Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mihaic 892 days ago
> Why, though? You always hear people say that one person having too much wealth is a problem but rarely hear a good reason.

Historically, most societies where this happened ended up with large violent episodes as a response, so we should want to prevent that.

While it's possible to enlarge the pie for everyone, to anyone that wants to buy a house it's obviously not the case in today's economy. In some cases the economy is zero-sum, especially with things that are inherently limited such as good real-estate.

1 comments

" to anyone that wants to buy a house it's obviously not the case in today's economy."

Land is very much a limited resource. But most of the problems today are due to the distribution and consumer wants. In much of the US, you could easily buy some land and put a trailer or small manufactured house on it (or buy forclosed, vacant, etc). The problem is the jobs, especially the good ones, are concentrated in a dozen or so major metro areas with higher population density. The. You have the preference of most people who want good public schools, yards, big fancy single family houses, etc. Most people don't want a small house, and due to the job distribution can't live in the less populated areas.