this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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[–] NafiTheBear@pawb.social 6 points 1 day ago

I need these statistics for other countries. Especially Germany. We seem to struggle to understand it as well.

[–] Civil_Liberty@lemm.ee 12 points 1 day ago (3 children)

We don't need to redistribute any wealth. We only need to disappear the wealth of the billionaires, and the billionaires themselves just to be sure they do not rise again.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

We don’t need to redistribute any wealth

I think part of the problem is that we confuse "wealth" as "money" and not "capital".

We don't need to raid a bunch of bank accounts and hand out big checks to everyone.

We do need to give workers equity in the companies where they work. We need to give them transparency with regard to how the businesses operate. And we need to give them lines of credit such that they can operate these businesses independently of the private banking sector.

That is the real wealth of the modern American economy. Not the Petrodollar.

[–] ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You gotta grease the wheels. Americans are very self-centered, they won't put in effort for somebody else's profit (knowingly), but if they're told they themselves can get almost $500k they'll be more inclined to do it.

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

You're absolutely right and I wish we had an opposition party that knew how to frame this messaging. Liberal Democrats are stuck in "civility politics" and messaging that everything is fair and good and we need to all "do our fair share" and that slides off the backs of most self-centered people, which is like... all of them.

The right has won so much ground because they have both fashioned a selfish base, and nurtured them and sent them messages of what they're entitled to. Even if those entitlements are batshit and stupid, they still successfully got a loud enough segment of the population to make demands that we're now in a hostage situation where about 20% of us represent all of us.

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

That's the point of the message. You can't "redistribute wealth" in the shape it's in now without some kind of thanos gem.

But if more people understand that if they work and contribute to society, they are entitled to getting more of that back, we make small steps towards people understanding that their local representatives need to attach themselves to making our labor actually count for something in our lives.

We work more than ever and have less to show for it than ever. This is something we could change if wanted.

[–] randomaside@lemmy.dbzer0.com 30 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Hmmm . . . as a lump sum the market would then react and everything would cost 1 million dollars. Money isn't real. Food, Land, and property are.

I think money's value is directly tied to its velocity of trade vs the scarcity of the item it's being traded for.

However

IMO: What you are owed is 500,000$ worth of government services per person. The costs of things like public education, infrastructure, healthcare , social security and other social services should be covered by this.

This is what they want to take from you.

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

IMO: What you are owed is 500,000$ worth of government services per person. The costs of things like public education, infrastructure, healthcare , social security and other social services should be covered by this.

I wish the loudest, stupidest segment of our population, that is, the small sliver that somehow has taken us all hostage, could understand these kinds of concepts. I wish we had an opposition party that knew how to frame these ideas in ways that the stupid segment could understand.

[–] Tja@programming.dev 7 points 2 days ago (3 children)

No one said it would be 500k in money/cash. It could very well be real estate, gold, shares, bonds, or a mix thereof.

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[–] frezik@midwest.social 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Upvote to the moon. Lots of leftists seem to intellectually understand that money is a fiction that's sometimes useful, but are bad at putting that into practice.

I'll stick my neck out on something here: this includes donating to individual people in Gaza, even if they're coming to you from a verified source on Blue Sky. Yes, a kilo of flour might cost $600. Giving someone $600 to buy flour might feed that family, but there's some other family who isn't getting that flour. You're just choosing who starves today. The fundamental issue is that there isn't enough flour or any other food. There is no way to solve that by donating to individuals. It can only be solved by telling the government of Israel to go fuck itself.

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[–] Lucky_777@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I just want billionaires and churches to pay their fair share and end citizens united. That's a great start

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[–] corroded@lemmy.world 147 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (13 children)

Mathematically, I think it's hard for people to truly understand the obscene wealth that some people have accumulated. 100 billion doesn't sound that different than 100 million.

100 million is magnitudes closer to ZERO than it is to 100 billion.

[–] ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world 91 points 3 days ago (4 children)

The difference between 1 million and 1 billion is roughly 1 billion.

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[–] Fandangalo@lemmy.world 47 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Imagine life was a game. You lived for 2025 years. You worked 260 days / year. You made the median US salary.

You would need to relive that process 3,145 times to match an Oligarch.

That amount of wealth is unethical while humanity suffers. No one can really fathom “1b dollars.”

[–] T00l_shed@lemmy.world 17 points 3 days ago

Without spending

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[–] return2ozma@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

The net worths are outdated but it's still a shocking way to show how much billions are...

Wealth shown to scale

https://eattherichtextformat.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

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[–] Buffalobuffalo@reddthat.com 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

If 20 strangers get 1/20 of a 10 million dollar mansion what do they do? The most anyone could pay for it is $500,000.

Everyone is on here talking about how this would cause inflation, but I don’t think it would. A vast majority of this value is not in cash but in stocks bonds and property. I am more sure how you would divide up who gets apples shares and who gets 5% of their neighbors $600,000 home. But even if you were able, what is sure is that most people would want to convert their stock/bonds/property to cash so they can eat. Only problem is that no one in America would have any cash to buy up the assets. So in a market full of sellers and no buyers the value of everything will plummet.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think there's a lot of distraction discussing the particulars of this hypothetical, when it's clear that it couldn't work that way in practice.

It's really only helpful to illustrate the equity imbalance and just how much equity is in the system that most people don't see.

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[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

To be honest we could use a little deflation right about now.

[–] ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 69 points 3 days ago (7 children)

That would be in equity, not in cash, but it would mean each person would have secure housing, a secure retirement, reliable transportation, and reliable healthcare

Imagine how much less stressful life would be if the average person didn’t have to worry about paying rent and whether or not they will retire at the end of their life.

I work in mental health and I guarantee you a lot of mental illness is not “mental illness” but resource management issues masquerading as such

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[–] assa123@lemmy.world 23 points 2 days ago (16 children)

Doing it over world wealth/population (454385÷8.2) gives 55,412 USD per capita, which tell how skewed is wealth in the US.

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[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Except the wealth you're talking about is ownership, not actual money. Redistributing it won't give everybody a pile of Scrooge McDuck coins, it will give them stocks and other asset ownership worth half a million. To spend any of that, they would have to sell shares to somebody for cash and spend the cash, which they can only do once. After a flurry of liquidating and spending, you'd end up with a lot of people who have more stuff but are otherwise back where they were, and other people who spend less and gradually accumulate a ton of shares to become rich.

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

"people would just have a little bit of more stuff, don't give the poors anything, they're not responsible with their money"

you're labouring under the just world fallacy

science disagrees, buddy

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/12/02/781152563/researchers-find-a-remarkable-ripple-effect-when-you-give-cash-to-poor-families

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[–] cmhe@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Well, if everyone has equal shares, and trading them becomes as common as exchanging money, you could just use your shares (or fractions of it) to buy something at the grocery.

I am sure that people will find solutions for what you describe, if they want to.

But sure if you don't effectively prevent developing wealth-inequality after you redistributed it, it will slowly move back to a similar situation, but not sure what your point here is, you cannot simply fix capitalism by redistributing wealth one time and not changing the underlying incentive structure. But that is not what is expressed here.

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[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 21 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Wealth inequality is our #1 issue in the world, and the root of all our other issues, climate change, politics, all issues. But y'all understand money doesn't work like the meme, right?

Tried explaining this to my stoner friend back in the 90s. Mike was appalled that the government shredded worn out bills. "Man! They could just give that to people like us!"

OK Mike, you understand that the US government could give each one of $1,000,000, today? And you know I charge $20 to mow a lawn? If we both had a million bucks, I wouldn't mow your lawn for $20. I'd want $20,000. I already have a million simoleans, what's $20?! "You could still get a righteous meal at McDonald's!"

If we all woke up with $417,465 tomorrow, we would instantly be broke. As dad used to say, "If getting money was easy, it wouldn't be money." We obviously need to tilt the table, radically, but just smearing all the money around is a childish idea.

Call me a downer, but I don't see any hope of clawing anything back from the rich short of guillotines. Every one of our institutions is bought and paid for, and that's still not enough. They rape us more everyday and demand yet more. (Call me bitter. Lowe's is pulling this shit on me daily. Stock must have gone down a nickle.)

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[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 29 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Eat the rich, embrace socialism, basically become a millionaire at some point

Vs whatever the fuck Reagan's neoliberalism has got you

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[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago (22 children)

I'm curious to know, if the wealth was redistributed like this, but with no modifications to the underlying system, how long before the existing Pareto-style distribution returns?

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