• webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    1 day ago

    In theory though impossible in practice:

    If we halved the wealth of the current richest person.

    Equally divided that wealth to the 50% poorest household.

    And repeated from their till there are no more Billionaires.

    Musk would end up at 800 mil after having his wealth divided 10 times. While people who had no money to start now have around 50K

    (Broad numbers, Not an accurate calculation)

    • Phil_in_here@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      1 day ago

      That’s still good, though.

      If the richest people were only 1000x wealthier than the poorest… wow.

      Currently, the richest people could spend the entirety of every penny an average person would make from the day that person was born to the day that person died every single day and still not run out of money before that person died. That’s an entire person’s fiscal existence spent every day for their entire life and it wouldn’t even make a dent.

      So, yeah, I’d take 1000:1

      • Okokimup@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 day ago

        This is why I think we need to start talking about wealth caps. I don’t understand why the left hasn’t jumped on that.

      • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 day ago

        I’d hate to break this to you, but…

        500,000,000
        ÷50,000
        = 10,000

        $800 million is over 10,000× wealthier than $50k, not 1000×…

      • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 day ago

        Thats what i mean, we theoretically can redistribute the majority of wealth to end all poverty and there would still be enough centralised wealth for the current rich to still live in royal luxury and feel special about.

        Of course there would be massive opposition unless we figure what that does to inflation. So I don’t think it’ll ever happen but its a point that we absolutely could redistribute wealth without eradicating the upper class.

        Instead as an actual solution i think we should count differently and consider all wealth to be a personal cost of a human taking resources from the shared planet. What you consume and possess is what you cost to others. Life is inherently a destructive action.

        By measuring the cost and aiming to keep it low we can allow free access to groups (elderly for example) to a share of industrial output.

        They don’t need to pay with money, society just needs to count the cost of their transaction. Invite for a welfare talk if there is a problem with overconsumption.

        This project is a wip but i imagine that using what is called fountain pen money now could be used to pay classical industry with classical money. The fountain pen money is technically a debt but its the natural debt of human life with no expectation to ever close it.