[Politics] Wealth Inequality

Comrade Sam · Jan 10, 2025

Professor Plum said:
She didn’t think they were ‘having too much of the pie’. That was never part of her dogma from what I remember. She was all for people increasing personal wealth. Perhaps misguided but it was the idea underpinning privatisation, Tell Sid, council house sales etc. It was the undemocratic nature of unions that Thatcherism railed against. Closed shops, block votes, secondary picketing, strike votes carried and leaders elected on 2 or 3% of the vote etc. That was the thrust of the 1979 campaign.

Do you know how unions work? They are probably the most democratic bodies in the UK. Unions don't strike without their members wanting it and even then they need to be pushed. The selling off of of the public sector was always going to end up in the hands of the few at the cost of the many. It was said at the time and now in hindsight it is clear. Thatcher used popular rhetoric to win the support of the middle classes and those that didn't gain from strike victories - share options, own your council house, get your employees to work any hours, easy credit. But ultimately we now have mass homelessness and zero hours employment, huge personal debt and austerity to help grab the last fork in the state drawer. She was the last hope of the rich and powerful to save their Britain and whilst she didn't use the violence of Pinochet, the massive disparities in our society are her legacy (and her child Blair).

Blue3 · Jan 10, 2025

I fail to understand why anyone has the need to just keep on gathering more and more wealth once all your basic needs are met then exceeded but what’s an acceptable amount before it become obscene?

beorhthelm · Jan 10, 2025

Comrade Sam said:
Do you know how unions work? They are probably the most democratic bodies in the UK. Unions don't strike without their members wanting it and even then they need to be pushed. The selling off of of the public sector was always going to end up in the hands of the few at the cost of the many. It was said at the time and now in hindsight it is clear. Thatcher used popular rhetoric to win the support of the middle classes and those that didn't gain from strike victories - share options, own your council house, get your employees to work any hours, easy credit. But ultimately we now have mass homelessness and zero hours employment, huge personal debt and austerity to help grab the last fork in the state drawer. She was the last hope of the rich and powerful to save their Britain and whilst she didn't use the violence of Pinochet, the massive disparities in our society are her legacy (and her child Blair).

right, no such thing as wild cat strikes or secondary pickets? iirc the NUM didnt have a vote on stike action, many carried on working and got ostracized for that - how very democratic. unions should be deomcractic, like any human organisation some get dominated by a few, corrupted to become playthings for those that run them. it was a pretty easy sell to the middle class and working class that had got fed up with the unions by 1979.

Bakero · Jan 10, 2025

Professor Plum said:
A good proportion of the media is left-leaning. Neither side seems to recognise the existence of their own lot.

I think we may have a different idea of left-leaning

Comrade Sam · Jan 10, 2025

beorhthelm said:
right, no such thing as wild cat strikes or secondary pickets? iirc the NUM didnt have a vote on stike action, many carried on working and got ostracized for that - how very democratic. unions should be deomcractic, like any human organisation some get dominated by a few, corrupted to become playthings for those that run them. it was a pretty easy sell to the middle class and working class that had got fed up with the unions by 1979.

Is that what Murdoch told you?

beorhthelm · Jan 10, 2025

Comrade Sam said:
Is that what Murdoch told you?

the corruption? experience. what happened in 1979? history.

funny how those that revere the unions and socialist policies will blame so many individuals for failings along the way, rather than reflect, learn, improve their case for the next challenge.

beorhthelm · Jan 10, 2025

Professor Plum said:
I’ve gone the other way. I’m still economically left wing but socially more conservative. It’s a very common shift for older people to make. Unfortunately the only party even vaguely representative of that viewpoint is Reform but I can’t support them for other reasons eg their cosying up to Putin and Trump. I’m effectively homeless when it comes to electoral choices.

fyi, Reform isn't economically left wing, they just promise to spend extra on NHS because it's popular. they also want tax cuts, so who knows how they'd acheive both.

dazzer6666 · Jan 10, 2025

Blue3 said:
I fail to understand why anyone has the need to just keep on gathering more and more wealth once all your basic needs are met then exceeded but what’s an acceptable amount before it become obscene?

It’s as much power as wealth for many, but the wealth is often the easiest way to represent the power

Machiavelli · Jan 10, 2025

pb21 said:
My instinctive feeling is that wealth inequality is too large and that it would be beneficial if it were narrower. It’s obviously impossible, to know what it should be though.

I think it’s fair and reasonable to expect there to be some distribution, but IMO it’s too skewed and, like gravity, the skew attracts more skew over time and not though actual work or increse value proportionate to that increase. I think if it were more proportional it would actually increase overall incentivisation benefit everyone.

Instinct. Really? See:

Home - WID - World Inequality Database

Home The source for global inequality data. Open access, high quality wealth and income inequality data developed by an international academic consortium.

wid.world

While dull to read, Piketty has a few very insightful ideas within a robust broader analysis. Foremost amongst these is that for the vast majority of the history of capitalism r>g. In other words, when the rate of return of capital (or what the financial sector would refer to as return on investment) is higher than the growth rate, inequality follows.
Between c1920 and 1980, g>r, and inequality narrowed, since then r>g is back with a vengeance.
Another insight offered in 2013 is that growth rates will be low in 21C core economies, which has profound impacts:

Let's say r is 6% and in the normal run of things g is 2%, yet falls over a protracted period to 1%, then r shifts from 3g to 6g

sussex_guy2k2 · Jan 10, 2025

Professor Plum said:
A good proportion of the media is left-leaning. Neither side seems to recognise the existence of their own lot.

A couple of the papers are left leaning, but such news outlets are becoming more and more obsolete as social media and specific TV channels dominate much of the news output. Almost none of the big media channels are left leaning, such as Sky, nor are social platforms like X and there’s reams of evidence to prove this with some research. BBC has moved horrifically to the right and there’s so much evidence of that now it’s overwhelming, particularly when it comes to political shows. You only have to see how much exposure Farage has had despite never being an elected MP before this election to see just how far right they’ve gone.

In fact, I’d argue that much of the country has moved so far right that the media outlets that are considered left wing are only actually centrist outlets, but of course that’s up for debate.

BadFish · Jan 10, 2025

Professor Plum said:
A good proportion of the media is left-leaning. Neither side seems to recognise the existence of their own lot.

Which outlets are you considering left leaning?

The guardian, the mirror (is it still?, bluesky.

What I missing?

dsr-burnley · Jan 11, 2025

Comrade Sam said:
Do you know how unions work? They are probably the most democratic bodies in the UK. Unions don't strike without their members wanting it and even then they need to be pushed. The selling off of of the public sector was always going to end up in the hands of the few at the cost of the many. It was said at the time and now in hindsight it is clear. Thatcher used popular rhetoric to win the support of the middle classes and those that didn't gain from strike victories - share options, own your council house, get your employees to work any hours, easy credit. But ultimately we now have mass homelessness and zero hours employment, huge personal debt and austerity to help grab the last fork in the state drawer. She was the last hope of the rich and powerful to save their Britain and whilst she didn't use the violence of Pinochet, the massive disparities in our society are her legacy (and her child Blair).

Don't get the idea that the unions were all on the side of the working man. For example, in Colne in the mid-seventies, a 40 year old cotton worker with two children was sacked because the union insisted. His crime was that for 2 weeks when he was 16 he worked in a non-union factory. The unions might have been supportive of their own members but they stamped on the face of the people they saw as enemies.

FatSuperman · Jan 11, 2025

Iggle Piggle said:
Musk makes more in an hour than most of us do in a year. Whilst this isn't new, at least the likes of Bill Gates used to have charitable donations and keep themselves to themselves. The problem with Musk having an obscene amount of money is that he is a massive prick with it and thinks he is a real life Bond Villain.

My soution to this problem? I'd introduce a global bell end tax. He'd be potless in no time.

He earns more per hour than we do in a year? IN A YEAR?!

Iggle, last year Musk grew his wealth by more than TWENTY ONE MILLION dollars an hour (£17m). To put that in perspective, on average a British person will earn less than £575,000 in their entire lifetime. Musk earned almost 30 times as much in one single hour than the average Brit earns in their entire life. Musk needs TWO minutes to earn the same as the Brit earns in their life. Two minutes.

PS: I'm not attacking Elong, I'm sure he's a very level headed and lovely guy. You can tell he's really nice, because he settled his recent child custody case in Texas where the state caps child support payments to a maximum of $2,750 per month. It makes the maths easy for him as it is basically half a second's earnings. The ****.

dsr-burnley · Jan 11, 2025

I

portlock seagull said:
I'm a fully bought up member of socialist ideals as I've got older, hopefully a bit wiser, and indeed wealthier. And no I don't drink champagne, prefer Harveys thank you. But the point I'd like to make is wealth should be capped. In a world of 10 billion people, if however you've managed to 'get' say 10 million pounds then everything above is re-distributed by whatever means. End of. You simply don't need 00's of millions, or even more grossly, billions, to live more than comfortably. It only leads to more problems e.g. wars and environmental destruction.

In the case of the much-maligned Musk,, this would be easy. Stop buying his cars. If Tesla were driven out of business, he wouldn't be able to make money by selling cars, he wouldn't be able to make money by investing in and developing green vehicles, and he wouldn't be able to make money by employing 125,000 people. We could either buy Chinese (though the slave labour element of their factories might be a downer) or go back to petrol cars; the employees could go on the dole.

FatSuperman · Jan 11, 2025

If you take the poorest half of American citizens (250 million people), and pooled absolutely everything they own, all of the assets, the wealth, their income, and added it all up. It would equal half of what Elon Musk has.

250,000,000 = Elon
None of you can think that is ok.

The other amazing thing is that many many people misunderstand just how rich the super rich are. A hedge fund manager is probably the best paid 'normal' job I can think of. Over their lifetime, a US hedge fund manager will earn $80m. Last year Elon earned that in four days. And yet, hedge fund managers and the like will always vote against anything that tries to tackle inequality.

Over the next 20 years or so, the families of the richest 500 people in the world will inherit over $10 trillion. We're talking about THREE TIMES the entire GDP of India - a nation of 1.5 billion people.

1,500,000,000 = 500 super rich people.
There is absolutely no way that any single person needs / deserves this kind of wealth.

Those richest 500 people are buying jets and superyachts. Imagine if we got them all on a plane (they'd fit on a 747 with over a hundred seats spare), flew them to Africa and pointed out all the mosquitos. We could explain to them that malaria kills over 400,000 people a year - 275,000 of them being children. We could explain that for an estimated $100 BILLION, we could permanently eradicate malaria. They could cover it. Just those 500 people could cover it. With ONE PERCENT of their wealth. ONE f***ing percent. They wouldn't even notice. Christ, last year those 500 people saw their wealth increase by more than ten times that amount. Yes, they added $1,200,000,000,000 to their wealth. In a year.

To put that malaria number in context, ebola has killed about 15,000 in the entirety of human history. That's like a fortnight for malaria.

800 children died today due to malaria, and these rich pricks could sort that with 1% of their wealth - or 10% of what they earned last year.

None of them, NONE of them genuinely earned that money.

FatSuperman · Jan 11, 2025

dsr-burnley said:
I

In the case of the much-maligned Musk,, this would be easy. Stop buying his cars. If Tesla were driven out of business, he wouldn't be able to make money by selling cars, he wouldn't be able to make money by investing in and developing green vehicles, and he wouldn't be able to make money by employing 125,000 people. We could either buy Chinese (though the slave labour element of their factories might be a downer) or go back to petrol cars; the employees could go on the dole.

In 2020, Jezz Bezos sold over $4,000,000,000 worth of Amazon shares.
The average Amazon warehouse worker earns $28,000. If you worked for 50 years in an Amazon warehouse, you'd have to have your life 2,860 times to earn what Jeff earned in a single day.

I don't get why people make comments like you have there. Nobody is saying that. Nobody is saying they don't add some small positives. But the fact remains they are rich because others are poor. They rely on the apathy and idiocy of people.

AstroSloth · Jan 11, 2025

Swegulls said:
It really makes you sick, those billions could have done a lot good elsewhere.

When Musk was buying twitter for $44b, someone asked why he doesn't solve world hunger for $6b instead.

He said if a charity can explain exactly how $6b would solve world hunger he would donate it.

So they showed exactly how that money would solve world hunger for a number of years, but because it wasn't a permanent solution he refused.

dsr-burnley · Jan 11, 2025

FatSuperman said:
If you take the poorest half of American citizens (250 million people), and pooled absolutely everything they own, all of the assets, the wealth, their income, and added it all up. It would equal half of what Elon Musk has.

250,000,000 = Elon
None of you can think that is ok.

I certainly don't think it's OK. Must, it's been reported on this site, has about $500 billion, so that means that the bottom half of the US, with all their wealth, their assets, and their income, on average has $1,000 each.

Certainly puts into perspective all that talk about America being wealthier than Britain!

(The figures come out similar if the more current figures of $416 for Musk, and 326m population, are used. Perhaps a recalculation might be worthwhile?)

alanfp · Jan 11, 2025

Dorset Seagull said:
Lets not forget that when Ford make a profit the shareholders will contain many pension funds that actually end up paying out to the very workers that were striking

Only to a TINY extent. Ford employees were all (99%?) in a Defined Benefit (final salary) scheme, not a Defined Contribution scheme, so that argument doesn't apply. And these days, of course, occupational pension funds are not allowed to hold shares in their employer (or only a very small percentage of their fund).

Professor Plum · Jan 11, 2025

Comrade Sam said:
Do you know how unions work? They are probably the most democratic bodies in the UK. Unions don't strike without their members wanting it and even then they need to be pushed. The selling off of of the public sector was always going to end up in the hands of the few at the cost of the many. It was said at the time and now in hindsight it is clear. Thatcher used popular rhetoric to win the support of the middle classes and those that didn't gain from strike victories - share options, own your council house, get your employees to work any hours, easy credit. But ultimately we now have mass homelessness and zero hours employment, huge personal debt and austerity to help grab the last fork in the state drawer. She was the last hope of the rich and powerful to save their Britain and whilst she didn't use the violence of Pinochet, the massive disparities in our society are her legacy (and her child Blair).

I will never defend Thatcher, an extremely divisive figure. But that doesn’t mean that the trade unions in the 70s weren’t shockingly undemocratic. It’s quite possible to find them both very unpleasant in their own, very different, ways. A lot of the shit they got from Thatcher was of their own making — Grunwick, Wapping, the mass intimidation in the mining industry, and so on. It was all done with the noble aim of protecting jobs and furthering the interests of their members (the entire raison d’etre of unions) but a lot of other, innocent parties suffered as a result. Thatcher went over the top in her reaction, yes.

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[Politics] Wealth Inequality

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