs billionaires. The reason I say he does understand is because he clearly pointed out the 10% vs 1% in the global emissions/consumption part. Let's be real, even the 1% thing is a myth because there are vast differences within the 1%. It's also relatively easy to be 1% earner, but MUCH more difficult to be 1% net worth.
@@JasonPrice1 $940K net is also quite irrelevant in a developed country. $1M only gets you a 30-40 year retirement these days. In US, to be 1% net worth you need 11 million. I don't think majority of people are saying Bezos is a bad guy because he's rich. Most people are unhappy about the work conditions at Amazon. And you're right that once you get certain amounts of wealth it just grows from there. But that's also the criticism that there is not much effort once you get there, meaning the system is rigged to an extent. Personally, I have no problem from them making a fortune from a viable business. I do take issue with the tax loopholes. Most people stop defending the wealthy once they realize the scheme of not cashing out stocks, and borrowing against them. It is definitely not a healthy practice. And again, this doesn't have anything to do with "hating" the wealthy. It's just a systematic issue that people want to address.
@@dailyrant4068 you should probably blame the fed a bit more than the practice of borrowing against assets. If the stock market was an actual free market then many would actually run liquidation risk. In crypto you learn real fast the dual edged sword such borrowing can be.
That's another problem with all those claiming they "hate the rich" - they don't realize they'd actually be rich by other countries standards, the 1% is full of doctors, engineers and other professionals, and the billionaires they talk so much about are more like the 0.001% Also, start eating the 1%, eat the top and the top gets lower, lower, lower until someone comes to eat you too. Very dangerous mindset.
@@dailyrant4068 But a pawn shop works the same way only with hard assets and not stocks. In both cases the person taking out the loan will pay interest for the privilege, that's money that then circulates.
My primary objection to staggering wealth inequality is not that it has some inherent economic downsides, it's the fact that there are simply too many people with problems that could be quickly solved by proper wealth redistribution. I'm angry in the way that I'd be angry at Superman if he just stood by and watched people die, and occasionally giggled. It's a lack of empathy not only on the part of the individual billionaires, but a lack of empathy built into government and society.
So why don't you complain that US government spends More EVERY YEAR into the military than the combined fortune of all these billionaries? Remember they do that with money they took from YOUR WORK! The billionaries on other hand do not have BILLIONS on money. They have assets that are evaluated at a humongous ammount. If they did not have those assets we would have less jobs, less houses built, less marketplaces to go to etc... On the other hand... how much of the military spending really helps society?
@@tiagodagostini Why do you assume I don't? Just because I didn't mention it within the rant about wealth inequality, that doesn't mean I support the bloated military budget! And it's frankly stupid of you to assume that.
The problem with this argument is that it will be a quick fix for a deeper problem. Wealth inequality is largely a psychological problem and even if you distribute wealth equally , eventually the inequality will appear again because people are different. There were studies done which stated that if the wealth is equally distributed , it'll not last more than a few years. And the next thing you know - there's no more wealth left to distribute.
@@firehunters9628 First of all, "no more wealth left to distribute" shows you don't understand what wealth actually is. It's not "just money". Wealth is value created by humans through our creative problem solving. Our capacity as a society to create wealth will never "run out". Secondly, yes we need structural change, not simply a capitalist system with constant wealth redistribution. Because the people with too much wealth will eventually figure out how to break the systems of redistribution. This is the primary goal of socialism, and why rich people have such an existential fear of the concept.
@@LoveLearnShareGrow @WildNights By redistributing wealth you're basically transferring it from relatively better allocators of money to less better allocators. What I mean by this is - if you redistribute wealth equally , some people might invest that money while others might spend it all foolishly. And this gap will appear again because money would grow for some , while it wouldn't for others due to their decisions. But the intensity of growth will be reduced , because a large majority of people (who got the redistributed wealth) would choose to spend it on material goods like cars , houses , etc instead of investing most of it , in comparison to the wealthy who would've invested most of it. Which is why if you look at the GDP growth rate of countries like Sweden , Norway and Denmark , which has high taxes and high social equality , they're in negatives. That's a high price to pay , don't you think ? I believe in having a larger 'pie' for everyone , than trying to fight over who gets the existing 'pie'. And capitalism has helped multiply this 'pie' many times over , whereas socialism has always failed. Lastly , you don't even consider the problem of people getting wealth for free without working. It reduces the value and incentive to work and puts the load on those actually do the work , which I think is unfair.
If those things were true and the rich also avoided taxes I wouldn't see a problem with that either. More money to spend on better rockets so we can take space vacations sooner.
@@kinesissado9636 To provide government services the market can provide better and cheaper without forcing you to pay against your will and then force the market not to provide those services.
Real problems - devaluation in the worth of manual labor due to technological advancement + genetic roadblocks to higher skill occupations in large part of the population. While the worth of the worker has been on a steady decline, now the new jobs being created require specialization and increasingly higher levels of analytical thinking. This is a new level of problem and has no tested practical solution.
I don’t see why technical development in the work place should have to be a problem; in a ‘perfect’ or at least well functioning society, wouldn’t the machines be able to do all the grueling, menial labor, whilst (all) humans get to reap the rewards? Perhaps work a 3 day work week instead of a 5? This of course would only be the case if we didn’t see technological advancement as a replacement for workers, but instead an aid.
There is one, it's called UBI and reducing the lenght of the workweek so that there are enough jobs and cash to go around. When we get to the point where there's legitimately no lowskill jobs out there, we'll be at a point where we can give everybody UBI to cover their basic needs and the folks that were working those lowskilled jobs can do something else. Just because a job is lowskilled, doesn't mean that the worker is. A bunch of them are working those jobs because they couldn't get a better one. You'd be surprised how many people are working those jobs with advanced degrees. It's hardly unheard of to get your coffee from somebody with a PhD in a field that doesn't have many openings.
The longer this situation persists, the bigger fireball it will produce when it implodes. So hopefully - as long as possible, but not for too long, so I get to witness it
Lol. This "situation" outlast the "equality" utopia that was Soviet Union. "For everyone to get rich, we let some people to get rich first" - "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" proverb, often attributed to Deng Xiaoping.
But then how would we sustain our morbid obesity and fill our rented storage units with half-broken small appliances? Walmart enables Americans’ preferred lifestyle.
I've come to the conclusion that the only way out of this mess is likely to stop buying so much stuff, buy less, but buy as much of it as you can from people that are behaving responsibly. Also try to invest what money you can in companies that engage in more socially responsible behavior, especially with regards to the environment as that seems to be the one issue that can't really be undone.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade if we could just get people to stop buying items built with planned obsolescence we could fix a lot of these issues. Single use items are the worst.
@@ilikekspwaytoomuch4691 its not unbiased because in these vids, he's playing the devil advocate. he volontarily gives argument to the other side just to have the complete perspective.
@@charlestrudel8308 You want a full perspective, not one side. The way you think may be a reason why people still give politicians credit when they mess up anyways.
@@AndrewKidd14145 its because there are already a ton of videos for the other side... its not a bad idea take the oppoite of what close to all other do.
I think you didn't really argue against the claim that wealth inequality is bad. Rather you argued why the inequality is smaller than it appears. The number one argument why I would say wealth inequality is actually a good thing ist that there is no way to effectively redistribute the wealth without significantly hurting the economy. And the population in the long term benefits far more from a thriving economy than from a short term wealth increase from wealth redistribution
You clearly never really thought about this. If the super rich would have to pay more taxes from the money (that they don’t even use) how would that hurt the economy? and if then simultaneously poorer people could pay less taxes and actually use their money for useful things, (which is usually what people who advocate for higher taxes for the rich also advocate for) how would that be bad for the economy? the money collected by those taxes could also be used to invest in education, medical care or science, wouldn’t that be a great thing for all? Sure, I know modern states are sometimes corrupt and don’t work really efficiently but trickle down economics (what you’re describing) has never worked so far. And we need big investments right now to prepare for the future with all the ecological failures we’re producing.. and I don’t know if only the super rich should decide where these investments are going to be made. Perhaps it’s time for more democracy within our economic structures
@@Aliasn433 It's not as simple as just raising taxes. When taxes are too high, the rich may start working less or will put their money into things that are tax-exempt. The result is decreased tax revenue. Sometimes lowering taxes can actually increase the total amount of tax revenue collected by the government. Look up the Laffer curve if you don't believe me.
@@Aliasn433 the rich will move to a tax Haven or a different country. Also, trickle down is fine when compared to other systems. Tell me one system that has worked better than trickle down. When people are allowed to pick a job based on their own freedoms, some will be smart and pick a job with a high ROI so they can make their lives better. They will work harder. That's how capitalism works. When people are told what to do and not given the freedom to decide, they don't do as good of a job. This is what caused the Soviet collapse, the mao collapse, north Korea's abysmal GDP, Venezuela's poor Economy, etc etc. When you don't incentives people to work, they don't work. We saw that in the US with the high unemployment. People just stopped working.
@@1s_that_a_j0j0_reference People are not as "free" to pick their jobs as you think, many factors come into play, someone might be inclined to accept a "lesser" job because he or she needs the money Asap, it has happened to me before, and if you already have kids it's not that easy to simply quit your job and find another one as many people tend to suggest, and finally "working harder" is not how capitalism works, those who work the hardest often earn miserable salaries, capitalism is about raising capital BY ANY MEANS necessary, those are the people on top of the pyramid, NOT the hardest workers, that's just a myth.
Fairly limited empirical support for this claim. You’re much better off being working class in Sweden than the US, their economy is also very productive. Perfectly possible. Morocco on the other hand, where there is basically no welfare state, not so much.
first off, very interesting. Great take by trying to understand the other side, I'm not going to dissect the entire argument but when you mention 65% of Americans are homeowners I would like to dig into the age demographic, especially regarding buying power. This is especially interesting to me since Toronto housing prices outpace income growth.
There's 3 things to consider. 1. USA has a low birth rate, but it has a relatively young population for a developed country. Especially compared to Europe. Immigration makes up the difference. So you have more young people trying to acquire the same resources, like a house, compared to other countries. 2. Immigrants don't inherit assets from parents like someone born and raised in usa would. That further reduces their future wealth. 3. People live longer even compared to a gew decades ago. Older generations holding onto their wealth is a factor.
@@truegamer_007 immigrants probably do more so, they cone here poor and outpace native born. That's why the left is racist. They don't want native blacks to see African immigrants succeed where they don't. It also destroyed the myth of institutional racism
@@truegamer_007 We are just about at the worst point in the housing pinch right now. 1) We have been roughly at a replacement birthrate since the boomers. Boomers, GenX, Mellinnials, and the unnamed generation after are all nearly the same size, with the mellinnials being the largest group by a little bit. We have the Greatest Generation, and the generation previous to that who are still with us, and starting to die off, but Boomers will live longer and healthier than their parents and grand parents, and we have 2 more generaitons to go before the population stabalizes. So that is another ~30 years of adding new housing inventory in mass before things settle out and demand tanks because the housing market (like the populaiton) will shrink to a replacement rate... but where a human lives some 75-85 years on average, a building can last an easy 150-200 years even if not super well maintained. So that will be a huge shift from new construciton to retrofitting older homes (like today's new homes) to fit future standards of convienence and efficiency. I think that we will not only see a jump in home ownership going forward in that, but also a leveling off in home prices, and drastic decreases in maintenance and utility costs and homes are fitted to newer standards, because they can afford the upgrades due to lower home prices to begin with. 2-3) Immigrants don't inherit assets form their parents, but really we have not had that happen much in the US either until the current generation. Parents of the greatest generation were mostly farmers with lots of kids, so typically what few assets there were either got distributed between a lot of kids, or the bulk of it given to whoever was becoming the new head of the family, or inheriting the family business. Most of them just didn't gain much wealth from parents, and made their own wealth from going to war and getting cheap schooling and housing during a long economic boom. But the greatest generation enjoyed a large expansion in lifestyle, but also had a lot of kids to split wealth between, and most have lived longer than expected, so they are largely dying comfortable but poor, and only a few thousands of dollars split between kids and grand kids. Nice for sure, but not life-changing wealth building money... and as many boomers also spent a lot of assets caring for their parents in their last days, it is often more of a repayment rather than new wealth to grow from. The boomers will likely be different. Most boomers (my parents included) believed firmly that their house was their greatest investment/asset, so they were house poor when they were young, and poured money into modernizing their homes rather than investing in other assets. So there will be some wealth to spread, and typically only spread across 2-3 kids, but also it will be tied up in closing costs, taxes, and other things which will take a large chunk out... That being said, assuming my parents never need to do any kind of reverse mortgage or anything to fund the last few years of their life, then my sisters and I are likely to inherit a few hundred thousand dollars from them... but we will be in our 60s at that point, so we are not likely to see any changes in our lifestyle other than it maybe making that last bit towards retirement possible. Up until recently I was GenX and was dismayed to find that they moved the goal poast of mellinnial to 1981, so now I am a mellinnial. But I think I relate more to GenX. GenX generally had a little help getting started early on home ownership, and a little better guidance about not trusting government to provide us with social security, not letting our home be our biggest asset because you can't nicely pull money out of your home to live on unless you plan to sell and move into an old folks home, and I think my generation wants to help our kids (and eventual grand kids) more BEFORE we die, rather than leaving them with a giant windfall and tax burden all at the end. So that is the plan. Moderate home that should be paid off before the kids go to college, lots of growth stocks in the retirement accounts now, and hopefully transition to dividends around retirement, and while we will have to be pretty stingy before retirement, by the time we retire we should be able to fund our kids and grand kids retirement with the surplus of our own. So the 401k drains out as a tax-free gift to the kids and grand kids, who then stock it away as a RothIRA to grow and enjoy tax-free, and allows them to spend more of their own hard-earned cash to enjoy the things that we had to say no to because we were focused on wealth building through most of their childhood. But mellinials... I can't quite figure them out even though I am one of them now. Like... we had a little help with our down payment from family... but that was about it. Nobody lives near us, nobody helped with free babysitting, nobody supported us when we had money or job problems, family didnt/couldn't help when my wife was in and out of the hospital for a year and a half. It was all us and we had to figure it out as we went along... but we did figure it out, and the opportunities are there. My wife has 2 associates and a masters degree that we had to pay for and she doesn't work much, and I had a lot of schooling that we paid for that doesn't add up to anything but I have always managed to find an OK paying job. And sure, we are pretty late on the wealth-building game, but still got there in plenty of time where we don't anticipate any major hardships in retiring. I look down the street and see similarly priced fixer-upper homes to what mine cost before we fixed ours up 14 years ago. Most of their parents are 'well to do' and should cover a good chunk of their retirement by or arround the time they are ready to retire, so they should be covered even if they can't afford to put much towards retirement today. It is like they suffer from group-think, and they don't stop to think about the consequences. They move to up-and-coming cities like Phoenix... and why? well, because it is the place to be and things are booming there. But did you have some special skill set? Or some assets to buy into an expensive housing market? No? Well then you can't really complain about not being able to afford a down payment on a house if you can't afford to live there. Move to Indianapolis, or Cincinnati where the jobs pay similarly and the cost of living isn't insane. Bought crypto at $50k and now it is worthless so you sold it? And you bought it on debt because it was a sure thing? Well maybe don't buy into a get rich quick scheme on debt just because talking heads on the internet say it is cool? Oh, and you bought the latest greatest iPhone even though you bought a nearly identical phone last year? And you financed it? You know you can get a flagship android for like $500, and a phone can last a solid 3-5 years right? And if it was just a $1000 phone every year then it would probably be fine, but it is more emblematic of mellinnial spending. Everything on credit, pay for lots of services and expierences instead of tangable items, and over-spend on depreciating assets like tech and cars. I feel like mellinnials are poor because they are too affraid of being poor. Go down to 1 car if you can. When the house has a problem learn how to fix it for $200 or less instead of calling the repair guy for a $500-1000 bill. Buy into non-school educational programs specific to a field you are in, and study outside of work for the job you want (in my case IT Pro TV), and don't waste money on random general knowledge programs like skill share... I mean... skill share is not bad by any means... but you aren't going to find in-depth industry-specific information that is going to up your game or your paycheck on there either. And lastly, I guess I would say to my generation, don't expect things to happen gradually. My wife and I struggled on the finance front for a long time, but we were good and didn't get ourselves into a lot of debt. When our luck turned on the income front finally just a couple years ago, then what debt we had paid off quickly, and the whole situaiton changed pretty fast. It was a lot of grinding with no progress, and when we made progress it went fast because we were ready. I guess all that to say, yeah, immigrants are really only 1 generation behind; and the way mellinnials talk like every mistake is the end of the world, they should be able to catch up just fine I think. That isn't to say that immigrants are not at a disavantage, but that is the wrong way to look at it. If moving to the US is the best chance at improving their lives, then I hope they can do it! Yes, if they moved here 2-3 generations pervious then they would have a leg up... but they didn't. But if they can't build wealth where they are and they wait another generation... well then it just sets things back further. I have worked with a lot of immigrants, and have yet to meet one that hasn't been awesome to work with in a field, or a warehouse job, or in IT. I do think I have seen some amount of 'white advantage' in many of the workplaces I have worked at (but not all, and not where I am at currently), but I have also seen immigrants knuckle-down and study hard, and when they can't move up they are much more willing to move to a different place to move up quicker than my white friends and I. Highly motivated people find a way, and while some of America is terribly racist, there is a good chunk of the country that pays well for good people no matter their background.
I just discovered this channel an hour ago and really liked the videos up until I watched this one. This video was honestly just really bad; bordering on pernicious in its assertions. The only video on youtube I've ever disliked. So many figures were misrepresented that I have to suspect it was intentional. This creator doesn't strike me as dumb enough to do this unintentionally. For example the 65% figure you brought up. From the source (The US Census Bureau Housing Vacancy Survey) that figure actually represents the "proportion of occupied households which are occupied by the owners." That IN NO WAY means that "65.8% of americans are homeowners themselves" as stated in the video. It is not the percentage of adults that own their own home. There's much more like this in this video but no one wants to read a ten page youtube comment so I'll stop here.
I don’t see how any of the arguments stack up against the negative consequences of wealth inequality: higher crime rates, less stable societies (political polarization, revolutions, civil wars, etc), and those without wealth are desperate to the point where climate change becomes way way on the back burner (because people are living paycheck to paycheck.) The point is that societies with less wealth inequality suffer from these catastrophic consequences at a significantly reduced rate. I appreciate the point of playing devils advocate, but wealth inequality is an unsupportable cancer on humanity. Space travel doesn’t mean shit when the people on the planet are turning against each other for food and other necessities. Maybe there’s a degree of wealth inequality that is healthy in an economy, but if it keeps getting worse the consequences will be beyond dystopian. Wealth inequality is directly or indirectly responsible for the worst conditions humanity faces today. I forget the source where I learned this information, but if I find it I will return with the link.
The most unequal country in the world is the rather rich Netherlands where the heiress of the East India Company and a collection of low key aristocrats live among normal people who would be the upper 10% in most countries. The problem is not wealth inequality itself, the problem is corrupt governments using income inequality as a tool to get bigger, richer and more powerful off the taxes they collect from the productive and keep promising but never actually deliver to the poor. $2.7T or America's yearly $3.5T revenue are paid by the 3% but we never see any god damn improvement on any public services while Washington is full of first generation millionaires. We need less "eat the rich" and more "audit the government".
i personally would argue, that there is no problem with some people being super-rich at all. Problems arise on the other hand when there are countless people who live in suffering, helplessness and fear even though there ARE enough ressources and sustainable technologies to ensure them a live worth living. The only thing, that is actively preventing this achievement is, that money is not a tool anymore, it has become a necessity to even survive in a modern society. as long as money is mandatory to live a life in comfort, no one who cares about his personal future will risk losing even a bit of it for the sake of total strangers. If You complain about inequality and immorality in our economic landscape, but don't endorse unconditional basic income, You yourself are taking part in blocking a bright future for everyone.
Wealth inequality IS a huge problem. While we don't want sameness, I do believe there will be a time when humanity looks back at super wealth hoarding as a mental illness. Reward and punishment are pillars of justice. Don't work hard, you shouldn't get much. Work hard, you deserve reward. However, there is a facet of "too much". Our world is there. Been there for awhile, and this stratification of the economy is going to be terrible. Anyone who thinks this current economic stratification is okay, either benefits from this, or doesn't understand the problem. The question isn't limiting earning, but we need to stop thinking people like Bezos are "self-made". They're not, that's a lie.
Because the corporations use federal data. Corporations have bought federal power using their money. I don’t have to keep explaining basic stuff to a 6th grader do I?
3:33 You can have it both ways because proportions exist. If someone is 1,000,000x wealthier than you and saves 75% of their wealth, they are still consuming 250000x more than you ever could while also not spending most of their money, which doesn't stimulate the economy.
I don't get why so many people complain about wealth inequality like it's inherently evil, inequality is natural, we're simply not the same so we don't have/deserve the exact same, the only way inequality can be evil is if it's caused by force
Yeah, but do you think that someone "deserves" to have 100000000000x more than others? Do you really think that someone that was born in a poor village in rural Africa deserves to be living with less than a dollar a day while someone earns in a second way more than what they will in a lifetime? This is without even considering the influence on political systems, economical policies and so on. It is not necessarily that "wealth inequality" is bad per se, but it shouldn't be ever increasing...
That was... Not great 😅 I get you have to defend wealth inequality but the argument in it's defense was pretty shitty. 1:49 is that really what people have a problem with? Does it really matter if they're using a normal human's amount of resources if it means the bottom 99% don't get what they need? And is money not a resource? Because I'm pretty sure they're taking waaaaaay more than a reasonable share. I think the biggest issue is that 99% go without just because the top 1% are hoarding. 3:52 how about they're bad for the economy because them hoarding cash prevents the rest of us from spending to boost the economy? One billionaire can only spend so much - can only live in so many houses. One billion people however can each buy themselves houses. What do you think is better for the economy? Besos buying a dozen homes or the other 300mil people in the US buying a home each? 4:09 they literally do. Using housing as an example of a basic necessity again. How many real estate investors are hoarding housing? Maybe not out of spite but it's still hoarding. 5:30 that's 35% of 300 million people... Idk if I'd call that "not as widespread as you might think". And yes we all still want affordable housing. Those of us with houses would like that asset to be worth something so they can make more money off the homes but NOBODY wants their living expenses going up. And we shouldn't be discounting the struggle of those 35% just because homeowners like their homes getting more expensive. 5:39 even if they are not buying single family homes they are still investing in housing - so all housing prices go up together (mostly). That also ignores the number of people that want housing but don't want single family homes. But the price of their 400 unit investments very much affects the price of single family residences. So this point doesn't matter. 7:34 no offense but this is a really REALLY bad defense. First, there is a misconception that capitalism/rich people drive innovation. In reality these owners only innovate ways to make more money. It's software/online services have all switched to a monthly subscription model instead of the onetime purchase model of the 00's. It's also why drug manufactures prefer creating essentially the same drugs with slightly different ingredients over pouring billions into researching newer more effective drugs. Gates is much more likely to reinvent sharecropping than he is to come up with more effective farming techniques because one GUARANTEES a return on his investment while the other does not - or at least not as quickly. "Old McDonald" who takes pride in his livelihood is probably more likely to innovate over the guy that sees farmland as "just another asset". 8:35 this last one makes some sense. But if you consider that most of those retirement accounts are not guaranteed returns it falls flat. A lot of those accounts are dependent on the stock market. We all know that the super wealthy can manipulate the market how they want through hedge funds - or at the very least they get warned of coming crashes before we do. It can be argued that the retirement account for the wealthy is much more of a "sure thing" than it is for regular people. Especially considering that all of us can be fired at any time but rich people cannot be fired from being rich. A lot of us will never see that retirement account. At the end of the day you have to consider one thing: is billions of people struggling worth a few people becoming rich enough to buy countries? I get these types of channels attract billionaire simps but unless most of your income comes from capital you own - the billionaires are not on your side.
you have no clue how money works if you think the 1% are hoarding cash that you would otherwise spend like the economy is a 0 sum game, nobody is stealing from you, cash is printed according to the goods produced
@@yungmetr0135 "according to goods produced" that's a funny way of saying "according to the whims of the ruling class" Get the boot out of your mouth buddy, you're drooling everywhere
@@enigmaticheart666 you did not understand what he said. You are still thinking that economy is a zero sum game. A zero sum game means that the amount of resources is kept constant over time and participants can only fight for their share of those resources. Economy is not like that. Yes, resources are limited, but they're far from constant, they keep growing and growing, sometimes exponentially. You can create right now some means to produce goods that wouldn't otherwise come to existence, by, for example, launching a small business. Ain't no billionaire come steal your little shop. If that little business scales up over time and becomes national or multinational, then you've become ultra-wealthy without stealing from anybody's share.
Just to disprove an assertion: Hi, I'm a home owner. Own a half-million dollar home. Affordable housing is a real problem and I'd be happy if my home dropped a few hundred grand in value if all of my friends' housing concerns went away at the same time.
@@Global-ytI guess that’s the problem with all of this isn’t it. It’s economics, someone is always going to get screwed. The real question is who, how much, and the justification for doing so. There’s no way out of this mess that isn’t going to result in losers. More often than not though, the loser with a house is going to be able to take the hit better than a loser who’s one bad month away from homelessness. I concede your point though that the above point isn’t universally true.
@@Squatch213 I do disagree that there always has to be losers; I think much of the world has just hit peak investment and feudal-style extraction is now more lucrative than actual production. Extractionary economics will always be zero-sum.
Inequality is not entirely bad until you realise that your hospital bills will keep you in debt until your death. It is worse in underdeveloped/developing countries.
that's a narrow scope when you don't factor that wealth is used to concentrate wealth and change laws to make it harder for people to be lifted out of poverty. Very narrow way of explaining the problem.
exactly... me, for example, i have very nice job but i am still unable to invest.... i get so frustrated with these videos that are simplifying the problem so much... "just invest and be rich".... i have no money or anything to inherit from parents, my friend for example was given 50k to buy an apartment.... even that amount create fcking HUGE difference in wealth between us.... she bought another apartment while im struggling to buy one, i am competing with them!!!!... video said that rich people dont care about real estate because they are too rich, but there is still tons of other rich people that buy up real estate
0:08 - "Only to be accelerated by actions of governments shutting down small businesses and funneling their profits to the tech giants". I fixed that for you.
we'll never have Eve offline if we don't kick the space program into high gear most of the world's problems become pretty trivial once we get proper interplanetary
@@kuritheking this is the thing i cant stand, when i know they aren't being honest i cant honestly advocate for them having more power than a politician with less accountability
@Trainrhys heads up, you're forced either way And they aren't being sold for cheap They are just willing to spend the money because they know that the average house makes a return on investment every year worth more than the people living in them
@Trainrhys that really doesnt make any sense to me. renting is giving them money to buy more houses, how does it stop them? And yes, houses are still being built. just not at the rate of demand. Entire suburban neighborhoods are being built and sold to corporations
@@HowMoneyWorks Americans might like your video but as a non American I think it's dogshit. You start taking about global iniquity for the first 25 second then switch to American inequality for 90% of the remaining video.
@3:30: But you can argue both. The velocity of rich people's money is much lower than that of a poor or middle class person, but when the rich do buy something using a significant fraction of their money it's a gigantic yacht, (or 12, looking at you DeVoss) or a trip to space, or a third private jet and so on. Most of a poor/middle class person's money gets spent right away on goods in their neighborhood (high velocity) and on things like groceries (low environmental impact compared to planes/yachts). I agree you can argue in defense of anything, just not always well.
If one person has ten sandwiches and another person has one sandwich, that's far better than if everyone has a quarter of a sandwich. If one person has ten sandwiches and everyone else has the crusts, that's when inequality is a problem.
Focus too much on America instead on a more global scale, and wasn't really what I expected as counter argument because the things that you have mentioned, saying that wealth inequality is not that bad is no use to those who are dying from not have access to resources due to wealth inequality
In what way is someone in the usa owning 10 houses while his neighbours own only one influencing the amount of food produced in e.g. africa? Wealth inequality (as mentioned in the video) has no consequences when it comes to day-to-day necessities, if anything a big centralised farm produces mich more food than individual family-led farms.
@@1CrazyDummy0 because the current system requires an under class to function, so in return the under class will have a harder time to maintain their normal life. It is possible for one person to get rich in this world but it is not possible for everyone to get rich at the same time
@@OzixiThrill It is kind of like the problem of exploiting workers, why people came up with this kind of term is because worker's life sometimes depends on horrible working conditions to live and yet worker at the same is one of the essential buildings blocks for the current system to function, there has to be someone to do the job. So as a result the wealth inequality problem actually means someone will have a harder time to gain material resources for their standards of living due to the profit motive of capitalism tends to drive down the cost.
@@smc9207 Counterpoint - The current system does not require, nor does it necessitate workers being screwed over; Larger companies do it to increase their profit margins, but there are companies (admittedly rare) that treat their workers well. It is entirely dependent on the employer.
I know this is a purely theoretical approach not aligning with your personal views. Nevertheless, I don't think the case you are making is a strong one. You manage to cast some doubt at the extend of harm produced by wealth inequality and how the empirical evidence may not very well show such a huge disparity but the remarks you are making are purely mitigatory. You don't manage to make a case as to how wealth inequality produces any unique and positive contributions towards society. The closest you come to that is in the remark that Bill Gates buying land may lead to innovation in food production but it feels like a merely a line thrown in there. It doesn't prove as to why him or any other billionaire has an active incentive to innovate in a way that isn't just "innovation" but one that is meaningful and meeting the immediate needs of people, even if they have that motivation it is unclear why we have to wait for the whims of the rich to align with the suffering of the rest and not take collective actions towards helping the most vulnerable.
I think there was a big missed opportunity to explore this idea further. I think you could make the case that having a small number of savvy people with access to a decent amount of resources acting outside the usual resource allocation system (i.e. traditional govt spending, or mass-market charities) is useful. For example, in the case of farm productivity, it's actually arguable that billionaires led to huge advances in food production during the Green Revolution (and made a massive improvement to quality of live around the world). I think people tend to underestimate the impact of philantropy, which I think is able to do things that govt and conventional charities can't. Of course, as you point out, that is reliant on the whims of those individuals, and you could argue that the amount they control is too much, or that it would be better handled by other means, but I think it is something worth exploring in more depth if you're going to make a case for wealth inequality.
The biggest problem with your standpoint is that the alternative to innovation by Bill Gates would be innovation by governments, which are often controlled by lobbyists, which as far as farming is concerned, are the environmental groups who do not want genetically modified food, even if that is necessary to provide everyone with the necessary nutrition
The US government literally pays farmers farm subsidies not to farm, think about that. Do you REALLY think that someone as intelligent as Bill Gates can't think of a better way to run farms than paying farmers not to farm ? If a wealthy person owns a farm, to actually run it as a business to generate returns, I think they can probably do it better than the government farm system, its not a hard bar to get over...
Yeah, I don't think a thorough defense of the topic is really necessary. It suffices to show that wealthy inequality is only tolerably harmful in case it's considered unavoidable in face of worse alternatives.
The disparity is still at historical highs. The last time inequality was as insane as it is now was the gilded age. Now idk if you ever heard how that ended but it wasn't great. So even if we accept your arguments at face value, this still ends in economic collapse. We have historical evidence we have to consider and the evidence doesn't point to anything good. This was a very interesting video as usual.
The children scavenging rubbish heaps are relieved they no longer need concern themselves over wealth inequality now they know what great pensions they can get.
Pensions would work if governments increased the age gap to get it. Back in the 50s or 40s getting to 70 was a miracle. Now it should be 85-90+. Not everyone can be paid to do nothing, so it should be rewarded to those who love to those ages.
I hesitate to comment on this for fear of giving it a boost in the algorithm. I watched a couple other of your uploads and they seemed okay. However, this whole 'its okay to let the rich do the evil stuff they are doing' makes me scratch my head. Wealth inequality can be proven to be a dire threat with a few simple examples: Reporter: The USA has an ever increasing homeless and poverty problem. Media: We're owned by a billionaire who doesn't want to pay taxes so do a piece about the ballooning deficit. Politician: My rich donors who give me lots of money and my kids insanely well paying jobs do not want me to raise taxes so I will either promise to raise taxes and then do nothing or tell people it's their fault they are poor. Reporter: The USA military / President / CIA has determined that they want to start a war based on a obviously false premise. Media: We're owned by a billionaire who will make LOTS of money on this war - not to mention ratings. We will broadcast non - stop how terrible the rulers of this country are. Politician: You know... rich donors. Send in the police to brutalize protestors. I hope you are familiar with the study showing how the needs of the working and lower classes are never addressed by policy but the slightest desires of the wealthy are ALWAYS met? www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materials/MSNBC%20review%20of%20A&I/13317619-princeton-scholar-poor-and-middle-class-have-no-say-in-government-policy
You could have just started your comment with “I didn’t listen to the video but I’m just going to shoot my mouth off anyway so please feel free to ignore” and it would have been easier for everyone.
@@tylerbrown4483 I DID listen to the whole thing, cringing all the way after 'the rich don't eat any more than a normal person so how can they contribute to the worlds troubles'? Or some such cr@p. I feel bad commenting on this video again.
@@belmiris1371 so you listened to the part from 0:45 to 1:10 where he explains that he doesn’t actually believe the argument he’s making but rather feels it’s important to understand the counter argument thoroughly to enhance your own understanding? Cause if you did you must’ve just gotten so caught up in your feels by the end of the video that you forgot… Seriously, he has a whole series where he argues the indefensible. My advice to you is to try and get to a point where you can engage your critical mind and listen for the sake of understanding when you hear something you don’t like, rather than just letting your emotions run away and listening for the sake of forming a rebuttal. It will make you a better communicator.
I don't like the idea of focusing on wealth inequality rather than providing a social safety net that prevents people from falling below a certain level. Wealth inequality as an emphasis implies that not only should people have a comfortable life, but it's wrong in general for anyone to have significantly more than anyone else. Good arguments can be made for the first position and helping people at the bottom have the essentials of life, but I find the second position incredibly distasteful, because it essentially amounts to saying people need to share wealth equally and that no one should be allowed to accumulate very much. I just don't believe that people are equals or that equality of financial outcomes would be more "fair" somehow, I think that it's basically an excuse by angry and very jealous people to steal resources from the wealthy because they feel life dealt them or people they care about a bad hand. And I have a feeling their "principles" would change the moment they were in charge of all that money they seized from the rich and now get to decide who gets that money and tracking to make sure things are "equal and fair."
But you see capitalism needs the hungry, the unemployed, the homeless. That's how they can drive down the price of labor and keep it there. By making us disposable while making us dependent on our employers. The "minimum wage" Is an insult. It's what the nation had to DEMAND they pay their workers. Who would want to do these low-paid exploitative jobs if our "living floor" was much higher and our lives secure?
I subscribed to your channel not even thinking about it. Usually I check how many views and such a video gets to see if their an experienced TH-camr worth subscribing to. After I subscribed I checked expecting a few hundred thousand per video..and it was like 7k. Wow. Your channel has so much room to grow. Keep doing what your doing.
Whatever your views on wealth taxes may be, if they must exist i think it should soely tax wealth gained instead on total worth. It would slow down the growing gap and give the benifit of a growimg market amd economy, more effectivly ,and could be used for social peograms and pay of government debt. It would also seem more fair than a goverment taking a percentage of everything you have year after year and wouldnt feel "spiteful/envious" and like "theft" as other wealth tax plans does to economic conservatives.
I don't agree with the idea of a wealth tax on a fundamental leve. lt is akin to spending years building a house for the government to start taking walls off every year because it "got too big" and it's "unfair". Income taxes are much fairer.
There needs to be a cap for income and net worth. Above this limit your properties and earnings should be on 100% tax rate. This would solve the problem of wealth hoarding and level the playing field
I simply don't understand the argument "its not as bad as it was back then" its the same shit black people were told after slavery but were still segregated. Almost everything gets better with time but its essentially pointless to use it as a counter argument to how bad wealth inequality is. I live in canada, I come from a india, I have seen 3 weeks old babies die on the street cause parents had to means to keep up with them, I simply do not care how far we have or haven't come, I care to get that shit resolved as soon as possible. Edit: way more bootlickers in my comments then I was expecting.
The funny thing is, if the reason "3 weeks old babies die on the street" is communism, like my parents' generation witnessed, you wouldn't have the same view. "I live in the UK, I come from China, I have seen 3 weeks old babies die on the street cause of communism, I care to eliminate communist ideology as soon as possible." Or something like that. Edit: spelling
I disagree. You have to look at the quality of life for all. Even the poorest families in the west are better off than the average families in cuba. Cuba is a financial system that you are probably advocating for (I don't know for sure, but the nature of your comment leads me to believe that this is true)
@@mwanikimwaniki6801 If you earn half of 500 monthly, then I earn 15 times what you earn in a month, and I still cannot afford to buy property within 100 miles of my hometown. Location is everything and the "poor" (as we see them) in other countries have it better. Money is worthless and does not bring happiness.
I don’t think the inequality itself is much of a problem. I think that it is a symptom of the larger problem that is the accumulation of the power of certain members of the 1%.
Aren't strict regulations a main driving factor preventing affordable housing? If prices in city centres become unaffordable (because too much capital coming in) wouldn't that be a strong incentive for wealth creation like new awesome 600 meters skyscrapers?
High skyscrapers are bad for living. Better solution are "comie blocks", sure they aren't pretty but they are good for affordable housing. And strict regulations are very location specific. Sure I wouldn't like to see a huge building in the middle if historical city centre.
regulations are there for a reason.... imagine if you bought a house and right next to you somebody would open mega club that would blast music until 3am.... or just build a house that would block all sunshine to yours.... everybody is blaming regulations until they are the ones on the receiving end of "free market"
Move out of the cities. Use the internet to gain education and make money. That is the new revolution. We've had the internet for so long, and it's changed the world a lot, but we haven't discovered all of its power yet.
I viewed this video when it has already been available for 3 years. I am a big fan of your channel, and look forward to all the other great videos I have missed.
Here is something surprising, the wealth graph of a society with equal savings will not be uniform. If everyone starts saving $10k/year at 20 and retires at 60, that is going to produce a wealth distribution with a slant. If they invest that money, there will be an exponential curve. If they start with college debt of $50k/year, there will be some with negative wealth, and the average wealth of the first 10 years (25% of the working population) will be zero. This should be what we compare the current wealth inequality to. Of course, the current situation is much more drastic than this, but it is unfair to expect a uniform wealth distribution.
Finally, someone who doesn't let his emotions get to him when talking about this topic. Don't get why everyone wants to tax the rich, when the government wouldn't even use that money in the way the common people would think.
I work part time and earn minimum wage, i paid more federal taxes (ratio to wealth gained) than Warren buffet last year, I'm sorry that you fail to see how fucked up that is.
you make a good point, the fact that lots of people forget in terms of redistributing wealth is that governments are not designed to help the people and never have been, taxing the rich is not the singular solution that is required but complete governmental reform/revolution as well, for instance if a business person was to directly give a politician in office money in order to influence policy, that's bribery and its illegal but if you hire someone else to give the money to someone in office and call them a lobbyist its suddenly legal despite achieving the exact same result (the same is true in the uk but instead it goes by the phrase "party donation"). We need to demand that these systems are changed as well as they exclusively serve people with the power (the capital) to use them, government should be used to serve everyone with equality, equity and ultimately justice and not just the people who demand power
@@harshsharma8707 He's not saying that isn't fucked up, he's saying people who expect things to change just because the government increases taxes on the rich are going to be sorely dissapointed, because the government will just find new ways to waste that money. The US government pays a lot for social security and the social security system in the US is worse than in countries that pay far less. It's not a lack of funding that is messing up US social securirty for example, it's government inefficiency. Same thing in Belgium where I live. Belgians have a very good social security system, but we pay more than 50% of what we earn in taxes. Compared to what we get for paying more than 50% on taxes the government is not giving us a good deal. Even with all those taxes the Belgium government can't get its budget straight. Why? Because Belgium is a horribly inefficient state and a lot of the politicians are idiots more concerned with keeping this country together so they can keep lining their pockets than actually fixing stuff. One hilarious poll showed the Belgians have less trust in their politicians than Indians and Pakistani have in theirs hahaha. Taxes in Belgium have been increasing for a while and trust me the government always finds new ways to still end up with a deficit. It's in my opinion a failure of democracy, democracy means politicians care mostly for short-term gains, becaus the long term is the problem for the guy elected after you. Hell if you can get your successor to be blamed for your failings or certain problems then maybe you can get reelected more easily next time. The guy having to raise taxes usually does not get reelected even though the reason why taxes have to be raised is because of his predecessor's idiocy. Few people will do the necesarry research to figure out who is really to blame for a certain problem.
@@TheShadowOfZama I'm sorry but I'm not the average guy, I'm sure the us government would find it in its best interest to just use that money to increase the military and police budget, but I hardly think its possible to lessen wealth inequality without taxing people a million times richer than you and I. And you really gotta know that the wealth inequality exist outside USA too lmao.
Exactly. If the problem were the gov needing more money then the issues wouldn't be as complex as they are. People just feel outraged because they don't like the fact that some people simply have more money than they do.
Great series. In a world where all issues are being pressed into unidimensional single-acceptable viewpoints, this kind of exercise is incredibly important.
@@luisandrade2254 many studies have been done finding a direct connection between poverty and crime, which isn't exactly quantum mechanics in complexity. When people are poor and feel trapped in that unpleasant existence they are more likely to commit crimes. I mean someone really does not get that a homeless person might be more likely to steal some food than someone who has 3 houses and 2 yachts.
@@danielbrown8812 poverty is not the same as inequality and poor people are more likely to be the VICTIMS of crimes not the perpetrators. So even that relationship is backwards
@@luisandrade2254 yeah, try adding the word "wealth." Wealth inequality is speaking specifically about a portion of society having little to no wealth. That IS the issue this is talking about.
A big problem with the argument around the Gates owned farms, is that its assuming 1) we have food shortages right now and 2) the new technologies gates funds would remove these shortages. this immediately falls flat, we already overproduce food in a GROSS abundance, we have plenty of food, the "shortage" only comes from the inaccessibility of that food to the poor. and no amount of farming tech is going to solve that
Exactly, at least in the US, we are a nation where the cheese caves are real and farmers are paid by the government to destroy whole crops to keep the agri market from bottoming out. It’s frustrating when I see the price of milk or cheese spike, let alone the price of corn products.
It's not about consumption. It's about bidding up the prices of financial assets. The operation of the US economic involve the production and sale of goods and services from which a profit is extracted. Some of the profits are used to pay dividends, the rest is retained. Decades ago the bulk of these retained profits were spent on creating more productive capital (i.e. means of production). Productive capital combines with labor to grow GDP. This process of accumulation of productive capital is what we call economic growth. Today the majority of retained profits are used to buy stock, driving up the index level. Capitalism is increasingly not accumulating productive capital (and growing the economy). Rather, it is accumulating the financial representation of productive capital (shareholder value). Rather than building a real, tangible future economy, we are building financial pyramids. The cause of this is low tax rates on high incomes. Eventually capitalism will simply collapse as everything will have become financial and virtual (think platform companies) and our system will be overwhelmed by some less-developed polity who still has a capitalism based on the real rather than the financial.
I lost a friendship over this topic just this week. I dont think inequality is bad if absolute poverty and other human well being metrics are heading in a positive direction (which they are). Also inequality is the measure of a distribution over a sample size, it is not an objective measure like the share of the global population living under $3 a day. For example: In 1990, 48 percent of all Black families with a single moher in the United States lived below the poverty level. In 2018, that figure had decreased to 27 percent. Inequality would still show these families as the bottom 20% and no progress being made but they are demonstrably not below the poverty line anymore in absolute terms.
Don't lose friends over sterile political discussions. They may have different opinion from Us (average people watching economic videos in their free time) but that's ok.
My trouble with the growing amount of rich people is that we have companies catering particularly to these income brackets. Since resources are limited, particularly in certain types of product manufacturing, the lower income people are not able to have as much choice in the products available to them, or have to make do with inferior quality products.
I don't understand, what products have so much class overlap and are so limited that the rich are limiting the amount of products available to poorer incomes?
Im not buying ur statement. Firstly it doesn't really make any sense from a capitalist market standpoint. For instance the majority of products r made for the general populace of the given market. Secondly products r often built with lower quality specs to save both parties money and resources. Theres a lot more to why products r low quality, but suffice to say it has little to do with the 1% being the primary market focus. If ur talking about rich people as in first world countries, than i semi agree with u. But theres still probelms with that argument.
@@magnuserror9305 How doesn't it make sense from a capitalist market standpoint? The amount of wealthy people today as well as the money they have is substantial enough to fill a whole company's consumerbase. They don't have to even consider making products for lower incomes. Enough companies do this and there's nothing left for lower income people to buy. If you look at the amount of scalping that's been happening in the pandemic, you'll understand where I'm coming from. The people with more money are literally denying others the resources they need by driving free market prices up to stupid levels. Thanks to low supply. And this is gonna have a permanent effect via higher prices by default from companies. Since now they know they can charge higher and get away with it.
@@truegamer_007 That literally isn't a 1 to 1 of wut ur saying. Like i said rich people are not market focus at all. They are the market focus of a small amount of products. The mass majority of all tech and products. Are built for the average person. Ur gunna have to show me stats on this. Cuz last time i checked, the mass majority of electronics r not marketed to the rich. They are marketed to the average consumer. Do u even know how scalping works. Or even wut it is. The general goal of scalping isn't to sell to the rich. Its to sell to the average consumer in a pinch. If u imagine an average gdp of 50k is rich than thats just bonkers. The super poor might have an issue with scalping prices, being unattainable. But anyone with a 25-50k gdp on average can easily afford recent electronics scalping prices.
@@HowMoneyWorks nah, you do start the vids saying its not your opinion but you do it to give perspective. its a good, albeit its not really convincing at all. like, trying to say that it couldnt be better is just plain wrong even with all these arguments, and with the some of the stuff hapening, we see the wealthy not even trying to make it better sometime... Some are really irresponsable.
When you have a significant amount of working people earning so little, that they live below the "poverty line," and qualify for government assistance, and others who can't afford a place to live with a permanent address while sleeping in campers, tents, and on the street. Or working people who live paycheck, to paycheck, that have no "disposable income" left to save, invest, or enjoy leisure while living in a state of perpetual debt, and stuck in jobs with stagnant incomes, or little to no "upward mobility." Statistically, the MAJORITY of people in America fall into these three categories. And their hopelessness and frustration is growing. That does not bode well for the 1% who control the vast majority of wealth in America. The wealth divide in this country is REAL, and it's GROWING.
I'm probably not the first to notice but. You actually can have it both ways. Because while Jeff doesn't eat hundreds of millions of times as much food as a poor person. That doesn't mean that a poor person can afford the food that is available. So the rich are both bad for the economy for not consuming enough AND bad for taking up too many resources. Because while the resources are available you can only use them if you have the currency to claim them. Resulting in the whole "we have enough food to feed 10 billion people yet people starve". And "X million tons of goods being thrown away because they didn't sell".
The pension thing is spot on, Im australian and we all have mandatory superannuation and it's counted in net worth placing us extremely high per capita
Honestly I think the policies are not changing fast enough to keep up with new millionaires. And the logic behind owning a piece of land regardless of how far away or how big it is also need to change. People need to start living in a little more efficient system so that younger people don't just keep getting pushed further and further out of cities or into God damn cages.
"People need to start living in a...." - well, we don't "need" to, we could keep going and probably just wipe ourselves out of existence as a species... like, we shouldn't pretend that that isn't an option, especially when it's the option that we seem to be heading full speed towards... and we're all too busy with our addiction to thinking bad things about each other to notice our own role, so while nobody wants to be heading in the direction we are heading, nobody wants to stop doing any of the things they are doing that are taking us there.
One of the core issues with wealth is its complete disconnection with the actual value of work. Following the exact same logic that person A who earns 1 Mn times more than person B doesn't actually consume 1 Mn times more resources than person B (which is true), the work of that person A is NOT 1 Mn times more valuable (both metaphorically and semantically) than the work of person B. Not even if you're the CEO of a company with thousands of workers worldwide. Even less so if your wealth comes from mere asset management (mostly real estate), which mostly requires an initial investment capital rather that supernatural management skills. Therefore, if being rich so often comes down to who was lucky enough to have a good inheritance, that wealth is perceived as not deserved. And that's the core issue with the wealth gap: the Top 1% - and even the Top 10% in any country - have more money than they will ever be able to spend even living the most extreme lifestyles, having that money stemming from (arguably) unjustified sources while so many other % of the population struggle to earn enough to outbalance the ever rising cost of life while working mad hours at jobs ranging from decent to pretty highly qualified. Which is why people don't question as much the notion of wealth per se as they question wealth distribution amongst the population. The topic at hand is: what would be the acceptable range between the lowest income and the highest income? Is the top most difficult/demanding/highest qualification job 10, 50, 100, 1.000 times more valuable than the lowest one? Accordingly, should a CEO earn 10, 100, 1.000 or 1 Mn times more than a trainee? Finding that "ideal" gap is extremely challenging but beneficial in terms of how a nation values its citizens and rewards hard work over luck and birth rights. And as a side effect, taking into account the fact that any extreme proposal (10x is obviously too low, 1 Mn times obviously too high...) will require a rock-solid justification, it also means that any amount earned by any individual outside of that admitted gap can be taxed and reinjected into the system to help raise the living standards of the majority. That is, if your goal - as a country - is to make your citizens happy, efficient and loyal. Obviously, through centuries-long promotion of bottomless riches and the freedom to do anything you want including stomping on the neighbour's head if it profits you in any way, the United States chose the opposite path and have work- and wealth-related issues of their own, including keeping a significant fraction of the population on the verge of slavery, misery and depression.
Personally, I don't mind wealthy people, I just dislike useless wealthy people who don't contribute to society or who harm it. You can determine who that might be.
than again people who are wealthy will only be wealthy due to the systhem that has been put in place by the wealthy thus making them feed of the rest of us like slaves to a system
A point you did not cover is the methodes used to gain that amount of wealth. There are very few who actually contribute that amount of value to society. Many insead got rich by being in the right spot at the right time. Therefore this is a big misallocation of resources.
Was there an argument about the wealth they hold overall? I just dont see how any of those arguments work until you have a society where people dont die from very simple causes due to a lack of resources? (In some cases 400 a month?)
@@HealingSwordsman it’s very important to consider when you’re trying to come up with a method for the wealthy to distribute their wealth. Because if you assume their assets inherently maintain their value, or uncirculated money holds the same value when returned to the economy, you can come across significant problems at scale.
@@zyrohnmng You are 10 steps ahead - again semantics. We arent talking about a method of distribution - we are talking about whether its ok to have this level of inequality.
@@HealingSwordsman it being okay or not is heavily dependent on whether we can transition to a system that fixes the issue, for example, the 400 a month you mentioned. And I apologize for making that assumption, but the way you worded your post made it sound like you were implying a redistribution as a solution and already stating this current inequality is not okay.
5:35 - Well this video aged poorly. BlackRock has bought up a massive portion of land assets recently (included residential homes). Infact just last year they were responsible for 44% of all residential purchases. Who owns BlackRock? Billionaires. I'd say we should go one step further than taxing the rich at this point if things don't change soon. Anyone feeling a little French? 🥖
I love the concept! There are a couple of things that really need mentioning about the various arguments. Let's start with the issue that the ultra wealthy do not spend nearly enough. Comparing this to the fact that the wealthy already consume a lot more than most other people, thus being detrimental to the environment, appears to make this an either or situation. It is not. The problem with trickle down economics concerns how much of the economic growth actually goes to improving the lives of the masses. Most of the excess wealth would better serve the country if it was distributed differently. Also, most people would not spend their additional income in ways that would be as damaging to the environment as the ultra wealthy currently do. The additional wealth spread across a lot more people would not result in nearly as much environmental damage as the same wealth concentrated in the very few. Moving on to the real estate market, while for the most part the local wealthy are not responsible for the large increase in prices everywhere, granted. But some are very much be at fault in cities. Australia and Canada have had massive increases in real estate prices that go far beyond their economic growth. Foreign investors started buying so much in cities, without even occupying the space, that real estate prices sky rocketed. As such, housing became too costly for a larger proportion of people. If the space is not even rented, that can leave people homeless or force them out of the city. Only by adding heavy taxes on unoccupied properties in high density areas were the major cities able to limit the price increases. So yeah, again the wealth inequality was bad at large.
Real estate in the US is undergoing the same process and has grown exponentially since 2008 when foreclosures exploded as a direct result of the process by which the properties were sold (using exotic loans designed for investors to finance long-term mortgages they were NOT designed for), collateralized and sold as investments on Wall St. What investors learned in 2008 is that while buying severely depressed real estate in the foreclosure market and selling it can be very profitable, buying it in large numbers and RENTING THEM can be even MORE lucrative. So, city leaders don’t issue new building permits so their rich friends (and sometimes their rich selves) can stay rich or get richer while they control the rental space available. So, without enough income (median household income in US is $57,000 a year) and housing prices blowing right past any possibility of qualifying for a mortgage loan big enough to afford a house - median in the US $200,000, in my state is $290,000 for a single-family home - not exceeding 4X annual income of applicants, the problem becomes plain. Can’t qualify for a mortgage over $228,000, but average price is $290,000 if it is sold for list (which never happens anymore, instead you enter a sort of twisted auction and bidding war with unknown or, I suspect, nonexistent bidders, driving the price up, even further. The property then goes to the investor/investment company that outbid you because you couldn’t carry a monthly payment in excess of $1,200 or so, but now they’ll rent it back to you at $1,800 or $2,000 a month or more. They’re happy to let you struggle, exhaust your savings, and sacrifice things like auto repair, medical treatment, braces for the kids, and anything else you need to give up to keep a roof over your heads, then run you through a $100 eviction process in court the moment you’re completely tapped. The idea of being put out on the street with all your stuff and your kids is impossibly frightening. No rent controls, no rental purchase controls, not enough building permits - by design as this benefits everyone except the family that needs a house - too many non-resident, absentee foreign investor owners, and everyone making bank with no consideration for the families or the future of America. Job “creators” are launching a massive propaganda campaign to convince the next gen that homeownership is a waste of time, money, and resources - that renting/leasing is the way of the future. This flies in the face of the history of America and the most successful, economically sound middle class in the world as the one common factor that made it possible for the majority was home ownership. Being a subscription slave may sound cheaper, easier, and less hassle - but that overlooks the reality that you will forever be subject to what someone else demands that you pay, regardless of what you’re capable of earning. If there is anything more frightening than the thought of one day being employed by the company who owns my house and everything in it, than working for the debt I owe to the “Company Store,” I don’t know what it is. Slavery in the 21st century in which the capitalist, finally accepting that they can’t treat minorities, immigrants, women or any other protected class differently from white, male workers, has decided we’re right. If they can’t enslave on part of the population or another, they’ll enslave its entirety. All that government regulation and union busting Reagan started has finally come home to roost. And far too many people only realize it when they get caught up in it - too late. Yeah, I’ve grown a bit cynical in more than 50 years on this planet because I’m old enough to remember when America was its people and not just its rich people, when education was lauded as a noble pursuit and the quality was second to none, when home ownership was easier and encouraged because it was good for the community, good for the people, good for the families, healthcare was affordable BEFORE insurance companies got into it (price didn’t skyrocket because doctors got greedy, but because a greedy middleman entered the fray and took a cut like the mafia protection rackets). Want to “Make America Great Again”? Go back to the policies enacted by FDR to get us out of the Great Depression and through World War II and re-enact them - including and especially the taxes on rich and corporations that varied from 60%-90%- and actually make America BACK into what it was intended to be and what it was before greedy, self-serving capitalists began to dismantle and sell her to the highest bidder. Estimates on the amount of money the oligarchs have siphoned out of our economy since 1980 hover around $52 Trillion. Enough to pay off the national debt more than TWICE. Put the money BACK into education as a State run entity because NOBODY should make profit on our schools - not “administrators,” not “food companies,” not contract labor providers. What was an experiment in efficiency to save money and increase effectiveness in education has proven to be a cash cow for private industry, costing FAR more (especially in direct expenses) and producing a grossly inferior product. Ditto healthcare, utilities, housing, and food. If we allow capitalists to continue to hoard and sell the necessities of life back to those of us who actually produce them, we’re far bigger fools than I ever would have imagined. Restoration begins with organizing labor. End Right to Work across the country and require labor representation in all private companies. Workers should be able to negotiate their compensation and benefits. After all, it’s all we’ve got to bargain with. In my mind, it’s unlawful even to push all union activity off-site and behind closed doors. People shouldn’t have to worry about their jobs just because they want to make more money or get better benefits.
Trickle down economics is not a real economic theory. It is probably the biggest economic misconception in the modern world. Free market advocates support supply side economics, and no, they are not the same thing.
"most people would not spend their additional income in ways that would be as damaging to the environment as the ultra wealthy currently do" - Extremely strongly disagree with that. While true that the ultra wealthy consume much more, they're only able to that because they're a few. There's no possible scenario where any large group of citizens have the same lifestyle as the ultra wealthy (there's not enough resources in the world). As a consequence, the environmental footprint of the ultra-wealthy population is only a fraction of the total footprint of their nations. As evidence, just compare the biggest company (not the richest person) to their home country's GDP. It's consumption at large and industry what drives environmental damage the most. So, if you distribute money to the population at large and instead of saving it all they use any part of that surplus to boost their consumption, definitely their environmental impact would be boosted too. Whereas if you keep increasing the wealth of the ultra wealthy, as explained in the video, they'd be hard pressed to boost their consumption any larger.
Ok só 1 trickle down economics is not an actual thing no research paper or economist has ever used that term it’s a made up internet thing but more importantly the rich holding on to their money makes sense from a capital allocation perspective why would you want to take money from people who know how to manage and use money? Doesn’t sound very efficient to me
@@luisandrade2254 Well trickle down economics is a good way to illustrate how the specific case of supply-side economics favouring the very rich is meant to work. Now arguing that keeping ever more money concentrated on the rich because they would be more competent at managing it completely ignores the fact that they are failing at managing it in such a way as to benefit society as a whole. They are failing so hard that the greater the wealth inequality, the worse things get for the lower economic spectrum, to the point of abject poverty. While eliminating wealth inequality completely is not desirable - there are good reasons why communism failed - the excess wealth must be tapped in order to ensure a baseline standard of living and growth opportunity for everyone. Where the market fails at doing this, it becomes the government's responsibility to intervene. How the government intervenes is another debate entirely.
There's never a shortage of people who think that it's greedy to keep the money you earn. It's ironic that these same people don't think it's greedy to want someone else's money... The entire inequality "argument" is just petty jealousy on a grand scale. The "poor" are wealthier today than ever, and contribute less than ever. But they're still okay with demanding money from those who do earn it.
thats the dumbest, the most inaccurate argument here.... if you say that poor poeple contribute less then rich you are just naive little sunshine and frankly brainwashed... and nobody demands money, but security... if you cannot even understand that nobody is talking about money transfers here you are really just lost
@@tmk5517 dont patronize me, i have masters in economy my dude.... its about proportion of you wealth.... poor people contribute more proportionally than rich... just because rich spend more on capital goods it doesnt make it any less messed up.... Amazon is using benefiting from roads they destroy with their trucks, from law system in place and do not contribute proportionally to the usage.... i would very much support Bill Gates idea that capital should be taxed.... just because worker is not alive doesnt mean it doesnt have to pay taxes.... Marxism is very much still alive because capitalism cannot create proper counter-argument to Surplus value, thats the main issue... taxation of capital could be the way to adress the issue
My biggest issue with the ultra wealthy is that so many of them don't seem to shove much back into the economy in avenues that will create more jobs/better civilization.
@@johnlee416 What kind of jobs exactly? Jobs with extremely high turnover rates? Jobs where your hours are closely monitored, and you’re heavily punished for falling out of line? Just because a company creates the bare minimum amount of jobs to account for growth while paying said workers the bare minimum, doesn’t exactly mean they’re doing some kind of great deed.
@@gt1r A lot of their jobs are above market rate, and if you're referring to their warehouse jobs, they still pay $20/hr which is more than what you'd make as a cashier at some retail store. Also you talk about high turnover rates and jobs that "punish falling out of line" to that I'd say quit and work another job. It's not the responsibilty of a corporation to accomodate the types of jobs you want. They're a business and if you don't like that, you can quit and work elsewhere. I'm tired of this victimhood mentaility that has infected America.
Wealth redistribution isn't about targeting the rich and make them poor, but enabling the poor and hungry to at least live above the poverty line. Everybody is allowed to be rich, but we shouldn't allow anyone to be hungry.
"they don't hoard those necessities so they can say 'Haha, you can't have any!'" true, the reason is much more straightforeward: The best business is the one that can't be replaced.
It’s still stupid that one man can own so much money and there’s still so many people in just the us who don’t even own a house or can barely feed themselves… you can’t defend people like that imo
Living in the Phoenix area, investors owned homes account for a huge percent of our market. Most places I would want to live are the same. More importantly when wealth inequality becomes as bad as it is getting you'll find products/services are more and more directed at the upper middle class to wealthy. The middle class is further squeezed and the poor just do without. Such as housing. Few homes are built for that middle class demographic anymore.
Actually, through local law, in most places it is literally illegal to build small homes or have a small plot, and illegal to build your own home. So it is literally illegal to own and live in a home worth less than the market average. It's ridiculous, and when people try to build small homes worth 20k or less the government will majorly fine you, enough to bankrupt most people, arrest you and send you to jail, or take the property. It's disgusting, it leaves an entire generation of young adults homeless or almost homeless, the life expectancy in the usa is decreasing. In the time we've been attacking the middle class, china has brought the equivalent to our entire population out of poverty. Our enemies in a decade will be able to buy america's loyalty from a generation of citizens forced into essentially slavery, or prostitution if robots don't start doing that job, too.
@@Dark_AbsoI In the ghetto next to me. Unless you're a drug addict in that event, please see the place on the other side of town, it's real affordable.
@@mikexhotmail some places if you're not a licensed builder. and everywhere there is a minimum size, generally larger than the average 1 bedroom. Around my county it's gotta be over 900sqft, but I've heard of places have minimums of 1,200sqft
I support the general premise of this series. Whenever I'm trying to make up my mind about any given topic, I have often gone to forums and such places that will strongly favor one side and argued against that side and do the same for the other side in another place. That way not only do I end up learning the best arguments for both sides, I also end up learning the best arguments against both sides. If I haven't done this for any given issue, I will never be confident in my views about it. On the topic itself: Your video here is one of the best arguments I've seen in favor of high wealth inequality, and I have to say it's simply not good enough. I remain open to the possibility, but my conclusion at this point is that it probably is genuinely indefensible. I think there is a level of wealth inequality that is fine, maybe even desirable, but whatever that level is it's somewhere far below where we are now.
I think it depends. Do we see equality as a necessary good, or even possible? I don't see equality of outcome as possible. Differences in ability and desires lead to different outcomes. I personally do not like working, so I work as little as possible to get by. I could work harder and make more money, but I don't want to. The rich are those who desire wealth and work towards it. One could make the argument that the economy is best handled by just such people. Would you pick a chef to defend you in court, or a lawyer? The real problem with wealth inequality is the ability to lobby the government. And that can be mitigated by preserving freedom of the press and speech (which corporations attack by divide and conquer means), a representative government, as well as campaign finance reform and term limits. If the problem is rich people lobbying the government, then why don't people think about reforming the government (as opposed to the economy, which is often affected by the government)? There has always been wealth inequality, and if there is more now, that is because there is more wealth now. Poor people are materially better off today than they were in the middle ages. Third world countries have been uplifted (indeed, this is part of the reason the US hasn't seen as great a gains, because the growth was often made in poorer countries, like China). And people's demands for standards of living have increased as well. Smart phones, credit cards, cars, single family homes/individual apartments. Good medical care, no famines, long lives. We take things for granted that the kings and elites of the past would have given all their fortunes for, and could not get. Think even about things like tea and spices, that were luxuries that wars were fought over, and now every poor person has in their cupboard at home.
The biggest problem is in taxation, not consumption. If you're super wealthy you have a team of people working for you to avoid paying taxes. But the construction of that wealth was facilitated by the infrastructure put in place using those taxes. This is just morally wrong. Period.
@K lake i absolutely agree it's not easy. If it were we'd have nailed this as a society long ago IMHO. This problem has only been exacerbated by globalization. Still, it is the #1 problem when I consider income inequality. We'd not nearly have as much anger if tax evasion wasn't so pervasive.
@@padonker Agree it is a different debate but some of the underlying forces drive it. Just as the wealth can hire people to avoid taxes. They can hire "people" to influence the direction of government spending. It is undue influence on both sides. Where as direct consumption may not be controlled by the super wealth they control the options.
Well done. Food for thought (Note: I have not looked into this much myself). I've read that countries that have the lowest gap between the rich and poor also have very low levels of wealth and high poverty generally (e.g., many countries in Africa). They are all equally poor, in other words. It *_could_* be that the existence of super-capitalists still does benefit the average worker despite the wealth gap. I'm not making that claim. I'm just saying that there may be something to it.
That's not really true. Most African are unequal based on GINI coefficients, and many of the western European nations have lower inequality. Scandinavia is quite wealthy and yet has low inequality. The USA is an outlier in it's high inequality relative to other high wealth nations
@@PRODEMOCRACYNEWS I think a big part of that is cultural. Europeans and more specifically Scandanavian culture is based on a collective mindset. "Everyone is responsible for everyone else". America was founded more on the idea of individual liberty. That you are responsible for yourself and other people's burden won't be placed on you. And personally, there's merit in each
@@stansman5461 The American dream is that 'anyone can be successful if they work hard enough', which easily gets corrupted into 'anyone who isn't successful hasn't earnt success'
What does any of this have to do with people having to spend thousands each month to pay for insulin, or many of my friends who had to drop out of college because they couldn't afford it?
@@i-never-look-at-replies-lol That maybe the person that has the talent for discovering the cure for an illness you'll have in 30 years is working as a cashier to survive instead of studying medicine, that's what it has to do with you and the rest of society.
@@i-never-look-at-replies-lol Also who the hell do you think "society" is? The people who can't afford healthcare/education/retirement are the vast majority of the SOCIETY.
I don't think there is a contradiction between claiming that billionaires own too much and that billionaires don't consume enough. It's not that they own too much stuff. They own too much capital. This gives them outsized control over government and society, but more crucially putting so much investment power in so few hands it likely inefficient.
3:55. Yes you can. Their private consumption is wastefull. It does not benefit society as a whole as in give recourses to the lower end of the population. Consuming thousands of liters of water to make their gigantic lawns green does not provide the same benefit to society as to tax it from them and making sure the lower end of the population has clean and affordable drinking water. AND ON TOP OF THAT. They don't even consume as much as they have, so not only do they consume wastefully, they also don't consume enough.
Selfishness is the problem. Wealth inequality only enables people who don't care to exploit those with less. Having more than others is not wrong and is often good when the wealthy are generous and compassionate. It's just super rare to see that.
"I need food, and a place to live!" "Well you need money." "I want money. How can I earn money?" "I have all the money." "Well, can I do something that you'll give me money?" "No, because you have no money. Now go away, all I care about is getting more money."
3:55 - But the wealthy do use their influence to say that most people aren't ALLOWED to have any basic necessities, unless they work for the vast majority of their waking lives and make the already obscenely wealthy even more obscenely wealthy. The wealthy also drive the extremely excessive consumption of resources, because the only way that a society can have almost everyone working to earn their right to have basic necessities as production efficiency increases, is to have everyone consume an ever increasing amount of resources.
the biggest stumbling block to affordable housing is current house owners - the middle class. if you try to build a multiunit apartment in san francisco the locals will fight it tooth and nail and drag you to court multiple times till you give up, this happened to a guy who owned a laundromat wanted to tear it down and put up a modest apartment building. after something like 10 years and the locals even changing laws he gave up and sold the property.
intresting vid. also would you also be doing a vid on something like UBI, since i think it would be a pretty interesting argument to (for or against ) Wealth Inequality.
@@karlalan3806 Prices are rising due to supply issues and the $6 trillion bailout and subsidies given to corporations, not the crumbs that were given to normal Americans. Do some research before BJing the rich and b!tching about the minimum help that was given to struggling Americans. You sound like an ignorant tool.
I'm trying to get out of real-estate for the exact resone you gave its way to big of a royal pain in the ass to deal with. Stocks are far more profitable with a tiny amount of headaches that being a landlord is. I'm trying my best to sell the houses to the tenants as that means less of a headache and I don't need to pay or deal with real-estate agents.
lol, I am poor and realestate sounds absolutely horrible! I look at youtubers like Minority Mindset, and Graham, and Kevin, and it sounds just awful. I think that what I learned from them about realestate investing is that the home you live in is a savings acct rather than an investment. It does grow, but the constant maintenance, taxes, finance fees, insurance, etc will nearly always be about what the growth was over time. So get a decent house to live in, but don't make it your largest asset. Buildings that you rent out to business or individuals are an asset because they increase in value and the tenant pays for it all over time... but with so many contractors, lawyers, etc... I'd just rather not. Plus, the idea of charging someone rent that allows me to buy a home when they could be spending their own money to be buying their own home? That feels real dirty to me. Like, if rent was cheap like it use to be so that it covered maintenance and improvements, and a little profit then that is one thing... but if they are also covering the principal and interest on a loan, PLUS maintenance? I just want no part in that. Now that I do have a little more disposable income I am curious about short term business loans, and stocks, but just not real estate.
Needs to be updated because Wall St is now destroying the housing market. Of course they would want to collect rent from everyone who should have been able to buy a home. Wall St drove prices from $100k avg home to $400k within 3 years. They shouldn't be allowed to buy single family homes.
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Once try to do a video on the US healthcare system vs countries in which government gives free healthcare
Atleast even after allowing private hospitals to function, and also government running it's own hospital ( where it's free) like in India
Now, I think as long as everyone can live comfortably, retire before 70 and own a decent house, the ultra rich can do whatever they want. But this is currently not the case so yeah.
Food, shelter, health care, mental health care, medicine, and transportation is my minimum. Houses are nice but not the point any livable shelter works.
*Retirement is also essential.*
Heres the issue, how do you define "live comfortably"? Comfort is variable between people. Just between me and my SO, my opinion of living comfortably is have the capabiliyy to go out and purchase a new car when i want to, my SO sees comfortable as just being able to afford the basic necessitied to live.
@Luís Andrade we're increasingly approaching a world where thousands of people will be unable to make a living at no fault of their own. There are already hundreds of people already that havent made "bad decisions". Just go ahead a think about that.
Eat the rich!
Nobody should 'own a decent house' . Home ownership is one of the worst financial decisions you can make. Anyone who doesn't rent is doing it wrong.
I think there is a problem with inequality that has nothing to do with economy, which might be the worst of all... the disparity of political power. As the ultra rich can divert more political power their way, the more economic power will be captured by these same ultra rich, in an vicious cycle. That's how their income and power has increased manyfold on the last decades and most middle classes have not moved much.
Exactly
Big corporations are disproportionately represented on the congress
Also, wealth concentration hurts GDP growth.
yeah that is the worst problem of it all that goverment is much more giving to the big corporations and much more regulating to small buisnesess.
imho, economic and political inequality are the same thing.
Lobbying, marketing, manipulation of news sources…
It’s a vicious circle right now.
EVERY big source of information is equally interested in protecting big businesses.
I get your point but thinking about it a bit more, I don't think my life is influenced that much by super-yacht-owning people. This "power" you speak of, what is it and what is it used for?
It's clearly used to make more money, but like you said, you are not focusing on something that has nothing to do with economy right now. So beyond making more money, what is the problem? -- I'm not saying there aren't problems, what I am saying is that in order to deal with those problems, it would make a lot more sense to actually define them, instead of just pointing the finger in the general direction of a private jet.
Money aka wealth is power, that is why USA can throw its weight around the whole world, and yet very few go again them, mostly only those who so poor that they have nothing to lose.
As a suggestion, it would be amazing if you can cover "Privatized Healthcare" as a future topic to discuss in this series.
oh like Sweden?
@@SgtJoeSmith Amazing quality and mainly paid by the taxpayers, only problem is to get it in time.
@@SgtJoeSmith or Switzerland ;)
@@SgtJoeSmith No, ones that cost much less than European “Private Hospitals” because they don’t have to compete against the State who runs at a loss meaning that people beyond the ultra rich can access immediate, high quality healthcare; because when your life is literally on the line it’s no time to wait around for a better price.
@@MonaLisaHasNoEyebrows i mentioned sweden cause they went the libertarian way and the gov pays tax dollars to 1 and only 1 private health care company to administer everything. but heres the problem. 2 middle men and no competition to be better or cheaper. go ask any nurse practitioner in america why they arent a doctor or no longer a doctor. and you will know what the problem is and why costs are so high.
want cheaper health care in america? this is the only way:
get insurance out of it:
when you pay health insurance half goes to the middle man and their office and employees.
get government out of it:
same with insurance. also too many regulations keep new competition away.
get lawyers out of it:
give doctors qualified immunity from lawsuits. doctors are often subcontractors of hospitals and can be sued directly.
Lawn mowing prices are up 80% in 30 years despite their overhead up 300%. cause market is flooded with lawn boys.
health care overhead costs are up 500% in same time but prices up 2000% or something like that.
like you said. when you might die if you dont get help and there is only 1 option you will pay anything.
only other option to what i said.... guess more people need to just be willing to boycott treatment and die.
the thing is i dont view the gaining of wealth as bad but I do view gaining and centralization of power as the true driver of the problem. with enough money and know how a rich man can easily take over a small town and become a tyrant without anyone knowing they are the ones pulling the strings
Yes, because money is power. The lobbies and all corrupted politicians are paid by rich people, not the rest
@@hamatlante1280 money is not basically power it is a form of power. And there are many different forms of power many of which are a lot more malicious than money.
@@hamatlante1280 thats the thing i dont believe that money is a tool that can get u power but u need intelligence and will power to actually achieve power that matters
@@wilfredpeake9987 Yes, obviously. Blades can be used in different ways: for cooking, for war, ecc ecc. But humanity prefered using them more for war (or at least the wealthy kings).
Blades aren't bad, but if the system encourages you to using them in a certain bad way (especially if you're a rich wanting to maintain his power), the system doesn't work well.
For example we have enough money for living all splendid lives, but nearly 1 billion of people lives in extreme poverty, and like 2/3 of humanity lives in poverty. And the wealthy use them to corrupt politicians.
So, money aren't bad, but extreme inequality is
Great reason to restrict and limit the government as well
I had a patent, and I was forced to sell it below price, because a billionaire literally told me: "I have time, you don't", and he was right, the creditors started to eat me alive. I had no choice, but to sell my patent to only cover my expenses, while he made probably more than a million dollar since then from it.
The thing is, anything happens to others, or to the planet, they don't have to care.
The point of money is to repay the work you give for other people. But they mostly only have capital, and the work is done by employees, who are not repaid.
Also you haven't even try to debate the points made in social studies, how wealth inequality harms the education, health systems etc.
The point of money is social domination. It's control. It's primary purpose is not as a means of exchange. Currency exists to render life outside of the economic and political system impossible.
Thanks again to everybody who has subscribed. The channel just passed 50k which is more than I ever imagined was possible.
IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME
Congratulations man , you deserve it great work as always
40k in 4 days lmao
I'm getting my commenting in now, another month or so and there'll be far too many to be spotted! Yeah, this channel will grow just fine, you've got it nailed
keep up the great work!
You make some severe logical errors in your arguments:
- You are treating consumption in the economic sense as the same as the consumption of resources but these do not always overlap. For example, insulating your home can be very expensive but will lower your energy usage over the long term. Certain goods can be very expensive but also use little resources (digital goods, high-quality items). Rich people consume proportionally less in the economic sense, which is bad for the economy, and consume more resources (often very unsustainable things such as flying on private jets or buying yachts), which is bad for the planet. A more equitable distribution would be better for the economy and would allow for climate measures to be easier to enact (since now most measures will disproportionally hurt the poor).
- The wealthy are actively preventing others from becoming wealthy. The real estate market is a good example, many young people have to pay a large part of their income to someone else just to live somewhere without being able to save up for a home themselves. A permanent underclass of people without property is being created and more and more people fall into it as wealth concentrates more and more at the top.
You bring solid points; However, the wealthy having less of a carbon footprint than say your typical lowerclass is a bit farfetched. Sure, if you compare Beverly Hills with the Bronx since Bronx is highly with a niche for less high-quality products and more consumable objects , then you can somewhat see a marginal difference, but then again it has already been shown that Space Tourism - particularly that of the most recent one utilizing rocket propulsion to achieve such activity - emits 100 times more co2 per passenger than you average flight, a feat solely resevered for the financially rich. When this industry “booms”, imagine how big of an environmental impact this solely will have. To summarize this, what I mean to say is that the rich have exponentially outgrowned a preservative state of pollution; be it through leisures or businesses tied to the activities that fund their wealth.
I don't know why it is so hard to grasp but money and land are zero sum. Wealth isn't zero sum because you can create more as you need it. Building a second water distribution system in another city doubles global wealth without hurting anyone.
The problem with land is that you can just buy it, squat on it and then extort people. There is no way to create new land. It's very unfair.
Money is a public good and it is almost the same. If you don't create new money as the economy grows then people can acquire it through a profit, hoard it and then extort people because people have to be paid with money for tax and debt reasons. So money not only has to increase with productivity, it also has to increase fast enough to preventing hoarding. That excess increase is called inflation.
@@shushirakawa3182 How can you say money is zero sum, while you later acknowledge that inflation is an excess increase in the money supply. Clearly we can just print all the money anyone needs no problem, bro. The real issue is that all this surplus money is driving up the cost of the things that ARE zero sum, like land and housing. I would actually argue that inflation is making the situation worse, as its really easy to buy up vast amounts of houses and land, if there is both 0 % loans to buy the land handed out to the rich that are close to the new money spigot, and there is also always more money for everyone to be able to rent the land. Limited money would actually limit the hoarding of land, because if there were no way to earn easy rents on the land, the rich would have to sell it, because they would be eaten up by property taxes, and it would be a poor investment.
Also, building infrastructure is in fact zero sum, because physical resources used to construct a water distribution system can't be used to build something else. The only things that are truly not zero sum are digital items. If I make 1000 Fortnight hats, I have not used any resources of society, as these art pieces take up only the tiniest amount of hard drive space. I suspect digital marketplaces will become much larger in the future, perhaps ushering a time of abundance in real life, since the rich guy 'hoarding' 100,000 Fortnight hats really isn't consuming any real resources, OR restricting anyone else from making or using their own hats, even if the rich guy has some high level of in-game status from his massive hat collation, it really isn't a problem for society.
I say the biggest problem with wealth inequality is the waste of resources to further redistribute the wealth to those who are already wealthy, without actually creating value.
The rich do create the value, far more that any consumer. Investment is needed for there to be anything for the consumer to be able to consume. They wealthy use investments to grow the money they have earned and use debt issued with the investment value to get loans to buy things you and I can't afford.
By being a wealthy business man and taking stock options in your business instead of making more money you don't have the taxable (income tax) event like you would if you had taken it all in cash. Now that you have ownership in this business you don't need to sell the stock to get money (if you do you will have a taxable event, ie capital gains) you ask a bank for a loan using the shares as collateral. If you get a loan to buy an investment the intrest is tax exempt.
Our tax code is set up for people to invest and buy doing so create more capital for businesses to expand and create jobs. Creating 100 new jobs equals 100 new consumers plus 1 wealthy one who consumes more.
One thing everyone must keep in mind is wealth inequality is an indicator of prosperty. It is a sign that everyone is living a far better life than people did 50 or 100 years ago.
@@shawnaning101 You rely on the assumption investment is only possiblle trough wealthy indivuduals. No one person needs to be wealthy yet ppl can come together and chose to pool resources for a common goal (like goverments should function).
The wealthy person doesn't create value for sociaty if most or all aditional value from those investments goes to that one person does he? He might even take away value from sociaty if he claims more then he created in the first place. (automation does allow this)
Also the wealth inequality is a clasic case of correlation != causation.
@@someonespotatohmm9513 You cannot pool together with enough people to create the value (ie job) Mark Cuban can. Those jobs he creates provide more consumers which create more value for society. The government only steals value, they don't create anything. The government uses private industry for creation of products and services using your tax money meanwhile debasing the currency by printing more money making it impossible for you to buy a new car for $1500 or a house for $20,000. I find it funny you suggested the government is the answer when as I stated in my first comment that the government created the conditions that make it possible for these people to be uber wealthy through tax laws. If I were you I would be careful what you advocate, you could be the next Jeff Bezos. You could have the next big idea that changes the world for the better and deserve a piece of the value you created. What I'm saying is if you want to be rich, don't be a consumer, be an investor. Save and invest as much as you can. If you start in your 20s you WILL be a millionaire. Wealth is a mindset achieved through an optimistic view of life and our economy. Once again for someone to be wealthy and someone to be poor there must be prosperity and everyone benefits through job creation and innovation. You used to have to salt you foods to keep them from going bad. You used to have to walk or ride a horse to get to where you want to go. These goods that make everyone's life better were created by investors and everyone has benefited.
@@shawnaning101 Troll? I don't belive anyone can belive this "being rich is just a mindset bro". The entire history is the example of why this isn't true.
Just ask yourself when the last time a poor man gave you a job and you have your answer. The rich provide jobs. If you hurt the rich you hurt everyone else.
I remember reading what a Japanese industrialist once said: "The money game is never over until you die, you never 'win' the money game." Essentially he was saying that wealth can disappear, and that you, or your family can be doing well one decade, and in a very short time be impoverished the next. The wealthiest families may see their wealth evaporate in a generation or two. Some extremely wealthy athletes and actors became destitute fairly quickly after retirement. In short its natural to always seek a return, because if you aren't gaining, you are inching ever closer to living under a bridge.
Those athletes you mentioned have been ill served and poorly educated. They have been fooled into thinking that money should be spent. Money is a tool to generate more money, not something to throw away for trinkets.
Freedom is worth infinitely more than luxury goods. If you want to use money, use it to secure freedom.
@@petermartin9494 People should spend money how they please, but should be educated in doing so. I have a step sister who has a fiancé and they simply have no clue on how to use money at all. One time they went on 2 different vacations in a matter of one month! Then they also try to reward themselves for saving money, by well, spending more money at the end of the week to get something they want.
Now they're in debt, maxed out a shit ton of credit cards and are now trying to spend even more money to have a lavish wedding. They are asking for more money from my parents, who my step sister's fiancé yelled at my father for not giving her more money for the wedding just because he is well off. Tbh, I think a large part of the inequality is how people spend their money in general.
For me, I have some money invested in blue chip stocks and had saved nearly 100% of the money I worked for 8 months and overtime to start my own business that I hope to benefit from even more financially while doing what I love to do. It is a risk I am willing to take and I even made plans further in the future in the event this may not work out at all.
So despite the fact my step sister and I had the same opportunity, she is the one that ends up spending irrationally to even afford to move out of her house. For me, I ended up saving up nearly all my money to invest into my own business and I'm living a life with my boyfriend where we work under his income while I try to start this business for the both of us to eventually work together one day. We never spend irrationally and we can talk about finances responsibly because we understand that going out for dinner all the time isn't a good idea at all or taking on more debt by going to vacations when it isn't within our means.
@@doomersnek3878 Thanks for your message, Axo, it is very interesting. Somehow it seems to me that your step sister has not learned the lessons about money that a young person needs to learn. Giving her money is very toxic and your parents need to understand that. It is not good for her and it is not good for them. It is best for her if she learns the consequences of over spending. That way she will probably be more careful in the future.
If my son in law ever yells at me for not giving more money, then that will be the last cent he sees coming out of my pocket ever. If your father is still giving them money, then he does not understand his place in the world and he does not understand respect.
All the best to you.
It's because these people are stupid with their money and blow it on crap. It disappears because of their stupid actions
@Calen Crawford Rich people are not the reason others are living under a bridge.
Billionaires buying farmland is probably one of the most terrifying things besides entire countries buying other's farmland
Why
Not really. If the were doing something really outrageous, they would loose the land.
watch the fucking video lmao
"If we can't control thel, we'll starve them out"
@@JohnSmith-bh8um gubber mint :) also unprofitable
The rich aren't hording resources... Does that include Nestle and Coke buying up all the water? Because they're doing that. I know it's not an individual, but their financial officers all make a pretty penny.
I don't like Nestle or Coke but they are not the rich. They are companies.
Top executives are just employees aswell. A salary of 17M (Coke CEO and Chairman) isn't too mutch compared to the 9BN revenue the company makes. Getting 0.2% from the revenue they are responsible for seems fair to me. Most of the money Coke makes goes towards their shareholdets. Waren buffet is making the big bucks by owning so many shares. But buying a share of Coke is achievable for everyone (at least in the developed world)
I'm still able to get water, so I'm not sure what the problem is?
@Josef K "The high executive pay is waste."
The same general public that makes statements like this think it appropriate to pay the person ultimately accountable for their clean water little more than the company that serves them their cat videos pays a mid level hire. Then those same people marvel at the fact that they can get their high quality cat videos in even the most adverse of conditions but somehow their water utility's performance is spotty.
Leadership matters and good leaders don't come cheap.
@@i-never-look-at-replies-lol there are portions of the world that are experiencing water shortages. The southwest united states is already having to ration water in some areas. It will come to you, soon.
There’s also another kind of wealth inequality in America. Skilled labor vs unskilled labor within the middle and lower working class. It’s become almost essential to either get a college degree or go to vo-tech school and learn a trade. People with skills are very much in demand while people without them have actually seen their wages fall adjusted to inflation. My second point is about wealth inequality. Do we take it from rich people and trust politicians with its redistribution? The issue with this is obvious. Politicians end up lining their own pockets and only a tiny percentage ends up helping the lower middle class and the poor. Wealth just gets shifted around from one set of oligarchs to another
There might be an economical turmoil but there is no doubt that this is still the best time to invest.
Best time to invest? thats funny tho because in the last four months I have lost more than $47,900 in stock market which is the biggest I have loss since I ventured into stock investment.
you could be right or wrong depends on your expertise, I once made such loss when i invested thinking i have gathered enough trading skills from youtube videos but now its a different ball game for me because I was lucky to have met "Tamara Diane Hagan", a financial manager and stock expert, I have made more than $165,000 in 6 weeks under her supervisions.
Really? people are cashing in from the stock market and frankly speaking its comforting seeing someone admit to the fact that they actually seek help from professionals. please how can i reach Tamara ?
search her name on the internet to reach her
thanks for the info . Found her website and it really impressive
I think there is value in providing "the other side of the story," but you ALSO need to present "the OTHER other side," ie the *actual* side. Present the counter-argument, but ALSO present the argument itself at the same time.
@Pinned by Kristina Forex how much for suki suki, princess?
Yea, I'd actually agree. The issue I see is the video would be near double the length? Maybe needs a 2nd video? Because I agree, just giving talking points for a counter opinion that is already sold 24/7 on main stream media isn't useful at all. Like talking about asset allocation very vaguely as far as what is being bought and where(a "small" % in SanFran, Singapore, or NYC, has a massive impact), not mentioning how technology adoption gets harder when billionaires drive up all capital costs, how historically they seem to be worse and worse to animals on their farms, how capital asset acquisition relates(causes) to inflation, etc.
He kinda just says stuff already pumped all over the place. Without a counter who is the video for? I don't know.
@@justcommenting4981 Right. I personally wouldn't mind a longer video, but there might be algorithm reasons not to make it longer, but at the very least there should be paired videos, "here is the devil's advocate position," and then "here is the actual reason why this _is_ bad." Maybe place them a week apart, but in the first one reference that the second exists (it should already be written before publishing the first), and cite it throughout "as I say in the other video, this might be seen as a bad thing because. . .".
Most videos he makes are the counter argument to thos
There's a major difference between your definitions of rich. The spending power of a person that has $100k vs $100 million vs $100 billion is not something that is easily condensed to the rich. I'd like to see a follow-up specifically talking about billionaires as that would be more a more interesting in my opinion.
I think he does understand it, but you are also absolutely right that there's a vast difference between a so called millionaire (which is really just someone with assets to retire in a very average fashion because $1M does not last that long, especially for a couple that just started retirement) vs billionaires.
The reason I say he does understand is because he clearly pointed out the 10% vs 1% in the global emissions/consumption part.
Let's be real, even the 1% thing is a myth because there are vast differences within the 1%. It's also relatively easy to be 1% earner, but MUCH more difficult to be 1% net worth.
@@JasonPrice1 $940K net is also quite irrelevant in a developed country. $1M only gets you a 30-40 year retirement these days. In US, to be 1% net worth you need 11 million.
I don't think majority of people are saying Bezos is a bad guy because he's rich. Most people are unhappy about the work conditions at Amazon. And you're right that once you get certain amounts of wealth it just grows from there. But that's also the criticism that there is not much effort once you get there, meaning the system is rigged to an extent.
Personally, I have no problem from them making a fortune from a viable business. I do take issue with the tax loopholes. Most people stop defending the wealthy once they realize the scheme of not cashing out stocks, and borrowing against them. It is definitely not a healthy practice. And again, this doesn't have anything to do with "hating" the wealthy. It's just a systematic issue that people want to address.
@@dailyrant4068 you should probably blame the fed a bit more than the practice of borrowing against assets. If the stock market was an actual free market then many would actually run liquidation risk. In crypto you learn real fast the dual edged sword such borrowing can be.
That's another problem with all those claiming they "hate the rich" - they don't realize they'd actually be rich by other countries standards, the 1% is full of doctors, engineers and other professionals, and the billionaires they talk so much about are more like the 0.001%
Also, start eating the 1%, eat the top and the top gets lower, lower, lower until someone comes to eat you too. Very dangerous mindset.
@@dailyrant4068 But a pawn shop works the same way only with hard assets and not stocks. In both cases the person taking out the loan will pay interest for the privilege, that's money that then circulates.
My primary objection to staggering wealth inequality is not that it has some inherent economic downsides, it's the fact that there are simply too many people with problems that could be quickly solved by proper wealth redistribution. I'm angry in the way that I'd be angry at Superman if he just stood by and watched people die, and occasionally giggled. It's a lack of empathy not only on the part of the individual billionaires, but a lack of empathy built into government and society.
So why don't you complain that US government spends More EVERY YEAR into the military than the combined fortune of all these billionaries? Remember they do that with money they took from YOUR WORK! The billionaries on other hand do not have BILLIONS on money. They have assets that are evaluated at a humongous ammount. If they did not have those assets we would have less jobs, less houses built, less marketplaces to go to etc...
On the other hand... how much of the military spending really helps society?
@@tiagodagostini Why do you assume I don't? Just because I didn't mention it within the rant about wealth inequality, that doesn't mean I support the bloated military budget! And it's frankly stupid of you to assume that.
The problem with this argument is that it will be a quick fix for a deeper problem. Wealth inequality is largely a psychological problem and even if you distribute wealth equally , eventually the inequality will appear again because people are different.
There were studies done which stated that if the wealth is equally distributed , it'll not last more than a few years. And the next thing you know - there's no more wealth left to distribute.
@@firehunters9628 First of all, "no more wealth left to distribute" shows you don't understand what wealth actually is. It's not "just money". Wealth is value created by humans through our creative problem solving. Our capacity as a society to create wealth will never "run out". Secondly, yes we need structural change, not simply a capitalist system with constant wealth redistribution. Because the people with too much wealth will eventually figure out how to break the systems of redistribution. This is the primary goal of socialism, and why rich people have such an existential fear of the concept.
@@LoveLearnShareGrow @WildNights By redistributing wealth you're basically transferring it from relatively better allocators of money to less better allocators. What I mean by this is - if you redistribute wealth equally , some people might invest that money while others might spend it all foolishly. And this gap will appear again because money would grow for some , while it wouldn't for others due to their decisions. But the intensity of growth will be reduced , because a large majority of people (who got the redistributed wealth) would choose to spend it on material goods like cars , houses , etc instead of investing most of it , in comparison to the wealthy who would've invested most of it.
Which is why if you look at the GDP growth rate of countries like Sweden , Norway and Denmark , which has high taxes and high social equality , they're in negatives. That's a high price to pay , don't you think ?
I believe in having a larger 'pie' for everyone , than trying to fight over who gets the existing 'pie'. And capitalism has helped multiply this 'pie' many times over , whereas socialism has always failed.
Lastly , you don't even consider the problem of people getting wealth for free without working. It reduces the value and incentive to work and puts the load on those actually do the work , which I think is unfair.
As long as we are not dirt poor, and can live comfortably and the rich don't avoid taxes, I dont care how rich Bill, Jeff or Elon is.
If those things were true and the rich also avoided taxes I wouldn't see a problem with that either. More money to spend on better rockets so we can take space vacations sooner.
@@michealdopemeal9445 when rich ppl avoid taxes the tax burden falls on the rest of people who can’t avoid taxes
@@kinesissado9636 Then get rid of the taxes.
@@michealdopemeal9445 do you know why taxes are a thing?
@@kinesissado9636 To provide government services the market can provide better and cheaper without forcing you to pay against your will and then force the market not to provide those services.
Real problems - devaluation in the worth of manual labor due to technological advancement + genetic roadblocks to higher skill occupations in large part of the population. While the worth of the worker has been on a steady decline, now the new jobs being created require specialization and increasingly higher levels of analytical thinking. This is a new level of problem and has no tested practical solution.
Now here's a good comment
I don’t see why technical development in the work place should have to be a problem; in a ‘perfect’ or at least well functioning society, wouldn’t the machines be able to do all the grueling, menial labor, whilst (all) humans get to reap the rewards? Perhaps work a 3 day work week instead of a 5? This of course would only be the case if we didn’t see technological advancement as a replacement for workers, but instead an aid.
Source that genetic roadblocks are the obstacles to higher skill occupations, not the structural problems of capitalism please
There is one, it's called UBI and reducing the lenght of the workweek so that there are enough jobs and cash to go around. When we get to the point where there's legitimately no lowskill jobs out there, we'll be at a point where we can give everybody UBI to cover their basic needs and the folks that were working those lowskilled jobs can do something else. Just because a job is lowskilled, doesn't mean that the worker is. A bunch of them are working those jobs because they couldn't get a better one. You'd be surprised how many people are working those jobs with advanced degrees. It's hardly unheard of to get your coffee from somebody with a PhD in a field that doesn't have many openings.
bitcoin solves this
The longer this situation persists, the bigger fireball it will produce when it implodes. So hopefully - as long as possible, but not for too long, so I get to witness it
I personally have had it with witnessing history unfold, ut just doesn't add up to the expectations.
Get the popcorn ready
Username checks out 🔥💣
It's imploding right now. 2020 got the ball rolling.
Lol. This "situation" outlast the "equality" utopia that was Soviet Union.
"For everyone to get rich, we let some people to get rich first" - "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" proverb, often attributed to Deng Xiaoping.
paying a buck less for pickles at walmart as opposed to your local grocery store is detrimental to your society
Your pfp is hot
But then how would we sustain our morbid obesity and fill our rented storage units with half-broken small appliances? Walmart enables Americans’ preferred lifestyle.
I've come to the conclusion that the only way out of this mess is likely to stop buying so much stuff, buy less, but buy as much of it as you can from people that are behaving responsibly. Also try to invest what money you can in companies that engage in more socially responsible behavior, especially with regards to the environment as that seems to be the one issue that can't really be undone.
In America we usually do the right thing only after we’ve tried everything else first.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade if we could just get people to stop buying items built with planned obsolescence we could fix a lot of these issues. Single use items are the worst.
You deserve a ton of subs. Your content is fantastic and unbiased.
I appreciate that! Thanks for the support man.
i doubt the unbiased part cause nobody can be unbiased but theyre fantastic
@@ilikekspwaytoomuch4691 its not unbiased because in these vids, he's playing the devil advocate. he volontarily gives argument to the other side just to have the complete perspective.
@@charlestrudel8308 You want a full perspective, not one side. The way you think may be a reason why people still give politicians credit when they mess up anyways.
@@AndrewKidd14145 its because there are already a ton of videos for the other side... its not a bad idea take the oppoite of what close to all other do.
I think you didn't really argue against the claim that wealth inequality is bad. Rather you argued why the inequality is smaller than it appears. The number one argument why I would say wealth inequality is actually a good thing ist that there is no way to effectively redistribute the wealth without significantly hurting the economy. And the population in the long term benefits far more from a thriving economy than from a short term wealth increase from wealth redistribution
You clearly never really thought about this. If the super rich would have to pay more taxes from the money (that they don’t even use) how would that hurt the economy? and if then simultaneously poorer people could pay less taxes and actually use their money for useful things, (which is usually what people who advocate for higher taxes for the rich also advocate for) how would that be bad for the economy?
the money collected by those taxes could also be used to invest in education, medical care or science, wouldn’t that be a great thing for all? Sure, I know modern states are sometimes corrupt and don’t work really efficiently but trickle down economics (what you’re describing) has never worked so far. And we need big investments right now to prepare for the future with all the ecological failures we’re producing.. and I don’t know if only the super rich should decide where these investments are going to be made. Perhaps it’s time for more democracy within our economic structures
@@Aliasn433 It's not as simple as just raising taxes. When taxes are too high, the rich may start working less or will put their money into things that are tax-exempt. The result is decreased tax revenue. Sometimes lowering taxes can actually increase the total amount of tax revenue collected by the government. Look up the Laffer curve if you don't believe me.
@@Aliasn433 the rich will move to a tax Haven or a different country.
Also, trickle down is fine when compared to other systems. Tell me one system that has worked better than trickle down.
When people are allowed to pick a job based on their own freedoms, some will be smart and pick a job with a high ROI so they can make their lives better. They will work harder. That's how capitalism works.
When people are told what to do and not given the freedom to decide, they don't do as good of a job. This is what caused the Soviet collapse, the mao collapse, north Korea's abysmal GDP, Venezuela's poor Economy, etc etc.
When you don't incentives people to work, they don't work. We saw that in the US with the high unemployment. People just stopped working.
@@1s_that_a_j0j0_reference People are not as "free" to pick their jobs as you think, many factors come into play, someone might be inclined to accept a "lesser" job because he or she needs the money Asap, it has happened to me before, and if you already have kids it's not that easy to simply quit your job and find another one as many people tend to suggest, and finally "working harder" is not how capitalism works, those who work the hardest often earn miserable salaries, capitalism is about raising capital BY ANY MEANS necessary, those are the people on top of the pyramid, NOT the hardest workers, that's just a myth.
Fairly limited empirical support for this claim. You’re much better off being working class in Sweden than the US, their economy is also very productive. Perfectly possible. Morocco on the other hand, where there is basically no welfare state, not so much.
first off, very interesting. Great take by trying to understand the other side, I'm not going to dissect the entire argument but when you mention 65% of Americans are homeowners I would like to dig into the age demographic, especially regarding buying power. This is especially interesting to me since Toronto housing prices outpace income growth.
There's 3 things to consider.
1. USA has a low birth rate, but it has a relatively young population for a developed country. Especially compared to Europe. Immigration makes up the difference. So you have more young people trying to acquire the same resources, like a house, compared to other countries.
2. Immigrants don't inherit assets from parents like someone born and raised in usa would. That further reduces their future wealth.
3. People live longer even compared to a gew decades ago. Older generations holding onto their wealth is a factor.
@@truegamer_007 immigrants probably do more so, they cone here poor and outpace native born. That's why the left is racist. They don't want native blacks to see African immigrants succeed where they don't. It also destroyed the myth of institutional racism
@@truegamer_007 We are just about at the worst point in the housing pinch right now.
1) We have been roughly at a replacement birthrate since the boomers. Boomers, GenX, Mellinnials, and the unnamed generation after are all nearly the same size, with the mellinnials being the largest group by a little bit. We have the Greatest Generation, and the generation previous to that who are still with us, and starting to die off, but Boomers will live longer and healthier than their parents and grand parents, and we have 2 more generaitons to go before the population stabalizes.
So that is another ~30 years of adding new housing inventory in mass before things settle out and demand tanks because the housing market (like the populaiton) will shrink to a replacement rate... but where a human lives some 75-85 years on average, a building can last an easy 150-200 years even if not super well maintained. So that will be a huge shift from new construciton to retrofitting older homes (like today's new homes) to fit future standards of convienence and efficiency. I think that we will not only see a jump in home ownership going forward in that, but also a leveling off in home prices, and drastic decreases in maintenance and utility costs and homes are fitted to newer standards, because they can afford the upgrades due to lower home prices to begin with.
2-3) Immigrants don't inherit assets form their parents, but really we have not had that happen much in the US either until the current generation. Parents of the greatest generation were mostly farmers with lots of kids, so typically what few assets there were either got distributed between a lot of kids, or the bulk of it given to whoever was becoming the new head of the family, or inheriting the family business. Most of them just didn't gain much wealth from parents, and made their own wealth from going to war and getting cheap schooling and housing during a long economic boom. But the greatest generation enjoyed a large expansion in lifestyle, but also had a lot of kids to split wealth between, and most have lived longer than expected, so they are largely dying comfortable but poor, and only a few thousands of dollars split between kids and grand kids. Nice for sure, but not life-changing wealth building money... and as many boomers also spent a lot of assets caring for their parents in their last days, it is often more of a repayment rather than new wealth to grow from.
The boomers will likely be different. Most boomers (my parents included) believed firmly that their house was their greatest investment/asset, so they were house poor when they were young, and poured money into modernizing their homes rather than investing in other assets. So there will be some wealth to spread, and typically only spread across 2-3 kids, but also it will be tied up in closing costs, taxes, and other things which will take a large chunk out... That being said, assuming my parents never need to do any kind of reverse mortgage or anything to fund the last few years of their life, then my sisters and I are likely to inherit a few hundred thousand dollars from them... but we will be in our 60s at that point, so we are not likely to see any changes in our lifestyle other than it maybe making that last bit towards retirement possible.
Up until recently I was GenX and was dismayed to find that they moved the goal poast of mellinnial to 1981, so now I am a mellinnial. But I think I relate more to GenX. GenX generally had a little help getting started early on home ownership, and a little better guidance about not trusting government to provide us with social security, not letting our home be our biggest asset because you can't nicely pull money out of your home to live on unless you plan to sell and move into an old folks home, and I think my generation wants to help our kids (and eventual grand kids) more BEFORE we die, rather than leaving them with a giant windfall and tax burden all at the end. So that is the plan. Moderate home that should be paid off before the kids go to college, lots of growth stocks in the retirement accounts now, and hopefully transition to dividends around retirement, and while we will have to be pretty stingy before retirement, by the time we retire we should be able to fund our kids and grand kids retirement with the surplus of our own. So the 401k drains out as a tax-free gift to the kids and grand kids, who then stock it away as a RothIRA to grow and enjoy tax-free, and allows them to spend more of their own hard-earned cash to enjoy the things that we had to say no to because we were focused on wealth building through most of their childhood.
But mellinials... I can't quite figure them out even though I am one of them now. Like... we had a little help with our down payment from family... but that was about it. Nobody lives near us, nobody helped with free babysitting, nobody supported us when we had money or job problems, family didnt/couldn't help when my wife was in and out of the hospital for a year and a half. It was all us and we had to figure it out as we went along... but we did figure it out, and the opportunities are there. My wife has 2 associates and a masters degree that we had to pay for and she doesn't work much, and I had a lot of schooling that we paid for that doesn't add up to anything but I have always managed to find an OK paying job. And sure, we are pretty late on the wealth-building game, but still got there in plenty of time where we don't anticipate any major hardships in retiring. I look down the street and see similarly priced fixer-upper homes to what mine cost before we fixed ours up 14 years ago. Most of their parents are 'well to do' and should cover a good chunk of their retirement by or arround the time they are ready to retire, so they should be covered even if they can't afford to put much towards retirement today. It is like they suffer from group-think, and they don't stop to think about the consequences. They move to up-and-coming cities like Phoenix... and why? well, because it is the place to be and things are booming there. But did you have some special skill set? Or some assets to buy into an expensive housing market? No? Well then you can't really complain about not being able to afford a down payment on a house if you can't afford to live there. Move to Indianapolis, or Cincinnati where the jobs pay similarly and the cost of living isn't insane. Bought crypto at $50k and now it is worthless so you sold it? And you bought it on debt because it was a sure thing? Well maybe don't buy into a get rich quick scheme on debt just because talking heads on the internet say it is cool? Oh, and you bought the latest greatest iPhone even though you bought a nearly identical phone last year? And you financed it? You know you can get a flagship android for like $500, and a phone can last a solid 3-5 years right? And if it was just a $1000 phone every year then it would probably be fine, but it is more emblematic of mellinnial spending. Everything on credit, pay for lots of services and expierences instead of tangable items, and over-spend on depreciating assets like tech and cars. I feel like mellinnials are poor because they are too affraid of being poor. Go down to 1 car if you can. When the house has a problem learn how to fix it for $200 or less instead of calling the repair guy for a $500-1000 bill. Buy into non-school educational programs specific to a field you are in, and study outside of work for the job you want (in my case IT Pro TV), and don't waste money on random general knowledge programs like skill share... I mean... skill share is not bad by any means... but you aren't going to find in-depth industry-specific information that is going to up your game or your paycheck on there either. And lastly, I guess I would say to my generation, don't expect things to happen gradually. My wife and I struggled on the finance front for a long time, but we were good and didn't get ourselves into a lot of debt. When our luck turned on the income front finally just a couple years ago, then what debt we had paid off quickly, and the whole situaiton changed pretty fast. It was a lot of grinding with no progress, and when we made progress it went fast because we were ready.
I guess all that to say, yeah, immigrants are really only 1 generation behind; and the way mellinnials talk like every mistake is the end of the world, they should be able to catch up just fine I think. That isn't to say that immigrants are not at a disavantage, but that is the wrong way to look at it. If moving to the US is the best chance at improving their lives, then I hope they can do it! Yes, if they moved here 2-3 generations pervious then they would have a leg up... but they didn't. But if they can't build wealth where they are and they wait another generation... well then it just sets things back further. I have worked with a lot of immigrants, and have yet to meet one that hasn't been awesome to work with in a field, or a warehouse job, or in IT. I do think I have seen some amount of 'white advantage' in many of the workplaces I have worked at (but not all, and not where I am at currently), but I have also seen immigrants knuckle-down and study hard, and when they can't move up they are much more willing to move to a different place to move up quicker than my white friends and I. Highly motivated people find a way, and while some of America is terribly racist, there is a good chunk of the country that pays well for good people no matter their background.
@@CaedenV Wow, thank you for sharing your first hand experience and thoughts. You said a lot of sensible stuff.
I just discovered this channel an hour ago and really liked the videos up until I watched this one. This video was honestly just really bad; bordering on pernicious in its assertions. The only video on youtube I've ever disliked. So many figures were misrepresented that I have to suspect it was intentional. This creator doesn't strike me as dumb enough to do this unintentionally. For example the 65% figure you brought up. From the source (The US Census Bureau Housing Vacancy Survey) that figure actually represents the "proportion of occupied households which are occupied by the owners." That IN NO WAY means that "65.8% of americans are homeowners themselves" as stated in the video. It is not the percentage of adults that own their own home.
There's much more like this in this video but no one wants to read a ten page youtube comment so I'll stop here.
I don’t see how any of the arguments stack up against the negative consequences of wealth inequality: higher crime rates, less stable societies (political polarization, revolutions, civil wars, etc), and those without wealth are desperate to the point where climate change becomes way way on the back burner (because people are living paycheck to paycheck.) The point is that societies with less wealth inequality suffer from these catastrophic consequences at a significantly reduced rate. I appreciate the point of playing devils advocate, but wealth inequality is an unsupportable cancer on humanity. Space travel doesn’t mean shit when the people on the planet are turning against each other for food and other necessities. Maybe there’s a degree of wealth inequality that is healthy in an economy, but if it keeps getting worse the consequences will be beyond dystopian. Wealth inequality is directly or indirectly responsible for the worst conditions humanity faces today.
I forget the source where I learned this information, but if I find it I will return with the link.
The most unequal country in the world is the rather rich Netherlands where the heiress of the East India Company and a collection of low key aristocrats live among normal people who would be the upper 10% in most countries.
The problem is not wealth inequality itself, the problem is corrupt governments using income inequality as a tool to get bigger, richer and more powerful off the taxes they collect from the productive and keep promising but never actually deliver to the poor. $2.7T or America's yearly $3.5T revenue are paid by the 3% but we never see any god damn improvement on any public services while Washington is full of first generation millionaires. We need less "eat the rich" and more "audit the government".
i personally would argue, that there is no problem with some people being super-rich at all. Problems arise on the other hand when there are countless people who live in suffering, helplessness and fear even though there ARE enough ressources and sustainable technologies to ensure them a live worth living.
The only thing, that is actively preventing this achievement is, that money is not a tool anymore, it has become a necessity to even survive in a modern society. as long as money is mandatory to live a life in comfort, no one who cares about his personal future will risk losing even a bit of it for the sake of total strangers.
If You complain about inequality and immorality in our economic landscape, but don't endorse unconditional basic income, You yourself are taking part in blocking a bright future for everyone.
Wealth inequality IS a huge problem. While we don't want sameness, I do believe there will be a time when humanity looks back at super wealth hoarding as a mental illness.
Reward and punishment are pillars of justice. Don't work hard, you shouldn't get much. Work hard, you deserve reward. However, there is a facet of "too much". Our world is there. Been there for awhile, and this stratification of the economy is going to be terrible.
Anyone who thinks this current economic stratification is okay, either benefits from this, or doesn't understand the problem.
The question isn't limiting earning, but we need to stop thinking people like Bezos are "self-made". They're not, that's a lie.
You didn't mention anything about the wage being kept low or rich corporations gaining political power to stay in power
What wage for what job in what state in what county in what township?
Because the corporations use federal data. Corporations have bought federal power using their money. I don’t have to keep explaining basic stuff to a 6th grader do I?
3:33 You can have it both ways because proportions exist. If someone is 1,000,000x wealthier than you and saves 75% of their wealth, they are still consuming 250000x more than you ever could while also not spending most of their money, which doesn't stimulate the economy.
I don't get why so many people complain about wealth inequality like it's inherently evil, inequality is natural, we're simply not the same so we don't have/deserve the exact same, the only way inequality can be evil is if it's caused by force
Yeah, but do you think that someone "deserves" to have 100000000000x more than others? Do you really think that someone that was born in a poor village in rural Africa deserves to be living with less than a dollar a day while someone earns in a second way more than what they will in a lifetime? This is without even considering the influence on political systems, economical policies and so on. It is not necessarily that "wealth inequality" is bad per se, but it shouldn't be ever increasing...
That was... Not great 😅 I get you have to defend wealth inequality but the argument in it's defense was pretty shitty.
1:49 is that really what people have a problem with? Does it really matter if they're using a normal human's amount of resources if it means the bottom 99% don't get what they need? And is money not a resource? Because I'm pretty sure they're taking waaaaaay more than a reasonable share. I think the biggest issue is that 99% go without just because the top 1% are hoarding.
3:52 how about they're bad for the economy because them hoarding cash prevents the rest of us from spending to boost the economy? One billionaire can only spend so much - can only live in so many houses. One billion people however can each buy themselves houses. What do you think is better for the economy? Besos buying a dozen homes or the other 300mil people in the US buying a home each?
4:09 they literally do. Using housing as an example of a basic necessity again. How many real estate investors are hoarding housing? Maybe not out of spite but it's still hoarding.
5:30 that's 35% of 300 million people... Idk if I'd call that "not as widespread as you might think". And yes we all still want affordable housing. Those of us with houses would like that asset to be worth something so they can make more money off the homes but NOBODY wants their living expenses going up. And we shouldn't be discounting the struggle of those 35% just because homeowners like their homes getting more expensive.
5:39 even if they are not buying single family homes they are still investing in housing - so all housing prices go up together (mostly). That also ignores the number of people that want housing but don't want single family homes. But the price of their 400 unit investments very much affects the price of single family residences. So this point doesn't matter.
7:34 no offense but this is a really REALLY bad defense. First, there is a misconception that capitalism/rich people drive innovation. In reality these owners only innovate ways to make more money. It's software/online services have all switched to a monthly subscription model instead of the onetime purchase model of the 00's. It's also why drug manufactures prefer creating essentially the same drugs with slightly different ingredients over pouring billions into researching newer more effective drugs. Gates is much more likely to reinvent sharecropping than he is to come up with more effective farming techniques because one GUARANTEES a return on his investment while the other does not - or at least not as quickly. "Old McDonald" who takes pride in his livelihood is probably more likely to innovate over the guy that sees farmland as "just another asset".
8:35 this last one makes some sense. But if you consider that most of those retirement accounts are not guaranteed returns it falls flat. A lot of those accounts are dependent on the stock market. We all know that the super wealthy can manipulate the market how they want through hedge funds - or at the very least they get warned of coming crashes before we do. It can be argued that the retirement account for the wealthy is much more of a "sure thing" than it is for regular people. Especially considering that all of us can be fired at any time but rich people cannot be fired from being rich. A lot of us will never see that retirement account.
At the end of the day you have to consider one thing: is billions of people struggling worth a few people becoming rich enough to buy countries? I get these types of channels attract billionaire simps but unless most of your income comes from capital you own - the billionaires are not on your side.
Thx for a concise counter argument you make a lot of good points
@@Lantern_Shark thank you I appreciate that.
you have no clue how money works if you think the 1% are hoarding cash that you would otherwise spend like the economy is a 0 sum game, nobody is stealing from you, cash is printed according to the goods produced
@@yungmetr0135 "according to goods produced" that's a funny way of saying "according to the whims of the ruling class"
Get the boot out of your mouth buddy, you're drooling everywhere
@@enigmaticheart666 you did not understand what he said. You are still thinking that economy is a zero sum game. A zero sum game means that the amount of resources is kept constant over time and participants can only fight for their share of those resources. Economy is not like that. Yes, resources are limited, but they're far from constant, they keep growing and growing, sometimes exponentially. You can create right now some means to produce goods that wouldn't otherwise come to existence, by, for example, launching a small business. Ain't no billionaire come steal your little shop. If that little business scales up over time and becomes national or multinational, then you've become ultra-wealthy without stealing from anybody's share.
Just to disprove an assertion: Hi, I'm a home owner. Own a half-million dollar home. Affordable housing is a real problem and I'd be happy if my home dropped a few hundred grand in value if all of my friends' housing concerns went away at the same time.
Many people make essential purchases with their homes as collateral; if housing prices drop for everyone, they're gonna get screwed over.
@@Global-ytI guess that’s the problem with all of this isn’t it. It’s economics, someone is always going to get screwed. The real question is who, how much, and the justification for doing so. There’s no way out of this mess that isn’t going to result in losers. More often than not though, the loser with a house is going to be able to take the hit better than a loser who’s one bad month away from homelessness. I concede your point though that the above point isn’t universally true.
@@Squatch213 I do disagree that there always has to be losers; I think much of the world has just hit peak investment and feudal-style extraction is now more lucrative than actual production. Extractionary economics will always be zero-sum.
Inequality is not entirely bad until you realise that your hospital bills will keep you in debt until your death. It is worse in underdeveloped/developing countries.
that's a narrow scope when you don't factor that wealth is used to concentrate wealth and change laws to make it harder for people to be lifted out of poverty. Very narrow way of explaining the problem.
exactly... me, for example, i have very nice job but i am still unable to invest.... i get so frustrated with these videos that are simplifying the problem so much... "just invest and be rich".... i have no money or anything to inherit from parents, my friend for example was given 50k to buy an apartment.... even that amount create fcking HUGE difference in wealth between us.... she bought another apartment while im struggling to buy one, i am competing with them!!!!... video said that rich people dont care about real estate because they are too rich, but there is still tons of other rich people that buy up real estate
0:08 - "Only to be accelerated by actions of governments shutting down small businesses and funneling their profits to the tech giants". I fixed that for you.
Yep. Walmart is allowed to stay open, every tech company can work remote, but local stores were destroyed by the lockdowns.
Restaurants that aren’t huge franchises were hit the hardest. Also the mom and pop retailers.
💯. The same politicians who rant about how bad wealth inequality is continue to put those who try to decrease it and help themselves down.
2:52 Jeff Bazos launched his own space program to keep him occupied.
While I play the free version of Eve Online and Kerbal Space Program
The Kerbal Space program shall inherit the real space program.
we'll never have Eve offline
if we don't kick the space program into high gear
most of the world's problems become pretty trivial once we get proper interplanetary
Playing devil's advocate too often might cause people to mistake you for a demon.
What about all the suburban homes being made and sold at mass to companies right now?
Exactly he completely jumped over that and was like “billionaires invest in real estate DIFFERENTLY!!” LOL ok
@@kuritheking this is the thing i cant stand, when i know they aren't being honest i cant honestly advocate for them having more power than a politician with less accountability
@Trainrhys heads up, you're forced either way
And they aren't being sold for cheap
They are just willing to spend the money because they know that the average house makes a return on investment every year worth more than the people living in them
@Trainrhys I agree, but we also can't allow corporations to be mass land owners
That just makes us surfs while they profit off of our existence
@Trainrhys that really doesnt make any sense to me. renting is giving them money to buy more houses, how does it stop them?
And yes, houses are still being built. just not at the rate of demand. Entire suburban neighborhoods are being built and sold to corporations
I definitely disagree with everything in this video, but it's good to have my knowledge tested every once and a while! Nice video.
Thanks for understanding the point of the video! I also disagree with most of what has been said here but it's fun to play devils advocate.
@@HowMoneyWorks hahahhahahahaha
@@HowMoneyWorks Americans might like your video but as a non American I think it's dogshit. You start taking about global iniquity for the first 25 second then switch to American inequality for 90% of the remaining video.
@3:30: But you can argue both. The velocity of rich people's money is much lower than that of a poor or middle class person, but when the rich do buy something using a significant fraction of their money it's a gigantic yacht, (or 12, looking at you DeVoss) or a trip to space, or a third private jet and so on. Most of a poor/middle class person's money gets spent right away on goods in their neighborhood (high velocity) and on things like groceries (low environmental impact compared to planes/yachts).
I agree you can argue in defense of anything, just not always well.
If one person has ten sandwiches and another person has one sandwich, that's far better than if everyone has a quarter of a sandwich. If one person has ten sandwiches and everyone else has the crusts, that's when inequality is a problem.
Focus too much on America instead on a more global scale, and wasn't really what I expected as counter argument because the things that you have mentioned, saying that wealth inequality is not that bad is no use to those who are dying from not have access to resources due to wealth inequality
In what way is someone in the usa owning 10 houses while his neighbours own only one influencing the amount of food produced in e.g. africa?
Wealth inequality (as mentioned in the video) has no consequences when it comes to day-to-day necessities, if anything a big centralised farm produces mich more food than individual family-led farms.
@@1CrazyDummy0 because the current system requires an under class to function, so in return the under class will have a harder time to maintain their normal life. It is possible for one person to get rich in this world but it is not possible for everyone to get rich at the same time
@@smc9207 Elaborate on both your claims.
@@OzixiThrill It is kind of like the problem of exploiting workers, why people came up with this kind of term is because worker's life sometimes depends on horrible working conditions to live and yet worker at the same is one of the essential buildings blocks for the current system to function, there has to be someone to do the job. So as a result the wealth inequality problem actually means someone will have a harder time to gain material resources for their standards of living due to the profit motive of capitalism tends to drive down the cost.
@@smc9207 Counterpoint - The current system does not require, nor does it necessitate workers being screwed over; Larger companies do it to increase their profit margins, but there are companies (admittedly rare) that treat their workers well.
It is entirely dependent on the employer.
I know this is a purely theoretical approach not aligning with your personal views. Nevertheless, I don't think the case you are making is a strong one. You manage to cast some doubt at the extend of harm produced by wealth inequality and how the empirical evidence may not very well show such a huge disparity but the remarks you are making are purely mitigatory. You don't manage to make a case as to how wealth inequality produces any unique and positive contributions towards society. The closest you come to that is in the remark that Bill Gates buying land may lead to innovation in food production but it feels like a merely a line thrown in there. It doesn't prove as to why him or any other billionaire has an active incentive to innovate in a way that isn't just "innovation" but one that is meaningful and meeting the immediate needs of people, even if they have that motivation it is unclear why we have to wait for the whims of the rich to align with the suffering of the rest and not take collective actions towards helping the most vulnerable.
I think there was a big missed opportunity to explore this idea further. I think you could make the case that having a small number of savvy people with access to a decent amount of resources acting outside the usual resource allocation system (i.e. traditional govt spending, or mass-market charities) is useful. For example, in the case of farm productivity, it's actually arguable that billionaires led to huge advances in food production during the Green Revolution (and made a massive improvement to quality of live around the world). I think people tend to underestimate the impact of philantropy, which I think is able to do things that govt and conventional charities can't. Of course, as you point out, that is reliant on the whims of those individuals, and you could argue that the amount they control is too much, or that it would be better handled by other means, but I think it is something worth exploring in more depth if you're going to make a case for wealth inequality.
The biggest problem with your standpoint is that the alternative to innovation by Bill Gates would be innovation by governments, which are often controlled by lobbyists, which as far as farming is concerned, are the environmental groups who do not want genetically modified food, even if that is necessary to provide everyone with the necessary nutrition
Is it not good to doubt things?
The US government literally pays farmers farm subsidies not to farm, think about that. Do you REALLY think that someone as intelligent as Bill Gates can't think of a better way to run farms than paying farmers not to farm ? If a wealthy person owns a farm, to actually run it as a business to generate returns, I think they can probably do it better than the government farm system, its not a hard bar to get over...
Yeah, I don't think a thorough defense of the topic is really necessary. It suffices to show that wealthy inequality is only tolerably harmful in case it's considered unavoidable in face of worse alternatives.
The disparity is still at historical highs. The last time inequality was as insane as it is now was the gilded age. Now idk if you ever heard how that ended but it wasn't great. So even if we accept your arguments at face value, this still ends in economic collapse. We have historical evidence we have to consider and the evidence doesn't point to anything good.
This was a very interesting video as usual.
"Wealth inequality isn't that bad because pensions" lmao ok
The children scavenging rubbish heaps are relieved they no longer need concern themselves over wealth inequality now they know what great pensions they can get.
Lol how many companies even still offer pensions
Pensions would work if governments increased the age gap to get it. Back in the 50s or 40s getting to 70 was a miracle. Now it should be 85-90+. Not everyone can be paid to do nothing, so it should be rewarded to those who love to those ages.
@@TouringWolf42 I just looked up the life expectancy over the years. Didn't realize how low it used to be.
@@TheUSDebt Part of that was infant mortality, but yes, not too many people survived past age 65 when the US started its Social Security program.
I hesitate to comment on this for fear of giving it a boost in the algorithm. I watched a couple other of your uploads and they seemed okay. However, this whole 'its okay to let the rich do the evil stuff they are doing' makes me scratch my head. Wealth inequality can be proven to be a dire threat with a few simple examples:
Reporter: The USA has an ever increasing homeless and poverty problem.
Media: We're owned by a billionaire who doesn't want to pay taxes so do a piece about the ballooning deficit.
Politician: My rich donors who give me lots of money and my kids insanely well paying jobs do not want me to raise taxes so I will either promise to raise taxes and then do nothing or tell people it's their fault they are poor.
Reporter: The USA military / President / CIA has determined that they want to start a war based on a obviously false premise.
Media: We're owned by a billionaire who will make LOTS of money on this war - not to mention ratings. We will broadcast non - stop how terrible the rulers of this country are.
Politician: You know... rich donors. Send in the police to brutalize protestors.
I hope you are familiar with the study showing how the needs of the working and lower classes are never addressed by policy but the slightest desires of the wealthy are ALWAYS met?
www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materials/MSNBC%20review%20of%20A&I/13317619-princeton-scholar-poor-and-middle-class-have-no-say-in-government-policy
You could have just started your comment with “I didn’t listen to the video but I’m just going to shoot my mouth off anyway so please feel free to ignore” and it would have been easier for everyone.
@@tylerbrown4483 I DID listen to the whole thing, cringing all the way after 'the rich don't eat any more than a normal person so how can they contribute to the worlds troubles'? Or some such cr@p. I feel bad commenting on this video again.
@@belmiris1371 so you listened to the part from 0:45 to 1:10 where he explains that he doesn’t actually believe the argument he’s making but rather feels it’s important to understand the counter argument thoroughly to enhance your own understanding?
Cause if you did you must’ve just gotten so caught up in your feels by the end of the video that you forgot…
Seriously, he has a whole series where he argues the indefensible. My advice to you is to try and get to a point where you can engage your critical mind and listen for the sake of understanding when you hear something you don’t like, rather than just letting your emotions run away and listening for the sake of forming a rebuttal. It will make you a better communicator.
"But they don't use their influence to say "Haha I'm going to hoard basic necessities so you poors can't have any"".
Press X for hard doubt.
They trade drinking water supplies like oil.
I don't like the idea of focusing on wealth inequality rather than providing a social safety net that prevents people from falling below a certain level. Wealth inequality as an emphasis implies that not only should people have a comfortable life, but it's wrong in general for anyone to have significantly more than anyone else. Good arguments can be made for the first position and helping people at the bottom have the essentials of life, but I find the second position incredibly distasteful, because it essentially amounts to saying people need to share wealth equally and that no one should be allowed to accumulate very much. I just don't believe that people are equals or that equality of financial outcomes would be more "fair" somehow, I think that it's basically an excuse by angry and very jealous people to steal resources from the wealthy because they feel life dealt them or people they care about a bad hand. And I have a feeling their "principles" would change the moment they were in charge of all that money they seized from the rich and now get to decide who gets that money and tracking to make sure things are "equal and fair."
But you see capitalism needs the hungry, the unemployed, the homeless. That's how they can drive down the price of labor and keep it there. By making us disposable while making us dependent on our employers. The "minimum wage" Is an insult. It's what the nation had to DEMAND they pay their workers.
Who would want to do these low-paid exploitative jobs if our "living floor" was much higher and our lives secure?
I subscribed to your channel not even thinking about it. Usually I check how many views and such a video gets to see if their an experienced TH-camr worth subscribing to. After I subscribed I checked expecting a few hundred thousand per video..and it was like 7k. Wow. Your channel has so much room to grow. Keep doing what your doing.
Whatever your views on wealth taxes may be, if they must exist i think it should soely tax wealth gained instead on total worth. It would slow down the growing gap and give the benifit of a growimg market amd economy, more effectivly ,and could be used for social peograms and pay of government debt. It would also seem more fair than a goverment taking a percentage of everything you have year after year and wouldnt feel "spiteful/envious" and like "theft" as other wealth tax plans does to economic conservatives.
Does that mean no more property tax? It seems weird to pay a tax on something you own but perhaps a tax on purchase makes sense.
I don't agree with the idea of a wealth tax on a fundamental leve. lt is akin to spending years building a house for the government to start taking walls off every year because it "got too big" and it's "unfair". Income taxes are much fairer.
There needs to be a cap for income and net worth. Above this limit your properties and earnings should be on 100% tax rate. This would solve the problem of wealth hoarding and level the playing field
I simply don't understand the argument "its not as bad as it was back then" its the same shit black people were told after slavery but were still segregated. Almost everything gets better with time but its essentially pointless to use it as a counter argument to how bad wealth inequality is. I live in canada, I come from a india, I have seen 3 weeks old babies die on the street cause parents had to means to keep up with them, I simply do not care how far we have or haven't come, I care to get that shit resolved as soon as possible.
Edit: way more bootlickers in my comments then I was expecting.
Then sell your house and give to the poor.
The funny thing is, if the reason "3 weeks old babies die on the street" is communism, like my parents' generation witnessed, you wouldn't have the same view.
"I live in the UK, I come from China, I have seen 3 weeks old babies die on the street cause of communism, I care to eliminate communist ideology as soon as possible." Or something like that.
Edit: spelling
I disagree. You have to look at the quality of life for all. Even the poorest families in the west are better off than the average families in cuba.
Cuba is a financial system that you are probably advocating for (I don't know for sure, but the nature of your comment leads me to believe that this is true)
@@alenpaul2523 i don't own one. I work minimum wage if me selling my imaginary house would fix inequality id gladly do so.
"Resolved"? Everyone has a different view of how much equality means the problem is solved, even amongst the left.
2:50 $500 suit?💀💀💀... Lmao I'm a Kenyan student earning half of that monthly and life ain't pretty tough... What is going on in the west.
Cost of living is madness over here. That's one of the reasons why we've got a pretty bad homeless problem, despite all our development.
@@E4439Qv5 💀💀💀💀💀I cannot imagine life in the West NY dude
@@mwanikimwaniki6801 If you earn half of 500 monthly, then I earn 15 times what you earn in a month, and I still cannot afford to buy property within 100 miles of my hometown. Location is everything and the "poor" (as we see them) in other countries have it better. Money is worthless and does not bring happiness.
@@YFZriderdude15 Wow. I am now virtually unemployed haha and I probably live on a quarter of what I used to. And my life is still pretty good. Wtf yoh
@@mwanikimwaniki6801 "WTF" indeed! Unless you're starving, I'd recommend staying where you are. It ain't better over here.
I don’t think the inequality itself is much of a problem. I think that it is a symptom of the larger problem that is the accumulation of the power of certain members of the 1%.
Aren't strict regulations a main driving factor preventing affordable housing? If prices in city centres become unaffordable (because too much capital coming in) wouldn't that be a strong incentive for wealth creation like new awesome 600 meters skyscrapers?
High skyscrapers are bad for living.
Better solution are "comie blocks", sure they aren't pretty but they are good for affordable housing.
And strict regulations are very location specific.
Sure I wouldn't like to see a huge building in the middle if historical city centre.
@@grzegorzswist Singapore with their HDB blocks. See PolyMatter "How Singapore Solved Housing"
regulations are there for a reason.... imagine if you bought a house and right next to you somebody would open mega club that would blast music until 3am.... or just build a house that would block all sunshine to yours.... everybody is blaming regulations until they are the ones on the receiving end of "free market"
Move out of the cities. Use the internet to gain education and make money. That is the new revolution. We've had the internet for so long, and it's changed the world a lot, but we haven't discovered all of its power yet.
@@Zoltan1251 You choose to build you house there now deal with it.
I viewed this video when it has already been available for 3 years. I am a big fan of your channel, and look forward to all the other great videos I have missed.
Here is something surprising, the wealth graph of a society with equal savings will not be uniform. If everyone starts saving $10k/year at 20 and retires at 60, that is going to produce a wealth distribution with a slant. If they invest that money, there will be an exponential curve. If they start with college debt of $50k/year, there will be some with negative wealth, and the average wealth of the first 10 years (25% of the working population) will be zero.
This should be what we compare the current wealth inequality to. Of course, the current situation is much more drastic than this, but it is unfair to expect a uniform wealth distribution.
Finally, someone who doesn't let his emotions get to him when talking about this topic. Don't get why everyone wants to tax the rich, when the government wouldn't even use that money in the way the common people would think.
I work part time and earn minimum wage, i paid more federal taxes (ratio to wealth gained) than Warren buffet last year, I'm sorry that you fail to see how fucked up that is.
you make a good point, the fact that lots of people forget in terms of redistributing wealth is that governments are not designed to help the people and never have been, taxing the rich is not the singular solution that is required but complete governmental reform/revolution as well, for instance if a business person was to directly give a politician in office money in order to influence policy, that's bribery and its illegal but if you hire someone else to give the money to someone in office and call them a lobbyist its suddenly legal despite achieving the exact same result (the same is true in the uk but instead it goes by the phrase "party donation"). We need to demand that these systems are changed as well as they exclusively serve people with the power (the capital) to use them, government should be used to serve everyone with equality, equity and ultimately justice and not just the people who demand power
@@harshsharma8707 He's not saying that isn't fucked up, he's saying people who expect things to change just because the government increases taxes on the rich are going to be sorely dissapointed, because the government will just find new ways to waste that money. The US government pays a lot for social security and the social security system in the US is worse than in countries that pay far less. It's not a lack of funding that is messing up US social securirty for example, it's government inefficiency. Same thing in Belgium where I live. Belgians have a very good social security system, but we pay more than 50% of what we earn in taxes. Compared to what we get for paying more than 50% on taxes the government is not giving us a good deal. Even with all those taxes the Belgium government can't get its budget straight. Why? Because Belgium is a horribly inefficient state and a lot of the politicians are idiots more concerned with keeping this country together so they can keep lining their pockets than actually fixing stuff. One hilarious poll showed the Belgians have less trust in their politicians than Indians and Pakistani have in theirs hahaha.
Taxes in Belgium have been increasing for a while and trust me the government always finds new ways to still end up with a deficit. It's in my opinion a failure of democracy, democracy means politicians care mostly for short-term gains, becaus the long term is the problem for the guy elected after you. Hell if you can get your successor to be blamed for your failings or certain problems then maybe you can get reelected more easily next time. The guy having to raise taxes usually does not get reelected even though the reason why taxes have to be raised is because of his predecessor's idiocy. Few people will do the necesarry research to figure out who is really to blame for a certain problem.
@@TheShadowOfZama I'm sorry but I'm not the average guy, I'm sure the us government would find it in its best interest to just use that money to increase the military and police budget, but I hardly think its possible to lessen wealth inequality without taxing people a million times richer than you and I. And you really gotta know that the wealth inequality exist outside USA too lmao.
Exactly. If the problem were the gov needing more money then the issues wouldn't be as complex as they are. People just feel outraged because they don't like the fact that some people simply have more money than they do.
Great series. In a world where all issues are being pressed into unidimensional single-acceptable viewpoints, this kind of exercise is incredibly important.
Love the video but I do think it may ignore some other issues. For example gini coefficients seem to suggest wealth inequality leads to violent crime
A logical conclusion
@@icemike1 not really correlation doesn’t equal causation
@@luisandrade2254 many studies have been done finding a direct connection between poverty and crime, which isn't exactly quantum mechanics in complexity. When people are poor and feel trapped in that unpleasant existence they are more likely to commit crimes. I mean someone really does not get that a homeless person might be more likely to steal some food than someone who has 3 houses and 2 yachts.
@@danielbrown8812 poverty is not the same as inequality and poor people are more likely to be the VICTIMS of crimes not the perpetrators. So even that relationship is backwards
@@luisandrade2254 yeah, try adding the word "wealth." Wealth inequality is speaking specifically about a portion of society having little to no wealth. That IS the issue this is talking about.
A big problem with the argument around the Gates owned farms, is that its assuming 1) we have food shortages right now and 2) the new technologies gates funds would remove these shortages.
this immediately falls flat, we already overproduce food in a GROSS abundance, we have plenty of food, the "shortage" only comes from the inaccessibility of that food to the poor. and no amount of farming tech is going to solve that
Exactly, at least in the US, we are a nation where the cheese caves are real and farmers are paid by the government to destroy whole crops to keep the agri market from bottoming out. It’s frustrating when I see the price of milk or cheese spike, let alone the price of corn products.
It's not about consumption. It's about bidding up the prices of financial assets. The operation of the US economic involve the production and sale of goods and services from which a profit is extracted. Some of the profits are used to pay dividends, the rest is retained. Decades ago the bulk of these retained profits were spent on creating more productive capital (i.e. means of production). Productive capital combines with labor to grow GDP. This process of accumulation of productive capital is what we call economic growth. Today the majority of retained profits are used to buy stock, driving up the index level. Capitalism is increasingly not accumulating productive capital (and growing the economy). Rather, it is accumulating the financial representation of productive capital (shareholder value). Rather than building a real, tangible future economy, we are building financial pyramids.
The cause of this is low tax rates on high incomes. Eventually capitalism will simply collapse as everything will have become financial and virtual (think platform companies) and our system will be overwhelmed by some less-developed polity who still has a capitalism based on the real rather than the financial.
I lost a friendship over this topic just this week. I dont think inequality is bad if absolute poverty and other human well being metrics are heading in a positive direction (which they are). Also inequality is the measure of a distribution over a sample size, it is not an objective measure like the share of the global population living under $3 a day.
For example: In 1990, 48 percent of all Black families with a single moher in the United States lived below the poverty level. In 2018, that figure had decreased to 27 percent. Inequality would still show these families as the bottom 20% and no progress being made but they are demonstrably not below the poverty line anymore in absolute terms.
Don't lose friends over sterile political discussions. They may have different opinion from Us (average people watching economic videos in their free time) but that's ok.
@@apc9714 yeah, it went from a fun discussion of differing views to him getting legit pissed off and leaving the chat 😳
My trouble with the growing amount of rich people is that we have companies catering particularly to these income brackets. Since resources are limited, particularly in certain types of product manufacturing, the lower income people are not able to have as much choice in the products available to them, or have to make do with inferior quality products.
I don't understand, what products have so much class overlap and are so limited that the rich are limiting the amount of products available to poorer incomes?
@@matthewkemp5343 Electronics from what I've seen, but I doubt it's limited to that.
Im not buying ur statement. Firstly it doesn't really make any sense from a capitalist market standpoint. For instance the majority of products r made for the general populace of the given market. Secondly products r often built with lower quality specs to save both parties money and resources.
Theres a lot more to why products r low quality, but suffice to say it has little to do with the 1% being the primary market focus.
If ur talking about rich people as in first world countries, than i semi agree with u. But theres still probelms with that argument.
@@magnuserror9305 How doesn't it make sense from a capitalist market standpoint? The amount of wealthy people today as well as the money they have is substantial enough to fill a whole company's consumerbase. They don't have to even consider making products for lower incomes. Enough companies do this and there's nothing left for lower income people to buy.
If you look at the amount of scalping that's been happening in the pandemic, you'll understand where I'm coming from. The people with more money are literally denying others the resources they need by driving free market prices up to stupid levels. Thanks to low supply. And this is gonna have a permanent effect via higher prices by default from companies. Since now they know they can charge higher and get away with it.
@@truegamer_007 That literally isn't a 1 to 1 of wut ur saying. Like i said rich people are not market focus at all. They are the market focus of a small amount of products. The mass majority of all tech and products. Are built for the average person.
Ur gunna have to show me stats on this. Cuz last time i checked, the mass majority of electronics r not marketed to the rich. They are marketed to the average consumer.
Do u even know how scalping works. Or even wut it is. The general goal of scalping isn't to sell to the rich. Its to sell to the average consumer in a pinch. If u imagine an average gdp of 50k is rich than thats just bonkers. The super poor might have an issue with scalping prices, being unattainable. But anyone with a 25-50k gdp on average can easily afford recent electronics scalping prices.
They're not gonna like this one.....
I think you might be right.
Maybe I should have held off a bit before giving all of these new subscribers a reason to get angry at me.
@@HowMoneyWorks nah, you do start the vids saying its not your opinion but you do it to give perspective. its a good, albeit its not really convincing at all. like, trying to say that it couldnt be better is just plain wrong even with all these arguments, and with the some of the stuff hapening, we see the wealthy not even trying to make it better sometime... Some are really irresponsable.
@@HowMoneyWorks Nah. You were based af.
When you have a significant amount of working people earning so little, that they live below the "poverty line," and qualify for government assistance, and others who can't afford a place to live with a permanent address while sleeping in campers, tents, and on the street. Or working people who live paycheck, to paycheck, that have no "disposable income" left to save, invest, or enjoy leisure while living in a state of perpetual debt, and stuck in jobs with stagnant incomes, or little to no "upward mobility." Statistically, the MAJORITY of people in America fall into these three categories. And their hopelessness and frustration is growing. That does not bode well for the 1% who control the vast majority of wealth in America. The wealth divide in this country is REAL, and it's GROWING.
I'm probably not the first to notice but. You actually can have it both ways. Because while Jeff doesn't eat hundreds of millions of times as much food as a poor person. That doesn't mean that a poor person can afford the food that is available. So the rich are both bad for the economy for not consuming enough AND bad for taking up too many resources. Because while the resources are available you can only use them if you have the currency to claim them. Resulting in the whole "we have enough food to feed 10 billion people yet people starve". And "X million tons of goods being thrown away because they didn't sell".
The pension thing is spot on, Im australian and we all have mandatory superannuation and it's counted in net worth placing us extremely high per capita
someone's going to write an angry article about you, I can feel it.
Honestly I think the policies are not changing fast enough to keep up with new millionaires. And the logic behind owning a piece of land regardless of how far away or how big it is also need to change. People need to start living in a little more efficient system so that younger people don't just keep getting pushed further and further out of cities or into God damn cages.
"People need to start living in a...." - well, we don't "need" to, we could keep going and probably just wipe ourselves out of existence as a species... like, we shouldn't pretend that that isn't an option, especially when it's the option that we seem to be heading full speed towards... and we're all too busy with our addiction to thinking bad things about each other to notice our own role, so while nobody wants to be heading in the direction we are heading, nobody wants to stop doing any of the things they are doing that are taking us there.
@@annoloki I support us destroying ourselves as quickly as possible so that the crows can take over. Not even joking
Só you want to limit property ownership? Didn’t work that well last time we tried it
@@annoloki you do realize not living in an expensive
City center doesn’t actually kill you right? Why do youngsters make such a big fuss about this?
Love your content! So proud you're over 65k now! Just realised you had a "Join" option! Its not much but I hope it helps! 💚
Jaska - thanks for your support and kind words, and thanks for being a member. It means a lot!
One of the core issues with wealth is its complete disconnection with the actual value of work. Following the exact same logic that person A who earns 1 Mn times more than person B doesn't actually consume 1 Mn times more resources than person B (which is true), the work of that person A is NOT 1 Mn times more valuable (both metaphorically and semantically) than the work of person B. Not even if you're the CEO of a company with thousands of workers worldwide. Even less so if your wealth comes from mere asset management (mostly real estate), which mostly requires an initial investment capital rather that supernatural management skills. Therefore, if being rich so often comes down to who was lucky enough to have a good inheritance, that wealth is perceived as not deserved. And that's the core issue with the wealth gap: the Top 1% - and even the Top 10% in any country - have more money than they will ever be able to spend even living the most extreme lifestyles, having that money stemming from (arguably) unjustified sources while so many other % of the population struggle to earn enough to outbalance the ever rising cost of life while working mad hours at jobs ranging from decent to pretty highly qualified. Which is why people don't question as much the notion of wealth per se as they question wealth distribution amongst the population.
The topic at hand is: what would be the acceptable range between the lowest income and the highest income? Is the top most difficult/demanding/highest qualification job 10, 50, 100, 1.000 times more valuable than the lowest one? Accordingly, should a CEO earn 10, 100, 1.000 or 1 Mn times more than a trainee? Finding that "ideal" gap is extremely challenging but beneficial in terms of how a nation values its citizens and rewards hard work over luck and birth rights. And as a side effect, taking into account the fact that any extreme proposal (10x is obviously too low, 1 Mn times obviously too high...) will require a rock-solid justification, it also means that any amount earned by any individual outside of that admitted gap can be taxed and reinjected into the system to help raise the living standards of the majority.
That is, if your goal - as a country - is to make your citizens happy, efficient and loyal. Obviously, through centuries-long promotion of bottomless riches and the freedom to do anything you want including stomping on the neighbour's head if it profits you in any way, the United States chose the opposite path and have work- and wealth-related issues of their own, including keeping a significant fraction of the population on the verge of slavery, misery and depression.
Personally, I don't mind wealthy people, I just dislike useless wealthy people who don't contribute to society or who harm it. You can determine who that might be.
than again people who are wealthy will only be wealthy due to the systhem that has been put in place by the wealthy thus making them feed of the rest of us like slaves to a system
A point you did not cover is the methodes used to gain that amount of wealth. There are very few who actually contribute that amount of value to society. Many insead got rich by being in the right spot at the right time. Therefore this is a big misallocation of resources.
Who did this?
Was there an argument about the wealth they hold overall?
I just dont see how any of those arguments work until you have a society where people dont die from very simple causes due to a lack of resources? (In some cases 400 a month?)
Money isn’t a resource in itself. It allows you to purchase resources. It’s an important distinction, especially when needing to consider inflation.
@@zyrohnmng In the context of my argument youre splitting hairs.
@@HealingSwordsman it’s very important to consider when you’re trying to come up with a method for the wealthy to distribute their wealth. Because if you assume their assets inherently maintain their value, or uncirculated money holds the same value when returned to the economy, you can come across significant problems at scale.
@@zyrohnmng You are 10 steps ahead - again semantics. We arent talking about a method of distribution - we are talking about whether its ok to have this level of inequality.
@@HealingSwordsman it being okay or not is heavily dependent on whether we can transition to a system that fixes the issue, for example, the 400 a month you mentioned.
And I apologize for making that assumption, but the way you worded your post made it sound like you were implying a redistribution as a solution and already stating this current inequality is not okay.
5:35 - Well this video aged poorly. BlackRock has bought up a massive portion of land assets recently (included residential homes). Infact just last year they were responsible for 44% of all residential purchases. Who owns BlackRock? Billionaires. I'd say we should go one step further than taxing the rich at this point if things don't change soon. Anyone feeling a little French? 🥖
I like to listening to this channel while at work, helps me stay salty.
I love the concept! There are a couple of things that really need mentioning about the various arguments. Let's start with the issue that the ultra wealthy do not spend nearly enough. Comparing this to the fact that the wealthy already consume a lot more than most other people, thus being detrimental to the environment, appears to make this an either or situation. It is not.
The problem with trickle down economics concerns how much of the economic growth actually goes to improving the lives of the masses. Most of the excess wealth would better serve the country if it was distributed differently. Also, most people would not spend their additional income in ways that would be as damaging to the environment as the ultra wealthy currently do. The additional wealth spread across a lot more people would not result in nearly as much environmental damage as the same wealth concentrated in the very few.
Moving on to the real estate market, while for the most part the local wealthy are not responsible for the large increase in prices everywhere, granted. But some are very much be at fault in cities. Australia and Canada have had massive increases in real estate prices that go far beyond their economic growth. Foreign investors started buying so much in cities, without even occupying the space, that real estate prices sky rocketed. As such, housing became too costly for a larger proportion of people. If the space is not even rented, that can leave people homeless or force them out of the city. Only by adding heavy taxes on unoccupied properties in high density areas were the major cities able to limit the price increases. So yeah, again the wealth inequality was bad at large.
Real estate in the US is undergoing the same process and has grown exponentially since 2008 when foreclosures exploded as a direct result of the process by which the properties were sold (using exotic loans designed for investors to finance long-term mortgages they were NOT designed for), collateralized and sold as investments on Wall St. What investors learned in 2008 is that while buying severely depressed real estate in the foreclosure market and selling it can be very profitable, buying it in large numbers and RENTING THEM can be even MORE lucrative. So, city leaders don’t issue new building permits so their rich friends (and sometimes their rich selves) can stay rich or get richer while they control the rental space available. So, without enough income (median household income in US is $57,000 a year) and housing prices blowing right past any possibility of qualifying for a mortgage loan big enough to afford a house - median in the US $200,000, in my state is $290,000 for a single-family home - not exceeding 4X annual income of applicants, the problem becomes plain. Can’t qualify for a mortgage over $228,000, but average price is $290,000 if it is sold for list (which never happens anymore, instead you enter a sort of twisted auction and bidding war with unknown or, I suspect, nonexistent bidders, driving the price up, even further. The property then goes to the investor/investment company that outbid you because you couldn’t carry a monthly payment in excess of $1,200 or so, but now they’ll rent it back to you at $1,800 or $2,000 a month or more. They’re happy to let you struggle, exhaust your savings, and sacrifice things like auto repair, medical treatment, braces for the kids, and anything else you need to give up to keep a roof over your heads, then run you through a $100 eviction process in court the moment you’re completely tapped. The idea of being put out on the street with all your stuff and your kids is impossibly frightening. No rent controls, no rental purchase controls, not enough building permits - by design as this benefits everyone except the family that needs a house - too many non-resident, absentee foreign investor owners, and everyone making bank with no consideration for the families or the future of America. Job “creators” are launching a massive propaganda campaign to convince the next gen that homeownership is a waste of time, money, and resources - that renting/leasing is the way of the future. This flies in the face of the history of America and the most successful, economically sound middle class in the world as the one common factor that made it possible for the majority was home ownership. Being a subscription slave may sound cheaper, easier, and less hassle - but that overlooks the reality that you will forever be subject to what someone else demands that you pay, regardless of what you’re capable of earning. If there is anything more frightening than the thought of one day being employed by the company who owns my house and everything in it, than working for the debt I owe to the “Company Store,” I don’t know what it is. Slavery in the 21st century in which the capitalist, finally accepting that they can’t treat minorities, immigrants, women or any other protected class differently from white, male workers, has decided we’re right. If they can’t enslave on part of the population or another, they’ll enslave its entirety.
All that government regulation and union busting Reagan started has finally come home to roost. And far too many people only realize it when they get caught up in it - too late. Yeah, I’ve grown a bit cynical in more than 50 years on this planet because I’m old enough to remember when America was its people and not just its rich people, when education was lauded as a noble pursuit and the quality was second to none, when home ownership was easier and encouraged because it was good for the community, good for the people, good for the families, healthcare was affordable BEFORE insurance companies got into it (price didn’t skyrocket because doctors got greedy, but because a greedy middleman entered the fray and took a cut like the mafia protection rackets). Want to “Make America Great Again”? Go back to the policies enacted by FDR to get us out of the Great Depression and through World War II and re-enact them - including and especially the taxes on rich and corporations that varied from 60%-90%- and actually make America BACK into what it was intended to be and what it was before greedy, self-serving capitalists began to dismantle and sell her to the highest bidder. Estimates on the amount of money the oligarchs have siphoned out of our economy since 1980 hover around $52 Trillion. Enough to pay off the national debt more than TWICE. Put the money BACK into education as a State run entity because NOBODY should make profit on our schools - not “administrators,” not “food companies,” not contract labor providers. What was an experiment in efficiency to save money and increase effectiveness in education has proven to be a cash cow for private industry, costing FAR more (especially in direct expenses) and producing a grossly inferior product. Ditto healthcare, utilities, housing, and food. If we allow capitalists to continue to hoard and sell the necessities of life back to those of us who actually produce them, we’re far bigger fools than I ever would have imagined.
Restoration begins with organizing labor. End Right to Work across the country and require labor representation in all private companies. Workers should be able to negotiate their compensation and benefits. After all, it’s all we’ve got to bargain with. In my mind, it’s unlawful even to push all union activity off-site and behind closed doors. People shouldn’t have to worry about their jobs just because they want to make more money or get better benefits.
Trickle down economics is not a real economic theory. It is probably the biggest economic misconception in the modern world. Free market advocates support supply side economics, and no, they are not the same thing.
"most people would not spend their additional income in ways that would be as damaging to the environment as the ultra wealthy currently do" - Extremely strongly disagree with that. While true that the ultra wealthy consume much more, they're only able to that because they're a few. There's no possible scenario where any large group of citizens have the same lifestyle as the ultra wealthy (there's not enough resources in the world). As a consequence, the environmental footprint of the ultra-wealthy population is only a fraction of the total footprint of their nations. As evidence, just compare the biggest company (not the richest person) to their home country's GDP. It's consumption at large and industry what drives environmental damage the most. So, if you distribute money to the population at large and instead of saving it all they use any part of that surplus to boost their consumption, definitely their environmental impact would be boosted too. Whereas if you keep increasing the wealth of the ultra wealthy, as explained in the video, they'd be hard pressed to boost their consumption any larger.
Ok só 1 trickle down economics is not an actual thing no research paper or economist has ever used that term it’s a made up internet thing but more importantly the rich holding on to their money makes sense from a capital allocation perspective why would you want to take money from people who know how to manage and use money? Doesn’t sound very efficient to me
@@luisandrade2254 Well trickle down economics is a good way to illustrate how the specific case of supply-side economics favouring the very rich is meant to work.
Now arguing that keeping ever more money concentrated on the rich because they would be more competent at managing it completely ignores the fact that they are failing at managing it in such a way as to benefit society as a whole. They are failing so hard that the greater the wealth inequality, the worse things get for the lower economic spectrum, to the point of abject poverty.
While eliminating wealth inequality completely is not desirable - there are good reasons why communism failed - the excess wealth must be tapped in order to ensure a baseline standard of living and growth opportunity for everyone.
Where the market fails at doing this, it becomes the government's responsibility to intervene. How the government intervenes is another debate entirely.
There's never a shortage of people who think that it's greedy to keep the money you earn.
It's ironic that these same people don't think it's greedy to want someone else's money...
The entire inequality "argument" is just petty jealousy on a grand scale. The "poor" are wealthier today than ever, and contribute less than ever. But they're still okay with demanding money from those who do earn it.
thats the dumbest, the most inaccurate argument here.... if you say that poor poeple contribute less then rich you are just naive little sunshine and frankly brainwashed... and nobody demands money, but security... if you cannot even understand that nobody is talking about money transfers here you are really just lost
@@tmk5517 dont patronize me, i have masters in economy my dude.... its about proportion of you wealth.... poor people contribute more proportionally than rich... just because rich spend more on capital goods it doesnt make it any less messed up.... Amazon is using benefiting from roads they destroy with their trucks, from law system in place and do not contribute proportionally to the usage....
i would very much support Bill Gates idea that capital should be taxed.... just because worker is not alive doesnt mean it doesnt have to pay taxes.... Marxism is very much still alive because capitalism cannot create proper counter-argument to Surplus value, thats the main issue... taxation of capital could be the way to adress the issue
@@Zoltan1251 yeah, cuz Bubba on the corner created Ford, or Microsoft, of Amazon...
@@ChristnThms obviously you are very privileged rich guy.... if you cant even look at very obvious problems there is no talking to people like you
@@Zoltan1251 which of us is making assumptions about the other, and drawing conclusions without any information?
My biggest issue with the ultra wealthy is that so many of them don't seem to shove much back into the economy in avenues that will create more jobs/better civilization.
Lol what? Amazon created hundreds of thousands of jobs and the same goes for all the big corps
@@johnlee416 What kind of jobs exactly? Jobs with extremely high turnover rates? Jobs where your hours are closely monitored, and you’re heavily punished for falling out of line? Just because a company creates the bare minimum amount of jobs to account for growth while paying said workers the bare minimum, doesn’t exactly mean they’re doing some kind of great deed.
They did, but more towards highly specified Jobs that require critical thinking and skill, not brainless work like normal wages
@@casualtake1497 I'm talking jobs across the board and in the countries that made them rich.
@@gt1r A lot of their jobs are above market rate, and if you're referring to their warehouse jobs, they still pay $20/hr which is more than what you'd make as a cashier at some retail store. Also you talk about high turnover rates and jobs that "punish falling out of line" to that I'd say quit and work another job. It's not the responsibilty of a corporation to accomodate the types of jobs you want. They're a business and if you don't like that, you can quit and work elsewhere. I'm tired of this victimhood mentaility that has infected America.
Wealth redistribution isn't about targeting the rich and make them poor, but enabling the poor and hungry to at least live above the poverty line. Everybody is allowed to be rich, but we shouldn't allow anyone to be hungry.
"they don't hoard those necessities so they can say 'Haha, you can't have any!'"
true, the reason is much more straightforeward: The best business is the one that can't be replaced.
It’s still stupid that one man can own so much money and there’s still so many people in just the us who don’t even own a house or can barely feed themselves… you can’t defend people like that imo
Living in the Phoenix area, investors owned homes account for a huge percent of our market. Most places I would want to live are the same.
More importantly when wealth inequality becomes as bad as it is getting you'll find products/services are more and more directed at the upper middle class to wealthy. The middle class is further squeezed and the poor just do without. Such as housing. Few homes are built for that middle class demographic anymore.
Actually, through local law, in most places it is literally illegal to build small homes or have a small plot, and illegal to build your own home. So it is literally illegal to own and live in a home worth less than the market average. It's ridiculous, and when people try to build small homes worth 20k or less the government will majorly fine you, enough to bankrupt most people, arrest you and send you to jail, or take the property. It's disgusting, it leaves an entire generation of young adults homeless or almost homeless, the life expectancy in the usa is decreasing. In the time we've been attacking the middle class, china has brought the equivalent to our entire population out of poverty. Our enemies in a decade will be able to buy america's loyalty from a generation of citizens forced into essentially slavery, or prostitution if robots don't start doing that job, too.
@@Dark_AbsoI In the ghetto next to me. Unless you're a drug addict in that event, please see the place on the other side of town, it's real affordable.
@@jjoohhhnn illegal to build your own home????? Really?
@@mikexhotmail some places if you're not a licensed builder. and everywhere there is a minimum size, generally larger than the average 1 bedroom. Around my county it's gotta be over 900sqft, but I've heard of places have minimums of 1,200sqft
I support the general premise of this series. Whenever I'm trying to make up my mind about any given topic, I have often gone to forums and such places that will strongly favor one side and argued against that side and do the same for the other side in another place. That way not only do I end up learning the best arguments for both sides, I also end up learning the best arguments against both sides. If I haven't done this for any given issue, I will never be confident in my views about it.
On the topic itself: Your video here is one of the best arguments I've seen in favor of high wealth inequality, and I have to say it's simply not good enough. I remain open to the possibility, but my conclusion at this point is that it probably is genuinely indefensible. I think there is a level of wealth inequality that is fine, maybe even desirable, but whatever that level is it's somewhere far below where we are now.
I think it depends. Do we see equality as a necessary good, or even possible? I don't see equality of outcome as possible. Differences in ability and desires lead to different outcomes. I personally do not like working, so I work as little as possible to get by. I could work harder and make more money, but I don't want to. The rich are those who desire wealth and work towards it. One could make the argument that the economy is best handled by just such people. Would you pick a chef to defend you in court, or a lawyer?
The real problem with wealth inequality is the ability to lobby the government. And that can be mitigated by preserving freedom of the press and speech (which corporations attack by divide and conquer means), a representative government, as well as campaign finance reform and term limits. If the problem is rich people lobbying the government, then why don't people think about reforming the government (as opposed to the economy, which is often affected by the government)?
There has always been wealth inequality, and if there is more now, that is because there is more wealth now. Poor people are materially better off today than they were in the middle ages. Third world countries have been uplifted (indeed, this is part of the reason the US hasn't seen as great a gains, because the growth was often made in poorer countries, like China).
And people's demands for standards of living have increased as well. Smart phones, credit cards, cars, single family homes/individual apartments. Good medical care, no famines, long lives. We take things for granted that the kings and elites of the past would have given all their fortunes for, and could not get. Think even about things like tea and spices, that were luxuries that wars were fought over, and now every poor person has in their cupboard at home.
The biggest problem is in taxation, not consumption. If you're super wealthy you have a team of people working for you to avoid paying taxes. But the construction of that wealth was facilitated by the infrastructure put in place using those taxes. This is just morally wrong. Period.
@K lake i absolutely agree it's not easy. If it were we'd have nailed this as a society long ago IMHO. This problem has only been exacerbated by globalization. Still, it is the #1 problem when I consider income inequality. We'd not nearly have as much anger if tax evasion wasn't so pervasive.
@K lake That is an entirely different debate, though.
@@padonker Agree it is a different debate but some of the underlying forces drive it. Just as the wealth can hire people to avoid taxes. They can hire "people" to influence the direction of government spending. It is undue influence on both sides. Where as direct consumption may not be controlled by the super wealth they control the options.
This is the best channel I've discovered in the past decade. Best of luck to 1mil subs, you more than deserve it.
Thank you so much 😀
Well done. Food for thought (Note: I have not looked into this much myself). I've read that countries that have the lowest gap between the rich and poor also have very low levels of wealth and high poverty generally (e.g., many countries in Africa). They are all equally poor, in other words. It *_could_* be that the existence of super-capitalists still does benefit the average worker despite the wealth gap. I'm not making that claim. I'm just saying that there may be something to it.
Historically, wealth and power inequality always peaks right before the revolution.
That's not really true. Most African are unequal based on GINI coefficients, and many of the western European nations have lower inequality. Scandinavia is quite wealthy and yet has low inequality. The USA is an outlier in it's high inequality relative to other high wealth nations
@@PRODEMOCRACYNEWS I think a big part of that is cultural. Europeans and more specifically Scandanavian culture is based on a collective mindset. "Everyone is responsible for everyone else". America was founded more on the idea of individual liberty. That you are responsible for yourself and other people's burden won't be placed on you.
And personally, there's merit in each
@@stansman5461 The American dream is that 'anyone can be successful if they work hard enough', which easily gets corrupted into 'anyone who isn't successful hasn't earnt success'
Wealth Power in 1st world and 3rd world countries is also completely sifferent
What does any of this have to do with people having to spend thousands each month to pay for insulin, or many of my friends who had to drop out of college because they couldn't afford it?
It doesn't and the author never claimed it did.
@@player276 congratulations, you understood my criticism.
what do your friends dropping out of college have to do with me or the rest of society?
@@i-never-look-at-replies-lol That maybe the person that has the talent for discovering the cure for an illness you'll have in 30 years is working as a cashier to survive instead of studying medicine, that's what it has to do with you and the rest of society.
@@i-never-look-at-replies-lol Also who the hell do you think "society" is? The people who can't afford healthcare/education/retirement are the vast majority of the SOCIETY.
I don't think there is a contradiction between claiming that billionaires own too much and that billionaires don't consume enough.
It's not that they own too much stuff. They own too much capital.
This gives them outsized control over government and society, but more crucially putting so much investment power in so few hands it likely inefficient.
3:55. Yes you can. Their private consumption is wastefull. It does not benefit society as a whole as in give recourses to the lower end of the population. Consuming thousands of liters of water to make their gigantic lawns green does not provide the same benefit to society as to tax it from them and making sure the lower end of the population has clean and affordable drinking water. AND ON TOP OF THAT. They don't even consume as much as they have, so not only do they consume wastefully, they also don't consume enough.
Selfishness is the problem. Wealth inequality only enables people who don't care to exploit those with less. Having more than others is not wrong and is often good when the wealthy are generous and compassionate. It's just super rare to see that.
Since you're doing a playlist on defending the indefensible why not try and do a video on the ufc and how the average fighter is paid unfairly?
Ok I will have a look into it, but I know much about UFC to be fair.
The Bloomberg video is pretty good on this topic
Pay by draw is fair, no they should not all be payed equally. It's also heiarchal, the winners get a bigger slice, nothing unfair there either.
"I need food, and a place to live!"
"Well you need money."
"I want money. How can I earn money?"
"I have all the money."
"Well, can I do something that you'll give me money?"
"No, because you have no money. Now go away, all I care about is getting more money."
3:55 - But the wealthy do use their influence to say that most people aren't ALLOWED to have any basic necessities, unless they work for the vast majority of their waking lives and make the already obscenely wealthy even more obscenely wealthy.
The wealthy also drive the extremely excessive consumption of resources, because the only way that a society can have almost everyone working to earn their right to have basic necessities as production efficiency increases, is to have everyone consume an ever increasing amount of resources.
I love this defending the indefensible series!!
the biggest stumbling block to affordable housing is current house owners - the middle class.
if you try to build a multiunit apartment in san francisco the locals will fight it tooth and nail and drag you to court multiple times till you give up, this happened to a guy who owned a laundromat wanted to tear it down and put up a modest apartment building. after something like 10 years and the locals even changing laws he gave up and sold the property.
intresting vid. also would you also be doing a vid on something like UBI, since i think it would be a pretty interesting argument to (for or against ) Wealth Inequality.
I will absolutely be looking at UBI proposals in a video at some point
We tried UBI last year, look at the pace at which prices are rising now.
@@HowMoneyWorks could you do the economics of villager trading?
@@karlalan3806 Prices are rising due to supply issues and the $6 trillion bailout and subsidies given to corporations, not the crumbs that were given to normal Americans. Do some research before BJing the rich and b!tching about the minimum help that was given to struggling Americans. You sound like an ignorant tool.
I don't feel like this video actually made an argument......
It presented a lot of arguments so I think you have missed something.
@@elenabob4953 the main point is that the rich dont use money as "evil" as most think, but other than that..
I'm trying to get out of real-estate for the exact resone you gave its way to big of a royal pain in the ass to deal with. Stocks are far more profitable with a tiny amount of headaches that being a landlord is. I'm trying my best to sell the houses to the tenants as that means less of a headache and I don't need to pay or deal with real-estate agents.
lol, I am poor and realestate sounds absolutely horrible! I look at youtubers like Minority Mindset, and Graham, and Kevin, and it sounds just awful.
I think that what I learned from them about realestate investing is that the home you live in is a savings acct rather than an investment. It does grow, but the constant maintenance, taxes, finance fees, insurance, etc will nearly always be about what the growth was over time. So get a decent house to live in, but don't make it your largest asset. Buildings that you rent out to business or individuals are an asset because they increase in value and the tenant pays for it all over time... but with so many contractors, lawyers, etc... I'd just rather not. Plus, the idea of charging someone rent that allows me to buy a home when they could be spending their own money to be buying their own home? That feels real dirty to me. Like, if rent was cheap like it use to be so that it covered maintenance and improvements, and a little profit then that is one thing... but if they are also covering the principal and interest on a loan, PLUS maintenance? I just want no part in that.
Now that I do have a little more disposable income I am curious about short term business loans, and stocks, but just not real estate.
Needs to be updated because Wall St is now destroying the housing market. Of course they would want to collect rent from everyone who should have been able to buy a home. Wall St drove prices from $100k avg home to $400k within 3 years. They shouldn't be allowed to buy single family homes.