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Global wealth inequality widened last year as billionaires increased their fortunes by $2.5 billion per day, anti-poverty campaigner Oxfam said in a new report.
While the poorest half of humanity saw their wealth dwindle by 11%, billionaires' riches increased by 12%. The mega-wealthy have also become a more concentrated bunch. Last year, the top 26 wealthiest people owned $1.4 trillion, or as much as the 3.8 billion poorest people. The year before, it was the top 43 people.
[...] To address many of these ills, Oxfam advocated raising taxes. It estimated that a 1% wealth tax would be enough to educate 262 million out of school children and to save 3.3 million lives. As of 2015 returns, Oxfam says that only four cents in every tax dollar collected globally came from tariffs on wealth, such as inheritance or property. The report also claims that the rich are hiding $7.6 trillion in offshore accounts
Previously: Only 1% of World's Population Grabbed 82% of all 2017 Wealth
(Score: 2, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday January 22 2019, @03:27PM (2 children)
Accumulation of capital is like many other human traits, such as height, strength, political manipulation, ability to catch a touchdown pass, ability to run or swim really fast, naturally a very small number of people are going to be experts and accumulate all the glory.
Historically we have ZERO successful solutions in areas less critical to civilizational survival when making sure we have equality of outcome in throwing touchdown passes or being tall. Therefore I'd assume any attempt at trying to social engineer the economy to result in equality of outcome will result in massive destruction and death. Interestingly this was pretty much the experience with socialism and communism so far, hundreds of millions killed and we still don't have the workers of the world united and so forth, just a lot of dead people to mourn. So trying to level the playing field of capital accumulation will 1) fail 2) result in a lot of dead innocents. Wake me when we have equality of outcome in "swimming really fast" or "being really tall" and maybe we can give it a try with the economy. Maybe some kind of forced genetic engineering at the point of a gun. Certainly the same shitty politicians pimping ideas that have never worked in the past, is very unlikely to work in the future at a similar but more complicated problem.
The second issue is we're still figuring out the post-capitalist free market. The same idiot politicians that killed hundreds of millions last century want to try it again this time by defining post-capitalist as socialist/commie. No thanks, losers. Yet we're post capitalist now and becoming more so. For example more than a century ago my G-G-grandfather required $1M from the New York banks and financial markets to finance "his" steam engine, then he operated it for a mere $3500/yr in wages, and of course the tracks were not free and were financed by giant capitalist markets, etc. When I was a kid before the turn of the century my $75K/yr job was much less capital intensive, I only needed maybe $50K worth of Sun servers and workstations to write perl scripts for web serving and stuff like that. Before the dotcom crash I ALMOST didn't need capitalism, in the sense of the NYSE and VC money, to earn my living, I could almost finance that kind of expense myself... Certainly there are people driving around in cars and trucks worth more than my 90s era Slowairis servers cost new... Of course my buddy the sysadmin also earned a living off those $50K of servers, etc, but as a simplification many order of magnitude of capitalism had disappeared. Now I need a $500 or so laptop (well, I have a nice desktop that cost maybe $2K, but whatevs) to earn a very nice living as a software dev. What do I need New York banks and financial markets and HFT for when the "tools of my trade" cost less than a weeks pay? So... my point is a century ago accumulation of capital was incredibly important when every living depended on massive investments of capital, but now a days, it certainly does now... so who cares who has all the money? Much as accumulation of farmland was the primary economic driver in the feudal era, but isn't very important anymore, who cares if some dude has a lot of digits in his bank account as long as MY account can trivially afford the tools of my trade? Nobody really cares anymore who the Baron of Durham is anymore, at least not a millionth as much as a couple centuries ago. Likewise "the dude with the most dollars" is almost as interesting and influential today as "the dude with the most garbage pail kids cards". Just don't matter so much anymore... Hello post capitalism, hope you stay a free market and repel the killer kommies...
The third pure bullshit issue is the proposals are idiotic on a macroeconomic scale. How incredibly Fing stupid to encourage investment in education. An expensive degree does not magically result in the creation of a new job, it merely results in greater income inequality where the smarter risk takers get more of the spoils exactly what the idiot proposal was trying to prevent. If there are no jobs, moving money out of the productive economy and piling it into education to set on fire, will, if anything, result in fewer jobs and greater income inequality. Also its ridiculously stupid to imply the money is in the form of $7.6T of gold coins while Scrooge McDuck jumps and swims in the pile of coins; what a complete idiot. Banks are not and never have been in the "pile of gold coins to swim in" business and $7.6T in deposits implies about $76T in mortgages and business loans keeping the economy afloat. All those loans need to be called in to confiscate and redistribute that $7.6T which would result in massive destruction and death and suffering and lower quality of life, all so some idiot feels better because some rich dude has less digits in his bank account. I have no idea how you save 3.3M lives by impoverishing the world; it doesn't even make sense to discuss. Sure on a microscale any individual always comes out ahead by investing more in personal education that their competition; on a macro civilizational scale its as stupid of a strategy as investing in giant limestone pyramids or easter island statues. Certainly the average worker is painfully staggeringly overeducated at this time; we have too many people who can't read because of racial / IQ reasons not because we didn't throw away enough money on education.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @07:36PM
TL:DR - VLM is a racist piece of shit trying to hide behind racist junk science. Truly the Trump Toady.
You mixed in so much crap that it would be impossible to reply in a single comment, so I went with the most accurate summary. GJ you racist fuck "Certainly the average worker is painfully staggeringly overeducated at this time; we have too many people who can't read because of racial / IQ reasons not because we didn't throw away enough money on education." You are a shamelessly stupid bigot with just enough brain cells to buy into some stupid rhetoric.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday January 23 2019, @05:16AM
You know, if you ignore the racist last sentence and tilt your head a bit, that looks like an argument for a Basic Income.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.