SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
posted by
martyb
on Saturday January 27 2018, @12:43PM
from the I-got-mine!-And-Yours.-And-Yours.-Annnnnd-yours,-too. dept.
from the I-got-mine!-And-Yours.-And-Yours.-Annnnnd-yours,-too. dept.
The 1% grabbed 82% of all wealth created in 2017
More than $8 of every $10 of wealth created last year went to the richest 1%.
That's according to a new report from Oxfam International, which estimates that the bottom 50% of the world's population saw no increase in wealth.
Oxfam says the trend shows that the global economy is skewed in favor of the rich, rewarding wealth instead of work.
"The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system," said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Only 1% of World's Population Grabbed 82% of all 2017 Wealth
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 261 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
There is nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the
ocean level wouldn't cure.
-- Ross MacDonald
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday January 27 2018, @02:41PM (10 children)
This strikes me as incredibly naive. If a company makes X profits, and they decide to distribute those earnings so that executives earn hundreds of times more than the average worker, it most certainly creates a difference compared to if they distributed things so executives only earned on the order of ten times more than the average worker, for example. And this trend toward inequality among salary has worsened significantly over the past 50 years or so. So yes, it CAN significantly affect poorer people when work they do (they are participating in the company too) isn't as valued, so they share less in the profits.
Note that I am NOT at all arguing for EQUAL distribution. Some workers are clearly worth more to a company than others should be paid more. But there's little evidence that paying a CEO 200 times the average worker rather than 100 times the average worker salary is actually making companies better or more successful or more efficient or whatever. To the contrary, there are studies suggesting the opposite: that CEO pay correlates very little with company performance, and that bonuses or salary increases to lower-level workers are perceived as so much more significant to them that they can create much stronger incentives for improvement.
Yes, I'm using the example of a company here, but a similar argument can be made for the population of a nation as a whole. As I noted in a post above, wealth provides incentives for innovation, but at some level of concentration it stops benefitting the rest of society. There are arguments to be made that society progresses better overall when quality of life improves for everyone (including the poor and middle classes).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 27 2018, @02:56PM
Male 400M record (43.03s), female 400M record (47.60s), female 4x100M relay team world record (40.82s). No one person is worth 200x average salary and the only way to make that money as an individual should be a result of taking on risk.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Whoever on Saturday January 27 2018, @03:59PM (4 children)
There is evidence that better paid CEOs actually perform worse.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 27 2018, @06:23PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Sunday January 28 2018, @06:35AM (1 child)
Perhaps you should look at my comment [soylentnews.org] and Sulla's reply.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 28 2018, @11:47AM
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday January 27 2018, @10:28PM
Yeah, it's a mixed bag. I've read a few of these studies including ones that claim the negative correlation as you do. My take is that it's mostly random. I'd really like to see a company secretly run by Magic 8 Ball making decisions and offering advice. See how it performs compared to average high-paid CEOs. I'm not hopeful that CEOs will come out ahead.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Sulla on Saturday January 27 2018, @05:38PM (2 children)
Sarbanes-Oxley allowing criminal prosecution of CEOs would have driven CEO wages up as they want additional pay to make up for the liability. I am not saying SA is bad, but now you are paying for a fall guy instead of an actual leader.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Sunday January 28 2018, @03:05AM (1 child)
So what you are saying is that higher paid CEOs are being paid to break the law?
If they are not breaking the law, then there is no additional risk.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Sunday January 28 2018, @06:12AM
Thats pretty much the assumption that I have always been under.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday January 28 2018, @12:09AM
This is a very good and underappreciated point.
The sort of naïve libertarian view that one hears at times is that the fact they are able to find work at that pay shows they are worth it, and there is a level of truth to that. We don't have a better definition of value than what we're willing to pay for something. In theory, if companies are overpaying for certain positions this should work itself out in the long run as they fail or improve. In practice this is no free market and some companies are 'too big to fail.'
"As I noted in a post above, wealth provides incentives for innovation, but at some level of concentration it stops benefitting the rest of society"
Does it really? I'm not sure that's proven.
But at any rate, assuming it does, it remains that society benefits very much from respect for private property, and it's virtually impossible to implement any sort of top-down redistribution scheme without brutally violating that principle. So it's clearly better to focus on *preventing* criminal concentration of wealth from occurring than on breaking up existing concentrations (minus proven derivation from criminal activity, of course.)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?