[rayiner]

Absolutely. If you divided up Bill Gates’ wealth among everyone in India and Bangladesh everyone would get $65. That would be a one-time redistribution. His contributions through the Gates foundation are immensely more valuable in the long run.

[munk-a]

This isn't untrue but I think it's a naive approach. If that money was divided between the governments to spend for their citizen's welfare then they could also invest it to benefit their citizens.

The question (the big one that America is super divided over) is which actor is better at allocating goods for public well-being, a billionaire who has proven (probably) they have good business acumen or the government that (ideally) exists to work for the benefit of the people.

I have my personal opinion but I wanted to neutrally (I hope) highlight that this is the heart of the issue.

[Shivetya]

Government misapplication of funds is the reason so much is wrong in this world. The idea some government politician or worse a group of them could better employ the money of a Gates or Bezos is ludicrous. They have all already proven they cannot. Gates does better with his money because he isn't doing one thing politicians love to do, punish by giving and taking money from groups.

Governments routinely punish the poor for nothing more than being poor. In the US this is done through fees, penalties, licensing, direct taxation, and embedded taxes. Government routinely targets the poor for enforcement efforts because the officials know they cannot afford to fight back, hence why so much forfeiture in the US is of that class.

You can take all the wealth of every US Billionaire and not fix anything because the political class will not fix what is already wrong with their spending. More money just means more likelihood of more money spent wrong.

The only source of wealth that can pay for all the promises being made this cycle is from the middle and upper classes combined.

TWO TRILLION Dollars comprise Social Security, Medicare, and Medicade, tell me who giving them more will solve anything when they cannot care for Americans with two trillion dollars. Worse this is on top of state aid programs and programs coming out of another nearly 1.5 trillion dollars in various aid programs.

[rayiner]

The various levels of the US government spend $6-7 trillion annually. That’s about the same as the total wealth, accumulated over a lifetime, of all known billionaires.

[inflagranti]

This is the commonly assumed tension but I think it's a slightly false dichotomy.

The choices are not just between concentrating an obscene amount of money with individuals vs concentrating an obscene amount of money with a handful of bureaucrats.

Why have a system that allows so much money to be concentrated with any kind of entity in the first place and put everyone else at the mercy of their philanthropy? MHO handing all that money to the government instead of a billionaire class is just changing from private trickle-down economics to nationalised ones.

As soon as your having someone deal with billions of dollars a couple thousands become a rounding error and your local concerns become benign, small picture issue. But for you having that 3000 available to finally fix that pothole on your street is critical.

Worker co-ops, taxes on municipal level and wealth taxes might be ways to prevent extreme concentration with any entity.

[rayiner]

> This isn't untrue but I think it's a naive approach. If that money was divided between the governments to spend for their citizen's welfare then they could also invest it to benefit their citizens.

Especially in the developing world, governments are more likely to piss away money given to them than to invest that money to the benefit of citizens.

If governments were good at investing money communism would have worked. There would be no point having companies like Apple develop cell phones if the government could do it just as well without enriching shareholders in the process. We’d just have a government agency in charge of building cell phones and giving them away or selling them to citizens at cost. We don’t have a private sector for funsies. We have it because we recognize that governments aren’t good at investing money and producing results.

[munk-a]

I am of a split mind on that topic - on the one hand I agree with you that massive corruption is pretty commonplace within some governments... on the other hand you've been talking about India which (while not a great example of a lack of corruption) has managed to invest heavily into toilets to fight against an epidemic of rape aaaand, I'm concerned about falling into the colonialism trap of "We in the west know better" - that road doesn't lead to good things in the long run.

I don't know which approach is better but I know that both roads contain pretty significant dangers and both contain benefits.

Additionally, I'm not particularly interested in going down a path towards communism - the leninist soviet system was an utter failure but germany and scandinavia seem to be doing pretty alright - in fact, on the topic of cell phones, Nokia started out in Finland which is a pretty heavily socialist country. I think there are a lot of options on the spectrum between 1637s Dutch Capitalism and Leninist Soviets - both extremes result in failure and, IMO, all centrist solutions are constantly being pulled toward the nearer of the extremes and need to actively work to stay from slipping into those dark places.

[rayiner]

> fight against an epidemic of rape aaaand, I'm concerned about falling into the colonialism trap of "We in the west know better" - that road doesn't lead to good things in the long run.

The west does know better. Not because they’re better, but because as a matter of historical accident they stumbled upon a set of winning ideas. Colonialism was bad. But that’s in the past. The choice people in former colonies are faced with is what to do now. And as someone from one of those countries, I think we’re fucking stupid if we reject the west’s winning ideas just because we’re bitter about colonialism. That’s cutting off your nose to spite your face.

People who talk about decolonization make me livid. I’d like to be able to take my kids to see Bangladesh some day without worrying about them getting sick from the water. Decolonization won’t do that. Capitalism, the rule of law, and liberal democracy will do that. I don’t care who came up with it first.

[bhupy]

> the leninist soviet system was an utter failure but germany and scandinavia seem to be doing pretty alright

Yes, and Germany and Scandinavian countries are liberal capitalist economies where the means of production are predominately owned by the private sector. In fact, Sweden has more billionaires per capita than the US.

[sillyphus]

Thank you. This is the heart of the income-inequality debate and majority of those arguing are missing the point.