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by skizm 3363 days ago
You can't eat money though. If they (the 6 most wealthy people) cashed in all their stock and re-distributed their wealth as best they could, the value of money would plummet since so much more is in circulation. It would crash the global economy and cause even more poverty.
3 comments
TheAdamAndChe 3363 days ago
The money they have isn't in some vault somewhere. It's already in circulation through various investments and whatnot.
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socmag 3363 days ago
Huh, it's already in distribution. Presumably those shares are held by institutions who use those for investments in projects.

That only the few can control which projects are invested in and compounded by [lack of] any semblance of "altruistic transparency" is the main concern not the wealth itself.

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maxerickson 3363 days ago
No it wouldn't.

The global economy is tens of trillions of dollars. Drop a couple trillion in there and it just gets consumed.

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skizm 3363 days ago
Inflation occurs when the US government adds around $10 billion of money to the market every year though (they print money to replace existing / lost currency, but always over produce). The money gets "consumed" but the value of each dollar goes down. And that's just with $10 billion.

That point aside, my original point was that just because the 6 richest people have paper value of more than half the planet doesn't mean there are enough resources to keep everyone alive just because they are born. (which is ideal in a theoretical world obviously)

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pg314 3363 days ago
> Inflation occurs when the US government adds around $10 billion of money to the market every year though (they print money to replace existing / lost currency, but always over produce). The money gets "consumed" but the value of each dollar goes down.

That's wrong. Inflation is more complicated than that. If it were that simple, Japan would not have had the years of sustained deflation.

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maxerickson 3363 days ago
The hundreds of billions in deficit spending and easy money at the Fed have a much greater impact on inflation than the amount of cash in circulation (if the nominal size of the economy grows, you'd expect to need more cash...).
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omarchowdhury 3363 days ago
Source for the $10 billion stat? Seems insanely low. Only 0.0083% of the total USD in circulation.
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