[MindTooth]

Someone with a beter insight: does that mean that I somehow is worse or better off? From where I stand, I hear/read a lot of criticism, but I’ve yet to see that Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, e.g., is going into my account and then steal my money which results me being in a worse position.

I am of the opinion that if we everyday feel resentment towards those who have more, that we are in itself creating a lesser condition for ourself. Whether that be mental illness, hate, or worse.

Your thoughts?

[georgeecollins]

The idea is that one person gets a great deal of wealth from the creation of something that they were the most important in that creation. We would all agree that what Gates and Bezos acomplished was laudable and needs to be encouraged in society. However, in a different era Arthur Sloan (GM) or Henry Ford actually ended up with a lower percentage of the wealth of their companies. More of that wealth was distributed as opposed to concentrated in a founder or CEO. Did that discourage their excellence? I don't think so. Did it make a healthier society? I would argue yes.

[CPLX]

> We would all agree that what Gates and Bezos acomplished was laudable and needs to be encouraged in society.

Absolutely not.

It’s a completely reasonably argument to assert that both men made the bulk of their outsized wealth via anti-competitive monopolistic behavior that was harmful to the markets they operated in.

Gates was in fact accused of this by the US Justice Department so it’s not exactly a fringe theory.

[badfrog]

> We would all agree that what Gates and Bezos acomplished was laudable and needs to be encouraged in society.

Not necessarily. There are plenty of people who think that the growth of Microsoft and Amazon came from doing sketchy things that should not be repeated.

[claudeganon]

> We would all agree that what Gates and Bezos acomplished was laudable and needs to be encouraged in society.

I definitely don’t agree that either of these companies predatory tactics, and especially Amazon’s treatment of workers, is something that should be lauded or encouraged.

[akavi]

Did the wealth of car companies go to labor? Or did the wealth go to the venture capitalists (or whatever the venture capital equivalents of the day were)?

Because those are very different situations.

[aianus]

The real wealth that car companies created went to consumers in form of consumer surplus.

The automobile used to be a toy for millionaires, now even (American) minimum-wage workers can travel daily in comfortable, individual, climate-controlled vehicles capable of incredible speeds.

I would pay $100k for a ten-year-old Civic but I don't have to because the car companies work hard and compete with each other and have driven down costs and prices to the bare minimum.

Same for many of todays billionaires / huge corporations. They're generally not stealing from us, but creating enormous wealth for all of us in the form of consumer surplus with their desirable goods and services.

[Valakas]

But are the billionaires the ones actually responsible for creating all that value? Is Bezos actually responsible for 10 000x the value of what Amazon produces than a worker? If Bezos didn't exist, there would be another "Bezos". He just happened to be there at the right time and do the right things. We discount all the effects that luck and society play in making a "Bezos". The company is what is providing that huge amount of value, not the person.

[pgt]

You have to apply your argument to yourself, which is "are you responsible for creating any of the value you create?" If you didn't exist there would be another you, so luck and society made you. But you know that is not true. You are where you are, and you can step away at any time.

[lotsofpulp]

People willing to work for less in countries other than America is where much of the consumer surplus in the past few decades has come from. As well as not needing people to work in the first place.

[danaris]

Henry Ford famously chose to pay his workers enough that they would be able to afford to buy his cars.

Also, I'm not sure that there was a meaningful equivalent to venture capitalists in that era, but I'm not at all confident enough in my history to state that with any weight.

[bitcurious]

I’m not going to address the larger question, because there has been a lot written about it by better writers than I, but there is this: Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, etc. have indeed reached into your pocket and taken money from you, assuming you are a tech worker. They did this via an anti poaching agreement. https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti-po...

[jstummbillig]

The Gates or Bezos don't have to get into your account to get you in a worse position. They simply have to pay less taxes, inherit more, pay relatively lower wages or increase rent on their properties.

[heydonovan]

It blows my mind that someone that makes more money than me, pays less taxes than me. Why? Well, I know why, but why is it like this? I don't care if my neighbor has more money than me, I care if the rules are the same.

We read that the wealthy are taxed at a lower tax bracket because most of their income doesn't come from a paycheck, but from investments which are taxed at a lower rate. I can never compete, because I do not have investments that would generate a return similar to my current salary. Unfair rules in my opinion.

[lucio]

You can start investing as little as $1000, and grow form that, maybe you can reach some relevant invested amount, or maybe you can reach a sensible amount and then pass that to your children for them to continue. Also you can lose all, because investing is not easy.

[jstummbillig]

I worded my original comment very ambiguously. I was not trying to claim that the rich pay less taxes than the poor. They obviously don't.

What I meant was: One way for rich people to get more at other peoples expense, that does not require what would legally considered stealing from you, is to have to pay less taxes than they previously had (by using legal ways to do it, or by being the beneficiary of changing laws).

The point is, there is a lot of way's for the rich to benefit at your expense, and hacking your bank account might just be the least practical.

[beezle]

It is extremely unlikely that you are paying more in taxes than any of the super rich. You are complaining about how the tax code treats wages vs investment/passive income.

The reality is (as of 2016) the top 1% pay 37% of the total income tax bill. The top 5% (income>198K) pay 58%. The top 10% 69.5%.

On the other hand, the bottom 90% pay 30% of the tax bill, the bottom 50% only 3%.

[lucio]

You've been misled

>The top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (37.3 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (30.5 percent).

https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-...

[ryandrake]

Which seems to make sense since the top 1% average over 39 times more income than the bottom 90 percent[1] and hold about 38% of all privately held wealth in the US[2].

1: https://inequality.org/facts/income-inequality/

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...

[cryoshon]

>does that mean that I somehow is worse or better off?

try this thought experiment:

your neighbor has $10 and you have $1. the cost to keep a person sheltered, fed, and clothed is $3. your neighbor pays you $1 to do some task each month while making $10 from your labor. you can't afford the basics with the salary being offered. your neighbor, on the other hand, can afford the basics for themselves and also for you using the revenues generated from your labor -- and more! yet, they still only pay you $1, because if they paid you $3, they'd only be able to pay for their own consumption two times instead of three times. is this situation acceptable on the basis of the factors outlined in the experiment alone?

because that level of exploitation is a mere shadow of the scale of exploitation that the current crop of billionaires perform. and we haven't even started to talk abou tax dodging yet.

[jordanbeiber]

My thought is that if people are getting supremely wealthy off of other peoples labour (as well as trashing the environment) and we see this divide, then peoples labour is obviously undervalued.

They are not so much stealing money from your account, but the amount they put in looks like it could be a lot bigger?

I don’t know, but something is off, the way I see it.

[kazen44]

the fact that environmental issues are a burden to a society instead of a company in itself is already a problem.

Many companies make huge profits because the enviromental impact of their work is an externiality, and they do not carry that cost.

[jordanbeiber]

Yeah, I just couldn’t be bothered to dive down that hole, but I wanted to add it as it is part of what is completely broken.

Probably the biggest part, as we will come to see.

[ashleyn]

The problem isn't that they're rich so much as that increasing numbers of people live at the beck and call of the health insurance industry and that there's not even any attempt to stem the tide of homelessness. So those in need of healthcare or housing are looking at someone like Bezos who "makes hundreds of dollars a second" and calling bullshit on the system they live in - can we blame them?

[pbz]

Bezos makes about $2,500 per second... Within a minute he makes more than most ever make in a year ($150,000)

[beezle]

False. Per CBS Marketwatch " Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos recorded total compensation of $1,681,840 in 2017, almost all of which is money paid for personal security — Bezos drew a salary of $81,840 and received no additional stock." which amounts to 5.3 cents per second.

You seem pretty clearly to be speaking of his networth which rises and falls with the price of AMZN shares. When friends/relatives ask 'how much do you make?' do you include unrealized gains on any investments you own?

[pbz]

I suppose if you choose to not take a salary you're not making anything, right?

[pimmen]

You're not going to see your bank accounts empty. You're not even necessarily going to see anyone or anything you care about get hurt by the one percent.

However, when you want something done, when you believe in a cause, you're going to have a harder time than previous generations to exert pressure on the powers that be to make that happen. They will care less about your purchasing power or your vote than was the case for your parents or grandparents. Depending on what injustices you see in the world, you will probably have a harder time finding an organization with any real influence that you can join to make a difference.

This is the biggest problem with inequality; people are fixated on what they have, not on what's possible. The world will change, and everyone has a stake in what it changes into. It's a problem when it changes on the terms of just one group, a problem that of course will always be the case, but can be bigger or smaller. Right not, it's getting bigger.

[seanalltogether]

It depends on whether they are being taxed appropriately on the wealth they have accumulated, then you could make an argument as to whether money is being stolen from you or not. Warren Buffet famously said that his secretary was paying a higher percentage of her income to taxes then he was. If that is the case, the middle class is subsidizing both the poor and the rich.

[asjw]

Violating anti trust laws and being anti competitive is taking money from people's pockets and making their life worse