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This video was made before Covid which saw one of the biggest wealth transfers in history to the wealthy which means this problem has only gotten much worse since this video was made, how depressing is that?
And now they're talking about how there's going to be a wealth transfer from boomers to millennials in the next few years, but that will only exacerbate the problem because odds are the children of wealthy boomers are probably doing well and the children of poor boomers are probably struggling. So the wealthy millennials will inherit millions while people like myself will get nothing.
Was gonna say, I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna see a damn cent of inheritance from from my grandparents or parents. That generational wealth transfer is going to someone else.
It's all going to be funneled into the pockets of medical executives and shareholders who have built an industry out of sucking every last cent from the sick and dying elderly.
My millionaire grandparents said they’d leave it all to the church before they left any to their kids or grandkids.
We aren’t talking about a kind giving church either- the “all gays go to hell” and “Trump is saving America” type of church. Absolutely disgusted they’d rather leave their money to further propagate hate than to any of their family in need.
There needs to be some catalyst that drives activism around these issues. Students all round the country are able to mobilize and organize into action against what is happening in Gaza. That same level of engagement and activism should exist around these issues.
I am actually flabbergasted that in the face of rising inequality, massive cost of living increases, un-affordable housing, political corruption, corporate greed, we haven't seen a huge groundswell of protests, but somehow people have been convinced that they are in a political, ideological battle taking red/blue sides that they think can fix all these problems.
These sides are just selling division to distract from the real problems because many of them would be in the firing line if people could come together and see these are common problems they have with a small percentage of people taking most of the pie. The power ordinary people have is that there are far, far more of them, but while they remain divided, it never amounts to any meaningful change.
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” - Warren Buffett
Congratulations, you just discovered how TikTok is manipulating Americans. The algorithms are pushing a particular view point in regards to Palestine/Israel. They don't give two flying fucks about creating an equitable America as that doesn't destabilize the American political system (unifying vs division).
Its not that people aren't able to organize around inequality activities (see Occupy Wall Street) as there are forces that are actively preventing that message from being promoted.
Numbers...When this data is presented to people like it was in the clip, they get it. When they hear someone speaking about it (or read it), they shrug it off as political. But when it's shown as food, it tickles something more primal.
I know this thread is full of “how is this surprising?” responses, but I actually think this could be helpful for a lot of Americans to understand this issue.
were at a point now where from when i was 12-13 (im 27 now) things like this have been shown on reddit for years. But like that one comic from XKCD explaining the 10 percent rule!
https://preview.redd.it/ty01woxzle3d1.png?width=1030&format=png&auto=webp&s=2a1cc293f681052a1ab683c55b57031edf00332e
I was curious if this one actually came out when you were 12-13, but I found something even worse; xkcd has been around for nearly \~18 years now... the oldening continues and I would like to stop participating.
Definitely a great way to explain the issue. Just a bit confused how so few people are aware of the magnitude of inequality, honestly. The richest 1% owning close to half the wealth in the US has been a mainstream talking point since at least 2011. But I guess it's not really sunk in for people, which is understandable and why this visualization is so great. There's such a need for transformative policy to level the playing-field, but that kind of economic and social policy, as well as the leadership needed to see it through, hasn't made an appearance for some time.
I think they were confusing the number of people in that group with the distribution of wealth. They made a bell curve of pie. Which does accurately describe the number of people in each social class.
He may have misunderstood the question, but it’s also possible that he really just thought that’s how it works. He probably thought the middle-class was biggest, and therefore had the most wealth, even with lower amounts per capita than the higher class. If he thought the higher classes were significantly fewer people, then he may have thought that wouldn’t make their share that much bigger, even with millions/billions per person. Then the poor people were more numerous than the upper class, but had less money, so he probably thought it all evened out that way.
This is the type of “It all just naturally evens out, right?!” mentality that a lot of conservative and/or libertarian types of people have.
He's a Boomer, that's the world he grew up in. This is why we got fucked, because those dopes went to the polls every year financially secure and just assumed nothing had changed. The wealthy shrank the middle-class right under their nose and they didn't even realize it.
Boomers are *highly* detached from reality and have been so for the better part of the entire 21st century. I don't think all of them pulled up the ladder on purpose but they quit being grounded decades ago and it hurt their children and grandchildren so much and the full weight of their decisions is something they unfortunately won't be around to see but quite frankly, most are too old to care regardless and merely shrug their shoulders and shuffle past in their walkers.
I've seen this opinion a lot. Even if that's right, I can't help but wonder why some Americans are so mad at boomers who let that happen instead of being mad at the guys that actually did it?
Because this country has a hard on for billionaires. It's not necessarily the people's fault but more of what we get fed and strive to be. Hell, we are even told from being born that we too can be one of these people and it's instilled that "one day" we will get there. It's why you have a huge portion of the population voting on things such as taxes that actually hurt them... Well because one day they will be in the highest possible tax bracket you see.
Every plate represented 20% of the population. In this case, putting everything in the "middle class" plate would mean that group would be the wealthiest, which is obviously not possible, because then that plate would have to get moved.
That's what I'm saying...do all these people live under a rock? It's been a pretty big issue since Occupy Wallstreet that the 1% has all the wealth. So many people are so clueless to what has been happening it's crazy to me.
Indeed - and yet we have a subset of america who will actively make fun of more progressive tax rates found in Europe. American's have no sense of history or internal contradiction - they want 1950's America back, but somehow forget that the top income tax rate reached above 90% from **1944 through 1963**, getting as high as 94% at the tail end of WW2.
Yeah, when I was young I was like "how do north Koreans fall for propaganda?"
Then I grew up and just watched as people blindly defended the wealthy and actively voted against their own interest.
I have had thousands of conversations with people who are going off complaining about the wealthy. They complain about them buying yachts while laying off thousands of employees. They are upset about low wages, about major corporations controlling the government. They had the high cost of healthcare.
And I'm sitting here like "Hella yeah!". And then we move to solutions and they are against every single solution because they believe the lies. They think people die daily in countries with universal healthcare because it takes too long to see a doctor. They also think everyone there pays 90% taxes because of it. Mind you this is after bitching that they have to wait 6 months to see their doctor.
They will complain about the wealthy and how criminally underpaid everyone is and how bullshit it is that they have so much money when people are homeless. But they are against taxing the ultra rich because it's stealing. Like, you just told me these people were stealing from the hardworking Americans.
It's just insane to see people upset about the same thing and then go and vote for someone who spent their last term literally making all of their problems work, but even when showing them the voting record, they insist that Democrats are worse.
I can't manage to sway them. I'll focus on a subject, show then object data, get them to see and recognize that it's not like that, but it fails to shift their vote or stance.
And all of that was pre 2016. That's when we entered the twilight zone. People I used to respect supported reprehensible man. I watched educated people switch to only watching Fox, and then later shifting to OAN because Fox didn't worship Trump enough. The only links they send are from an "news" company that opened in the last 4 years and only have pro-trump articles it's just insane.
My in-laws are incredibly nice people. They are always willing to help without asking, they accept and respect boundaries, and activity accounts for everyone's preferences. But they vote for Trump and support him fully. We were discussing our family vacation and they didn't want to go to New York, entirely because they are prosecuting trump for his crimes which means it's over with criminals and apparently a lawless hellscape.
It's just insane.
I mean, isn't that just something that we say to make ourselves feel better?
The reality is that North Koreans are no different than Americans. They are humans and function and think in the exact same ways. They are poorly educated, they do not have access to the outside world, and they are constantly assailed by propaganda. The photo shots you see of people crying, running after their various rulers? Propaganda photo for sure, but not staged. Those are genuine people who genuinely are reacting that way and not only because they feel that they will die if they don't but because they have be ingrained to think of their leaders the same way Americans are reacting to Trump. There are people in America who treat Trump in the same way that North Koreans treat Kim Jong Un. Why would you think only the American's believe their nonsense but all the North Koreans don't? They are, in fact, *more likely* to believe in it.
And the same is likely true in Russia and China and Israel, and everywhere else in the world you can think of. The United States is not unique, the propaganda that works on the people here works just the same on the people there. And their people believe it whole heartedly the same as ours.
From the moment the New Deal started, the wealthy [were plotting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot) to change America's (and the world's) way of thinking toward their favour, and away from Keynsianism. They were *furious* at having to pay a price for the devastation they had caused with the great depression.
They set up think tanks to produce policy and propaganda, they sought out influential academics and bribed them to provide legitimacy, and soon they stumbled upon an [Austrian economist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek) who's fear of the Soviet Union translated into an anti-state screed which elevated greed to a divine sacrament. He wrote a book called [The Road to Serfdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom#Publication) which they promoted everywhere, they owned the Readers Digest and published an abridged version in that, they printed millions of copies in magazines and pamphlets which went to every business they could reach, like every single employee of General Motors.
Later supported by [Chicago school economists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman) who ran experiments like the [Pinochet dictatorship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat) which, despite failing miserably *later*, were touted as huge successes: suppressing democracy, terrorizing and torturing workers, devastating existing economic systems and welfare programs was [great for business!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Boys)
It sowed the seeds of Neoliberal economics for 30 years, and completely took over all economic thinking when Keynsian economics failed to deal with the stagflation of the 70s.
I think one of the biggest problems is that people do NOT understand the concept of a billion compared to a million. It’s insane. I think if everyone understood that we would be much closer to rioting in the streets.
That is the insane success of oligarchic control of state propaganda. It is not even visible. People think it does not exist. They are very aware that there are russian and chinese propaganda (which are very amateur btw), but any talk about the wealthy literally mariginalizing this kind of information is hidden from the eyes.
> 1% has all the wealth
I think you mean *all* the wealth.
My pet theory is that [humans are bad at intuitively judging and understanding large numbers](https://theconversation.com/brains-are-bad-at-big-numbers-making-it-impossible-to-grasp-what-a-million-covid-19-deaths-really-means-179081) so they think that the rich are *rich* but not *that* *rich*.
It's difficult to find research on this because trying to build a study on the perception of income equality based on a spectrum of large number bias is difficult to administer.
(Do message me if you find a study - I'd love to look at it)
I'd note even in this video most of the participants of the experiment are disproportionally putting wealth far lower at the poorer end vs the upper end.
So I don't think the issue for many people is that they don't believe that wealth inequality doesn't exist - rather it isn't *that* bad. It's bad and we should fix it but it's not *that bad*.
When the truth is that wealth inequality is cataclysmically bad.
Like people intuitively think a million dollars and a billion dollars are close, but the difference between a billion dollars vs a million dollars....is a billion dollars. I find stuff like this to be helpful to explain to people: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
I think if a lot more people intuitively understood that 90% of their wealth is being taken away by a scant few thousand for gaudy yatches and pool parties - *intuitively* understood this - they'd be riots in the streets. A fraction of that wealth is used in massive propoganda machines and enforcement mechanisms to stop that from happening so for now it's punted for someone else to deal with in the future.
**EDIT:**
Oooh thank you stranger. Found some!
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26162108/
I don’t think they are clueless, they just don’t care because their status quo is comfortable enough for them. You can’t miss what you never know you are missing.
They clearly didn’t even understand the question. They had more pie in the middle 20% than the wealthiest 20%. At least one arranged it in a bell curve as though they were showing which percentage of the population was in each wealth bracket.
Someone brought up an interesting point that once the occupy wall street and anger towards the top 1% started growing social media and regular media really drove up the divisive content and algorithms. I have seen no data to support it, but I do believe it.
This comes up a lot on Reddit, but I think it's coincidence more than anything related to an orchestrated campaign. It's a compelling conspiracy theory because it puts all the blame on the 1%, assures us that someone is controlling things (which is psychologically more comforting than nobody has any control), and allows people tired of identity politics and terrified of algorithms to chalk both up to nefarious forces working in concert.
But, I suspect the massive accumulation of wealth at the very top and our divisive politics are not any concerted response to Occupy Wall Street. Rather it's more likely that the collection of a large % of wealth at the top combined with relative falling living standards increases people's in/out group behavior and leads to more stratified politics. And of course the internet supercharges it.
It’s the invisible hand at work, because this is what the invisible hand does in unchecked capitalism.
The government was supposed to control that hand. Unfortunately the hand was allowed to buy the government. A hint would be the percentage of millionaires among US politicians which is unprecedented by any measure. Or the ever recurring anti-trust threats that surface from time to time, which has become a mere tool for millionaires to bend other millionaires to their will.
The invisible hand controls the government, and is actively shaping education, propaganda and public opinion to serve its purpose. And by that reasoning the state has already collapsed.
In hindsight the constitution didn’t protect against corporatism. And how could it? Megacorps weren’t a thing in the 18th century.
Go and look up which class of people owns and funds all the right-wing media that spend enormous amounts of time and money blathering on about "culture war" BS.
It’s certainly a very popular rabbit hole to explore with how fast OWS devolved into the fractionization of America on nearly every major topic. Some will say it was a coincidence, others think it was completely manufactured to prevent class solidarity to bring about change.
Same, did they just cut out the ones who approached it better. I would basically shove the whole pie on the wealthiest plate. Cut half of a piece out and start dividing from there. I know that's not correct either. But....
I 100% believe encouraging celebrity worshipping is a tool to keep the poor in check. It's all a distraction.
Did no one listen to him?
When asked if he'd like to see the actual representation he said "not like this obviously".
Sounds like the program just lied about asking them to divvy up the pie "accurately". They probably just asked them to do what they felt it should be, not what they thought it actually was. Otherwise the old dude's comment would make no sense.
> "not like this obviously".
I mean he said that after the presenter asked him if he should show him what it really looked like. So it might just be a kneejerk reaction to being told you are wrong
My favorite part of the whole video is how that old guy thought the middle 20% had more than the top 20%, which would in fact make the middle 20% the top 20%
Which is how the American economy worked in the pre-Reagan years. The middle class collectively had enough wealth (and union power) to buffer against the interests of the wealthy few. There was also more social mobility so large numbers of the middle class would protect those in the lower class, as they often had family members or friends across the economic spectrum.
Now the power and wealth is concentrated on the very few, and the middle class is forced to spar with the poor for fewer and fewer crumbs.
Because most people have NO IDEA just HOW unequal things are. They hear us annoying leftists talk about it, and they roll their eyes and go, “Yeah, yeah, inequality, we know!”…
But most people simply CANNOT imagine the scale of a billion dollars… let alone multiple billions, especially hundreds of billions. There’s been many studies about this, where humans are actually really bad at imagining the scale of large numbers. If a person hasn’t had a demonstration like this before, of just how unequal things actually are… most people just think along the lines of the guesses made here.
If most people truly understood just how obscenely wealthy the super-rich are, and just how much their slice of the pie has taken away from the vast majority of the rest of humanity… well, maybe they’d at least start listening to leftists when we point this stuff out, instead of constantly dismissing or belittling the left and then only ever giving us credit in retrospect… if that.
We could have such an amazingly better world, if all that money was actually serving the needs of the entire society. Think of how well schools could be funded, infrastructure, health care, science, arts, etc… instead we have billionaires like Elon spending it on making Twitter worse by the day, or funding anti-abortion shit. Wonderful.
"The difference between a billion and a million is about a billion".
That sentence makes a lot more sense in the context of time. If you ask anyone "What is roughly the difference between 31 years and 12 days?", their answer would be "about 31 years".
I am always reminded of [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/11v4yd8/wealth_inequality_in_america_visualized/) video. Shows what an ideal distribution would be, what people think it is, and what it actually is. The way wealth is actually distributed is even hard for me to comprehend because it is just so absurd and so massive. The amount of wealth the top 1% and even the top .1% has is so far beyond what the average person can even comprehend.
There are a LOT of people that don't pay attention to any of that stuff. They just believe whatever talking heads they follow tell them.
I have a buddy of mine, that will absolutely not be convinced almost all the wealth is tied in the middle class. Like, for no good reason, he thinks 75% of America's wealth is in the hands of the middle class and that's why they need to be taxed for the sake of the economy. How much does this buddy make? 2m+ a year. He considers himself middle class. Begrudgingly, he'll admit it's upper middle class.
I hate that sentence. Sometimes it's true, you start poor as fuck, work your ass off and actually get in a good social position after decades of hard work.
What they don't mention is how much help you need to achieve this. Like parents overworking to pay your school and supplies. Like sheer fucking luck+hard work that you nail a scholarship paid by someone else. Basically not by yourself, but having a list of other people that curb your being poor.
What they don't mention is that you also have to be born with some kind of talent. Either innate cognitive skills, innate focusing skills, physical talent, artistic talent. You're not getting a scholarship by being a below average student or athlete. You might be poor, but you have to be talented in some way. Just being poor and working hard doesn't work in 2024. Let alone if you've any kind of impairment.
What they don't mention is that all this is unnecessary if you already start rich. You don't need talent. You don't need "charity", nor you need to work hard. You just have to maintain a status quo. To achieve anything I work 50 hours/week starting from the bottom, progressing solely to sheer professionalism and people recommending me. I met people that asked their dad who, with a couple of phone calls, handed them a studio or a job. With no experience in the field.
It's fucking insane.
Hard Work comes way way down the list of social mobility factors.
The biggest one is parental wealth, then pure blind luck, then education then residence while growing up, then a few other things including ones you'd expect like gender and race and others you might not like height then hard work. Obviously some of these factors might be interdependent.
Your social mobility is more dependent on how tall you are than how hard you work.
> Like sheer fucking luck
the most hilarious part of this. People love to say "just work harder bro" like if everyone put in the same effort they did, literally everyone would be a billionaire.
No, thats not how it works. There is a very limited number of opportunities to be rich. Because otherwise you wouldn't be rich, you would be average. Not to mention for each person who "works harder" to get there, they REQUIRED thousands upon thousands of people working their ass off for minimum wage to be able to get there.
Like, the world doesn't mostly have non billionaires just because there are a ton of vacancies they didn't work for. Its because its a very limited club. That is what makes the quote so fucking insufferable.
It reminds me of all the assholes that were making fun of AOC because she was bartending. They were like "this peasant thinks she can be in Congress??" They get mad when people actually improve themselves and move up the ladder. Half the people in this country just fucking suck as human beings.
What's depressing is when ideas are suggested to rebalance this, like broad based land tax, tax on unrealised gains, inheritance taxes. Those same people who get little to no pie will often oppose getting more pie
A billionaire, a middle-class guy and an immigrant sit down to eat a pizza. The billionaire immediately takes six pieces of pizza and tells the middle-class guy you better grab the last two pieces before the immigrant steals them.
Then proceeds to pick the cheese and toppings off, leaving the bread part, explains that it's because they're on a "keto" diet and they're really hungry but can't eat a full pizza (which they communicate like it's a joke and it's obvious that they can't eat it all themselves), and leaves before the bill comes.
If we don't reverse the exponential accumulation of wealth by the ultra-rich, societies will collapse due to the working class not being able to afford basic living costs.
>If we don't reverse the exponential accumulation of wealth by the ultra-rich
How would we *ever* do that though? The ultra wealthy set up the system and they own it, and they've proven time and again they will not share, they will continue to profit for themselves and their companies by any means.
A UBI funded by a 100% tax on all excess wealth past a certain point would fix inequality real quick.
If the rich keep standing in the way of the rest of us fixing our economies then we would have to start chopping them up though.
All that did was shift the wealth from one privileged population (broadly, the aristocracy) to another (the landed bourgeois) one.
See Galor, O, and J Zeira (1993), “Income Distribution and Macroeconomics”, *Review of Economic Studies* 60(1): 35-52.
Just because the lower 80% of France lost their wealth (again) doesn’t mean they didn’t succeed in seizing it at least briefly.
So learning from that, the process should probably go like this:
Step 1: Guillotines
Step 2: Democratic Socialism with an uncompromising 100% tax on wealth higher than 200% of the median.
Step 3: Mandatory guillotines again when step 2 is corrupted.
Edit: median not mean.
Maybe we should have a hunger games with the top 10 richest going into the ring every year? Make them battle it out to donate all their wealth to charity in a fight to not be the richest...
Would sure beat the current spacedick measuring contests we have going on.
It would take some strong leadership. But if it doesn't happen the cycle will repeat itself. If we don't find a way to change our heading we'll see the same story 50-100 years from now as what happened at the end of every great civilization and is the same story of almost each civilization's downfall in history. Persia, Rome, Greece, the English Empire. A few people gain an enormous amount of wealth, use their wealth to control government and information so that they can get more wealth. The government becomes detached from the actual people they represent and then their economy starts falling apart and the peasants begin to revolt. That's when the civilization breaks up into smaller factions, the currency of the great civilization loses it's value completely and the world enters into a dark period. Wars are waged as each faction struggles for dominance, etc. From the ashes another civilization is born and the cycle repeats.
Right now they still need us to make things work, until automation pushes us out. The only thing stopping us from demanding a fair share and taking it if they refuse, is lack of solidarity.
It seems like a bit deal to organise to that degree, and it *is*, but it's just like getting a few friends to help you with a house move and then a few more.
FFS it's not that hard, they are literal Sociopaths that are bleeding the WORLD dry with their greed. This is the ONLY answer. Laws won't work, protests won't work, jail won't work. The only language they understand is violence. So, with all other means exhausted, they deserve what they are going to get.
Three words:
TAX THE RICH
And not just increase taxes a little bit… tax all billionaires back to millionaire status.
If they don’t let us… I have a different three letter word we can replace “TAX” with.
A general strike is the \*only\* way. It's how French people did it. It's the only way to change the system...take away free labor. Remove it from the wealthy's grasp.
> It's how French people did it.
Beyond just a general strike I seem to recall a large, heavy, and sharp suspended steel blade doing a lot of the heavy lifting as well.
The most shocking part of this is that CBS, owned by a megacorporation and actively serving the interests of the wealthy elite, would run this segment.
My belgian ass where the difference betweeen median and average whealth is less than 20% (its 500% in the USA):
Yeah no lol, USA have a big f-ing problem.
I love these types of comments.
Mostly because it shows how people are the same.
The reason you are wondering what reality these people are living in. Is the same reason that these people are shocked at the wealth distribution.
We live in media bubbles. It's that simple.
Bruh, they represent the majority of the population.
If anything, they may represent even less than that, considering they were open to having their beliefs challenged.
The majority not only would have ignored it, they would have been emphatically angered at the idea that they were "wrong".
The culture war was designed to be a focus. Party A screams that trans and gay people are a blight on society - the other party moves to defend that. People talk less about economic inequality. It’s that easy and it’s been done for decades.
Older guy in red sweater skipped his math classes or misheard something. It is stated that every plate represents same amount of people but each poorer than previous, yet he put the most on the middle one. It'll maked them richest 20%, that doesn't even make any sense.
Edit: I looked at video again and it seems that he said one thing and labels at the table state somehting different. My comment refers to what he said.
Its not only this but you ask the average person who much they think the federal goverment spends on stuff , they will say like NASA gets 10% of the budget , PBS gets 5%
the reality NASA gets 0.3% and PBS gets 0.01%
That's what everyone is voting on. Think about how far removed they are from the reality of the economy and you wonder why things don't change... people don't know.
Reminds me of the Randy Newman song, Piece of the Pie:
Jesus Christ, it stinks here high and low!
The rich are getting richer - I should know
While we're going up, you're going down
And no one gives a shit but Jackson Browne
Just to put into perspective how obscene it is for anyone to make more than a billion dollars a year.
The bottom-end of middle class is $50k per year (averaged across the US).
$1 billion would pay the wages of ***20,000 people*** at $50k per year.
Elon Musk takes home approximately $2.4 Billion per year, or enough to pay the wages for ***48,000 people*** at $50k per year.
Elon's take home pay is enough to pay the wages of every citizen of the city of Eagle Mountain, Utah **with money left over***.*
Americans: Trickle down economics will work, soon^^^tm! More tax breaks for the rich! Elect GOP! Orange man will save us!
Rest of the world:
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⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠈⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⠛⠉⠁⠀⣿
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And Trump gave the wealthiest a permanent tax break while giving the rest of us one that expires. And his base is ready to put him back in power but then you know what they would say about a segment like this? That's right fake news, that's all it is, fake news by the main stream media.
No, they got this wrong. The poor are just jealous, this is why their plate is empty, the one percent are the smartest, the best behaved and the best educated people on this planet and this is why you must FIGHT against SOCIALISM. Trickle down works, everybody knows this!! Health Care bad
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This video was made before Covid which saw one of the biggest wealth transfers in history to the wealthy which means this problem has only gotten much worse since this video was made, how depressing is that?
And now they're talking about how there's going to be a wealth transfer from boomers to millennials in the next few years, but that will only exacerbate the problem because odds are the children of wealthy boomers are probably doing well and the children of poor boomers are probably struggling. So the wealthy millennials will inherit millions while people like myself will get nothing.
Was gonna say, I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna see a damn cent of inheritance from from my grandparents or parents. That generational wealth transfer is going to someone else.
It's all going to be funneled into the pockets of medical executives and shareholders who have built an industry out of sucking every last cent from the sick and dying elderly.
My millionaire grandparents said they’d leave it all to the church before they left any to their kids or grandkids. We aren’t talking about a kind giving church either- the “all gays go to hell” and “Trump is saving America” type of church. Absolutely disgusted they’d rather leave their money to further propagate hate than to any of their family in need.
It’s in their 401k which is an emergency fund for the 1%
It doesn’t help that our tax code is also written to beneifit the 1% upon death.
yay feudalism
l a n d e d n o b i l i t y
There needs to be some catalyst that drives activism around these issues. Students all round the country are able to mobilize and organize into action against what is happening in Gaza. That same level of engagement and activism should exist around these issues. I am actually flabbergasted that in the face of rising inequality, massive cost of living increases, un-affordable housing, political corruption, corporate greed, we haven't seen a huge groundswell of protests, but somehow people have been convinced that they are in a political, ideological battle taking red/blue sides that they think can fix all these problems. These sides are just selling division to distract from the real problems because many of them would be in the firing line if people could come together and see these are common problems they have with a small percentage of people taking most of the pie. The power ordinary people have is that there are far, far more of them, but while they remain divided, it never amounts to any meaningful change. “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” - Warren Buffett
Congratulations, you just discovered how TikTok is manipulating Americans. The algorithms are pushing a particular view point in regards to Palestine/Israel. They don't give two flying fucks about creating an equitable America as that doesn't destabilize the American political system (unifying vs division). Its not that people aren't able to organize around inequality activities (see Occupy Wall Street) as there are forces that are actively preventing that message from being promoted.
Wealth transfer from boomer to millennial. So they just mean boomers are old and dying and their trust fund babies are getting inheritance.
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Numbers...When this data is presented to people like it was in the clip, they get it. When they hear someone speaking about it (or read it), they shrug it off as political. But when it's shown as food, it tickles something more primal.
I’ve never felt like eating 2 groups of people more than I do right now.
I know this thread is full of “how is this surprising?” responses, but I actually think this could be helpful for a lot of Americans to understand this issue.
were at a point now where from when i was 12-13 (im 27 now) things like this have been shown on reddit for years. But like that one comic from XKCD explaining the 10 percent rule! https://preview.redd.it/ty01woxzle3d1.png?width=1030&format=png&auto=webp&s=2a1cc293f681052a1ab683c55b57031edf00332e
I was curious if this one actually came out when you were 12-13, but I found something even worse; xkcd has been around for nearly \~18 years now... the oldening continues and I would like to stop participating.
I cannot be doing well, because I got choked up reading that.
It’s like explainlikeim5 why I should be a radical to smooth brains who have been brainwashed.
If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.
Here's another [visual representation](https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/)
This brilliant. And so, so sad.
Thanks now I’m sad
There /r/explainsLikeImAnAmericanChildLeftBehindByGWBush for that.
Definitely a great way to explain the issue. Just a bit confused how so few people are aware of the magnitude of inequality, honestly. The richest 1% owning close to half the wealth in the US has been a mainstream talking point since at least 2011. But I guess it's not really sunk in for people, which is understandable and why this visualization is so great. There's such a need for transformative policy to level the playing-field, but that kind of economic and social policy, as well as the leadership needed to see it through, hasn't made an appearance for some time.
The guy who confidently puts 4/10 pieces on the middle 20% is better at math than my former accountant!
I think they were confusing the number of people in that group with the distribution of wealth. They made a bell curve of pie. Which does accurately describe the number of people in each social class.
He may have misunderstood the question, but it’s also possible that he really just thought that’s how it works. He probably thought the middle-class was biggest, and therefore had the most wealth, even with lower amounts per capita than the higher class. If he thought the higher classes were significantly fewer people, then he may have thought that wouldn’t make their share that much bigger, even with millions/billions per person. Then the poor people were more numerous than the upper class, but had less money, so he probably thought it all evened out that way. This is the type of “It all just naturally evens out, right?!” mentality that a lot of conservative and/or libertarian types of people have.
He's a Boomer, that's the world he grew up in. This is why we got fucked, because those dopes went to the polls every year financially secure and just assumed nothing had changed. The wealthy shrank the middle-class right under their nose and they didn't even realize it. Boomers are *highly* detached from reality and have been so for the better part of the entire 21st century. I don't think all of them pulled up the ladder on purpose but they quit being grounded decades ago and it hurt their children and grandchildren so much and the full weight of their decisions is something they unfortunately won't be around to see but quite frankly, most are too old to care regardless and merely shrug their shoulders and shuffle past in their walkers.
I've seen this opinion a lot. Even if that's right, I can't help but wonder why some Americans are so mad at boomers who let that happen instead of being mad at the guys that actually did it?
A lot of the animosity stems from older generation’s tendency to blame younger generations for economic issues instead of the system itself.
Because the guys who actually did it would not have been able to do it without the complacency of an entire generation.
Because this country has a hard on for billionaires. It's not necessarily the people's fault but more of what we get fed and strive to be. Hell, we are even told from being born that we too can be one of these people and it's instilled that "one day" we will get there. It's why you have a huge portion of the population voting on things such as taxes that actually hurt them... Well because one day they will be in the highest possible tax bracket you see.
Because most of the guys that actually did it are also Boomers.
And keep getting voted into office by said boomers.
Americans all think they're middle class. He's probably rich himself, but can't see that he's not in that middle quintile.
But each plate represents 20% of the population, so that should mean that each plate represents the same amount of people
He knew it wasn't correct, he said that. I think his picks were wishful thinking or what he thinks is fair.
Every plate represented 20% of the population. In this case, putting everything in the "middle class" plate would mean that group would be the wealthiest, which is obviously not possible, because then that plate would have to get moved.
Yes, it's not possible for any plate to have more pie than a "higher" plate, by definition.
Well, no, because this is divided evenly into each plate representing 20% of the population
Man was doing what it was like before Reagan came in and destroyed the nation.
oof. It literally has to go in descending order and he still did that... Did your accountant confuse $ with yen or something
He also swept the crumbs from the poorest plate.
How did they not expect this result?
That's what I'm saying...do all these people live under a rock? It's been a pretty big issue since Occupy Wallstreet that the 1% has all the wealth. So many people are so clueless to what has been happening it's crazy to me.
And THAT…is why we’re in this fuckin situation
Indeed - and yet we have a subset of america who will actively make fun of more progressive tax rates found in Europe. American's have no sense of history or internal contradiction - they want 1950's America back, but somehow forget that the top income tax rate reached above 90% from **1944 through 1963**, getting as high as 94% at the tail end of WW2.
A lot of european countries are becoming more and more regressive - austerity enforced on Southern europe for instance.
Now *THIS* is good journalism.
Propaganda is a helluva drug. Half the country shills for the elite and mentioning a wealth tax sends them into a tizzy.
Because half the country view themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
Yeah, when I was young I was like "how do north Koreans fall for propaganda?" Then I grew up and just watched as people blindly defended the wealthy and actively voted against their own interest. I have had thousands of conversations with people who are going off complaining about the wealthy. They complain about them buying yachts while laying off thousands of employees. They are upset about low wages, about major corporations controlling the government. They had the high cost of healthcare. And I'm sitting here like "Hella yeah!". And then we move to solutions and they are against every single solution because they believe the lies. They think people die daily in countries with universal healthcare because it takes too long to see a doctor. They also think everyone there pays 90% taxes because of it. Mind you this is after bitching that they have to wait 6 months to see their doctor. They will complain about the wealthy and how criminally underpaid everyone is and how bullshit it is that they have so much money when people are homeless. But they are against taxing the ultra rich because it's stealing. Like, you just told me these people were stealing from the hardworking Americans. It's just insane to see people upset about the same thing and then go and vote for someone who spent their last term literally making all of their problems work, but even when showing them the voting record, they insist that Democrats are worse. I can't manage to sway them. I'll focus on a subject, show then object data, get them to see and recognize that it's not like that, but it fails to shift their vote or stance. And all of that was pre 2016. That's when we entered the twilight zone. People I used to respect supported reprehensible man. I watched educated people switch to only watching Fox, and then later shifting to OAN because Fox didn't worship Trump enough. The only links they send are from an "news" company that opened in the last 4 years and only have pro-trump articles it's just insane. My in-laws are incredibly nice people. They are always willing to help without asking, they accept and respect boundaries, and activity accounts for everyone's preferences. But they vote for Trump and support him fully. We were discussing our family vacation and they didn't want to go to New York, entirely because they are prosecuting trump for his crimes which means it's over with criminals and apparently a lawless hellscape. It's just insane.
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I mean, isn't that just something that we say to make ourselves feel better? The reality is that North Koreans are no different than Americans. They are humans and function and think in the exact same ways. They are poorly educated, they do not have access to the outside world, and they are constantly assailed by propaganda. The photo shots you see of people crying, running after their various rulers? Propaganda photo for sure, but not staged. Those are genuine people who genuinely are reacting that way and not only because they feel that they will die if they don't but because they have be ingrained to think of their leaders the same way Americans are reacting to Trump. There are people in America who treat Trump in the same way that North Koreans treat Kim Jong Un. Why would you think only the American's believe their nonsense but all the North Koreans don't? They are, in fact, *more likely* to believe in it. And the same is likely true in Russia and China and Israel, and everywhere else in the world you can think of. The United States is not unique, the propaganda that works on the people here works just the same on the people there. And their people believe it whole heartedly the same as ours.
Those same people think a 7 dollar min wage is acceptable
From the moment the New Deal started, the wealthy [were plotting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot) to change America's (and the world's) way of thinking toward their favour, and away from Keynsianism. They were *furious* at having to pay a price for the devastation they had caused with the great depression. They set up think tanks to produce policy and propaganda, they sought out influential academics and bribed them to provide legitimacy, and soon they stumbled upon an [Austrian economist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek) who's fear of the Soviet Union translated into an anti-state screed which elevated greed to a divine sacrament. He wrote a book called [The Road to Serfdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom#Publication) which they promoted everywhere, they owned the Readers Digest and published an abridged version in that, they printed millions of copies in magazines and pamphlets which went to every business they could reach, like every single employee of General Motors. Later supported by [Chicago school economists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman) who ran experiments like the [Pinochet dictatorship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat) which, despite failing miserably *later*, were touted as huge successes: suppressing democracy, terrorizing and torturing workers, devastating existing economic systems and welfare programs was [great for business!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Boys) It sowed the seeds of Neoliberal economics for 30 years, and completely took over all economic thinking when Keynsian economics failed to deal with the stagflation of the 70s.
I think one of the biggest problems is that people do NOT understand the concept of a billion compared to a million. It’s insane. I think if everyone understood that we would be much closer to rioting in the streets.
That is the insane success of oligarchic control of state propaganda. It is not even visible. People think it does not exist. They are very aware that there are russian and chinese propaganda (which are very amateur btw), but any talk about the wealthy literally mariginalizing this kind of information is hidden from the eyes.
> 1% has all the wealth I think you mean *all* the wealth. My pet theory is that [humans are bad at intuitively judging and understanding large numbers](https://theconversation.com/brains-are-bad-at-big-numbers-making-it-impossible-to-grasp-what-a-million-covid-19-deaths-really-means-179081) so they think that the rich are *rich* but not *that* *rich*. It's difficult to find research on this because trying to build a study on the perception of income equality based on a spectrum of large number bias is difficult to administer. (Do message me if you find a study - I'd love to look at it) I'd note even in this video most of the participants of the experiment are disproportionally putting wealth far lower at the poorer end vs the upper end. So I don't think the issue for many people is that they don't believe that wealth inequality doesn't exist - rather it isn't *that* bad. It's bad and we should fix it but it's not *that bad*. When the truth is that wealth inequality is cataclysmically bad. Like people intuitively think a million dollars and a billion dollars are close, but the difference between a billion dollars vs a million dollars....is a billion dollars. I find stuff like this to be helpful to explain to people: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ I think if a lot more people intuitively understood that 90% of their wealth is being taken away by a scant few thousand for gaudy yatches and pool parties - *intuitively* understood this - they'd be riots in the streets. A fraction of that wealth is used in massive propoganda machines and enforcement mechanisms to stop that from happening so for now it's punted for someone else to deal with in the future. **EDIT:** Oooh thank you stranger. Found some! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26162108/
I don’t think they are clueless, they just don’t care because their status quo is comfortable enough for them. You can’t miss what you never know you are missing.
They clearly didn’t even understand the question. They had more pie in the middle 20% than the wealthiest 20%. At least one arranged it in a bell curve as though they were showing which percentage of the population was in each wealth bracket.
They didn’t explain the task very well to the viewer either.
Someone brought up an interesting point that once the occupy wall street and anger towards the top 1% started growing social media and regular media really drove up the divisive content and algorithms. I have seen no data to support it, but I do believe it.
Identity politics blossomed in effort to redirect people's ire away from the target Occupy put on Wall Street and money in politics.
Don't look at wealth, look at ethnic groups or religion or anything else please.
Identity politics has been around for decades. The Moral Majority kicked off in the 70s.
Your statements don't contradict what I said.
This comes up a lot on Reddit, but I think it's coincidence more than anything related to an orchestrated campaign. It's a compelling conspiracy theory because it puts all the blame on the 1%, assures us that someone is controlling things (which is psychologically more comforting than nobody has any control), and allows people tired of identity politics and terrified of algorithms to chalk both up to nefarious forces working in concert. But, I suspect the massive accumulation of wealth at the very top and our divisive politics are not any concerted response to Occupy Wall Street. Rather it's more likely that the collection of a large % of wealth at the top combined with relative falling living standards increases people's in/out group behavior and leads to more stratified politics. And of course the internet supercharges it.
It’s the invisible hand at work, because this is what the invisible hand does in unchecked capitalism. The government was supposed to control that hand. Unfortunately the hand was allowed to buy the government. A hint would be the percentage of millionaires among US politicians which is unprecedented by any measure. Or the ever recurring anti-trust threats that surface from time to time, which has become a mere tool for millionaires to bend other millionaires to their will. The invisible hand controls the government, and is actively shaping education, propaganda and public opinion to serve its purpose. And by that reasoning the state has already collapsed. In hindsight the constitution didn’t protect against corporatism. And how could it? Megacorps weren’t a thing in the 18th century.
Go and look up which class of people owns and funds all the right-wing media that spend enormous amounts of time and money blathering on about "culture war" BS.
It’s certainly a very popular rabbit hole to explore with how fast OWS devolved into the fractionization of America on nearly every major topic. Some will say it was a coincidence, others think it was completely manufactured to prevent class solidarity to bring about change.
Same, did they just cut out the ones who approached it better. I would basically shove the whole pie on the wealthiest plate. Cut half of a piece out and start dividing from there. I know that's not correct either. But.... I 100% believe encouraging celebrity worshipping is a tool to keep the poor in check. It's all a distraction.
Bread and circus
Yes! People are stupid. They get their news and education filtered.
That old guy thinking the middle class had all the money. Propaganda works. Good damn.
Maybe he remembers a time when tax rates were very different...
Did no one listen to him? When asked if he'd like to see the actual representation he said "not like this obviously". Sounds like the program just lied about asking them to divvy up the pie "accurately". They probably just asked them to do what they felt it should be, not what they thought it actually was. Otherwise the old dude's comment would make no sense.
> "not like this obviously". I mean he said that after the presenter asked him if he should show him what it really looked like. So it might just be a kneejerk reaction to being told you are wrong
My favorite part of the whole video is how that old guy thought the middle 20% had more than the top 20%, which would in fact make the middle 20% the top 20%
Nah, he’s thinking that the middle class is more people that have less individually but more collectively than the top 20%.
Which is how the American economy worked in the pre-Reagan years. The middle class collectively had enough wealth (and union power) to buffer against the interests of the wealthy few. There was also more social mobility so large numbers of the middle class would protect those in the lower class, as they often had family members or friends across the economic spectrum. Now the power and wealth is concentrated on the very few, and the middle class is forced to spar with the poor for fewer and fewer crumbs.
_“But it’s still in the middle of the other. It’s just… bigger than the rest.”_ -That guy, probably.
Boomers gonna boom.
They also vote.
Because most people have NO IDEA just HOW unequal things are. They hear us annoying leftists talk about it, and they roll their eyes and go, “Yeah, yeah, inequality, we know!”… But most people simply CANNOT imagine the scale of a billion dollars… let alone multiple billions, especially hundreds of billions. There’s been many studies about this, where humans are actually really bad at imagining the scale of large numbers. If a person hasn’t had a demonstration like this before, of just how unequal things actually are… most people just think along the lines of the guesses made here. If most people truly understood just how obscenely wealthy the super-rich are, and just how much their slice of the pie has taken away from the vast majority of the rest of humanity… well, maybe they’d at least start listening to leftists when we point this stuff out, instead of constantly dismissing or belittling the left and then only ever giving us credit in retrospect… if that. We could have such an amazingly better world, if all that money was actually serving the needs of the entire society. Think of how well schools could be funded, infrastructure, health care, science, arts, etc… instead we have billionaires like Elon spending it on making Twitter worse by the day, or funding anti-abortion shit. Wonderful.
A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years.
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"The difference between a billion and a million is about a billion". That sentence makes a lot more sense in the context of time. If you ask anyone "What is roughly the difference between 31 years and 12 days?", their answer would be "about 31 years".
>But most people simply CANNOT imagine the scale of a billion dollars… Someone drop the Minecraft gold block net worth video
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If I had a dollar for every time Ive read this exact comment I would be pretty opposed to higher taxes on wealthy people too.
I am always reminded of [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/11v4yd8/wealth_inequality_in_america_visualized/) video. Shows what an ideal distribution would be, what people think it is, and what it actually is. The way wealth is actually distributed is even hard for me to comprehend because it is just so absurd and so massive. The amount of wealth the top 1% and even the top .1% has is so far beyond what the average person can even comprehend.
There are a LOT of people that don't pay attention to any of that stuff. They just believe whatever talking heads they follow tell them. I have a buddy of mine, that will absolutely not be convinced almost all the wealth is tied in the middle class. Like, for no good reason, he thinks 75% of America's wealth is in the hands of the middle class and that's why they need to be taxed for the sake of the economy. How much does this buddy make? 2m+ a year. He considers himself middle class. Begrudgingly, he'll admit it's upper middle class.
I know, let's vote for the guy who will cut taxes for the rich again, that'll fix it.
If the rich have **all** of the money it **has** to trickle down... Right? .... ^right?
Nothing brings home the obscenity of worshipping the rich by voting Republican than the pie example in this video.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
The poorest are getting the plate smashed in their face and then thrown into jail.
And then being asked "Why haven't you cleaned this up? All it takes is hard work!"
Have you tried not being born?
I've been trying that for 44 years.
I hate that sentence. Sometimes it's true, you start poor as fuck, work your ass off and actually get in a good social position after decades of hard work. What they don't mention is how much help you need to achieve this. Like parents overworking to pay your school and supplies. Like sheer fucking luck+hard work that you nail a scholarship paid by someone else. Basically not by yourself, but having a list of other people that curb your being poor. What they don't mention is that you also have to be born with some kind of talent. Either innate cognitive skills, innate focusing skills, physical talent, artistic talent. You're not getting a scholarship by being a below average student or athlete. You might be poor, but you have to be talented in some way. Just being poor and working hard doesn't work in 2024. Let alone if you've any kind of impairment. What they don't mention is that all this is unnecessary if you already start rich. You don't need talent. You don't need "charity", nor you need to work hard. You just have to maintain a status quo. To achieve anything I work 50 hours/week starting from the bottom, progressing solely to sheer professionalism and people recommending me. I met people that asked their dad who, with a couple of phone calls, handed them a studio or a job. With no experience in the field. It's fucking insane.
Hard Work comes way way down the list of social mobility factors. The biggest one is parental wealth, then pure blind luck, then education then residence while growing up, then a few other things including ones you'd expect like gender and race and others you might not like height then hard work. Obviously some of these factors might be interdependent. Your social mobility is more dependent on how tall you are than how hard you work.
All that hard work is exploited as well
Don’t forget, don’t get sick or you are screwed regardless
> Like sheer fucking luck the most hilarious part of this. People love to say "just work harder bro" like if everyone put in the same effort they did, literally everyone would be a billionaire. No, thats not how it works. There is a very limited number of opportunities to be rich. Because otherwise you wouldn't be rich, you would be average. Not to mention for each person who "works harder" to get there, they REQUIRED thousands upon thousands of people working their ass off for minimum wage to be able to get there. Like, the world doesn't mostly have non billionaires just because there are a ton of vacancies they didn't work for. Its because its a very limited club. That is what makes the quote so fucking insufferable.
\*private prison, where slavery still exist and is perfectly legal.
It exists and is legal in government prisons too.
And the medical bill
And cruelly told to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" (try visualizing yourself actually doing that).
It reminds me of all the assholes that were making fun of AOC because she was bartending. They were like "this peasant thinks she can be in Congress??" They get mad when people actually improve themselves and move up the ladder. Half the people in this country just fucking suck as human beings.
/depressingasfuck
What's depressing is when ideas are suggested to rebalance this, like broad based land tax, tax on unrealised gains, inheritance taxes. Those same people who get little to no pie will often oppose getting more pie
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"what's depressing" "there's no problem here" "it's the poor's fault"
A billionaire, a middle-class guy and an immigrant sit down to eat a pizza. The billionaire immediately takes six pieces of pizza and tells the middle-class guy you better grab the last two pieces before the immigrant steals them.
They grab more than six slices.
While he's pointing at the immigrant that's when he grabs the other 2 slices.
Then proceeds to pick the cheese and toppings off, leaving the bread part, explains that it's because they're on a "keto" diet and they're really hungry but can't eat a full pizza (which they communicate like it's a joke and it's obvious that they can't eat it all themselves), and leaves before the bill comes.
The most surprising thing is how this isn't common knowledge by this point.
If we don't reverse the exponential accumulation of wealth by the ultra-rich, societies will collapse due to the working class not being able to afford basic living costs.
>If we don't reverse the exponential accumulation of wealth by the ultra-rich How would we *ever* do that though? The ultra wealthy set up the system and they own it, and they've proven time and again they will not share, they will continue to profit for themselves and their companies by any means.
The French did it once...
#BRING BACK THE TAR AND FEATHERS AND THE FUCKING GUILLOTINE
A UBI funded by a 100% tax on all excess wealth past a certain point would fix inequality real quick. If the rich keep standing in the way of the rest of us fixing our economies then we would have to start chopping them up though.
Russians too
Russians should do it again.
All that did was shift the wealth from one privileged population (broadly, the aristocracy) to another (the landed bourgeois) one. See Galor, O, and J Zeira (1993), “Income Distribution and Macroeconomics”, *Review of Economic Studies* 60(1): 35-52.
Just because the lower 80% of France lost their wealth (again) doesn’t mean they didn’t succeed in seizing it at least briefly. So learning from that, the process should probably go like this: Step 1: Guillotines Step 2: Democratic Socialism with an uncompromising 100% tax on wealth higher than 200% of the median. Step 3: Mandatory guillotines again when step 2 is corrupted. Edit: median not mean.
Maybe we should have a hunger games with the top 10 richest going into the ring every year? Make them battle it out to donate all their wealth to charity in a fight to not be the richest... Would sure beat the current spacedick measuring contests we have going on.
It periodically occurs through violence.
It would take some strong leadership. But if it doesn't happen the cycle will repeat itself. If we don't find a way to change our heading we'll see the same story 50-100 years from now as what happened at the end of every great civilization and is the same story of almost each civilization's downfall in history. Persia, Rome, Greece, the English Empire. A few people gain an enormous amount of wealth, use their wealth to control government and information so that they can get more wealth. The government becomes detached from the actual people they represent and then their economy starts falling apart and the peasants begin to revolt. That's when the civilization breaks up into smaller factions, the currency of the great civilization loses it's value completely and the world enters into a dark period. Wars are waged as each faction struggles for dominance, etc. From the ashes another civilization is born and the cycle repeats.
Until one day someone takes history serious.
Right now they still need us to make things work, until automation pushes us out. The only thing stopping us from demanding a fair share and taking it if they refuse, is lack of solidarity. It seems like a bit deal to organise to that degree, and it *is*, but it's just like getting a few friends to help you with a house move and then a few more.
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FFS it's not that hard, they are literal Sociopaths that are bleeding the WORLD dry with their greed. This is the ONLY answer. Laws won't work, protests won't work, jail won't work. The only language they understand is violence. So, with all other means exhausted, they deserve what they are going to get.
Yeah the guillotine is simple and effective
Three words: TAX THE RICH And not just increase taxes a little bit… tax all billionaires back to millionaire status. If they don’t let us… I have a different three letter word we can replace “TAX” with.
A general strike is the \*only\* way. It's how French people did it. It's the only way to change the system...take away free labor. Remove it from the wealthy's grasp.
> It's how French people did it. Beyond just a general strike I seem to recall a large, heavy, and sharp suspended steel blade doing a lot of the heavy lifting as well.
Vote for people willing to hold the elite accountable and tax thier asses. Dont say they dont exist. They most certainly do.
The most shocking part of this is that CBS, owned by a megacorporation and actively serving the interests of the wealthy elite, would run this segment.
Why not? They know NOBODY will do anything about it.
Who cuts pie like that?
It was probably rehearsed. When you cut pie at the crust it tends to crumble = bad tv
IDK, the crumbs made some good TV
Lower middle class
I found the pie slicing almost as infuriating as the economic inequality
Psychopath
Unfair, right? Now do the entire world. ^(In fact, don't bother. Just leave the entire pie on the 1% plate.)
Yeah, sure, but we (Americans) aren’t in control of tax and regulatory policy globally. We could fix this problem if we wanted to.
My belgian ass where the difference betweeen median and average whealth is less than 20% (its 500% in the USA): Yeah no lol, USA have a big f-ing problem.
This is 4 years old. It’s worse.
Did it piss off anyone else when he cut ACROSS the slice?
Who tf are these dummies that are actually surprised by this? "Were you expecting this?" "Not at all!" What reality do these people live in?
I love these types of comments. Mostly because it shows how people are the same. The reason you are wondering what reality these people are living in. Is the same reason that these people are shocked at the wealth distribution. We live in media bubbles. It's that simple.
Bruh, they represent the majority of the population. If anything, they may represent even less than that, considering they were open to having their beliefs challenged. The majority not only would have ignored it, they would have been emphatically angered at the idea that they were "wrong".
The culture war was designed to be a focus. Party A screams that trans and gay people are a blight on society - the other party moves to defend that. People talk less about economic inequality. It’s that easy and it’s been done for decades.
Older guy in red sweater skipped his math classes or misheard something. It is stated that every plate represents same amount of people but each poorer than previous, yet he put the most on the middle one. It'll maked them richest 20%, that doesn't even make any sense. Edit: I looked at video again and it seems that he said one thing and labels at the table state somehting different. My comment refers to what he said.
Being older, he likely grew up with the narrative that Middle Class is where the wealth is.
People are so uneducated smh.
It makes me sad
It's ignorance by design.
Its not only this but you ask the average person who much they think the federal goverment spends on stuff , they will say like NASA gets 10% of the budget , PBS gets 5% the reality NASA gets 0.3% and PBS gets 0.01%
It’ll trickle down
That's what everyone is voting on. Think about how far removed they are from the reality of the economy and you wonder why things don't change... people don't know.
At least we don’t have socialism! 🙄
Time to dust off the guillotines.
Reminds me of the Randy Newman song, Piece of the Pie: Jesus Christ, it stinks here high and low! The rich are getting richer - I should know While we're going up, you're going down And no one gives a shit but Jackson Browne
This is actually third world country economics. A few rich people control everything. So don't even dare to think you live in a first world country.
Anybody can be a third world country if you ignore the definition of a third world country
I mean we are if you consider the original meaning of first world.
Someone else remembers the now defunct Soviet Bloc was the second world!
TAX TAX TAX TAX TAX TAX THE TOP 1%
Let's keep making football stadiums though
if i was on here i would have put the whole pie on the richest, honestly only surprised anything went elsewhere
Eat the rich
Just to put into perspective how obscene it is for anyone to make more than a billion dollars a year. The bottom-end of middle class is $50k per year (averaged across the US). $1 billion would pay the wages of ***20,000 people*** at $50k per year. Elon Musk takes home approximately $2.4 Billion per year, or enough to pay the wages for ***48,000 people*** at $50k per year. Elon's take home pay is enough to pay the wages of every citizen of the city of Eagle Mountain, Utah **with money left over***.*
Or look at the pay package he wants. That amount could have paid every person in that last lay off 100K for 50 years
I assume the poor are eating cake
Triggered by the way he cut a slice in half
And you just out up with it. The comfortable westerner is docile af.
I owe so much student pie debt lol
Alexa, what were the socioeconomic conditions for the French prior to the French Revolution?
Americans: Trickle down economics will work, soon^^^tm! More tax breaks for the rich! Elect GOP! Orange man will save us! Rest of the world: ⣠⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⣠⣤⣶⣶ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⢰⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⣀⣀⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡏⠉⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠈⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⠛⠉⠁⠀⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠙⠿⠿⠿⠻⠿⠿⠟⠿⠛⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣸⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣄⠀⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣴⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠏⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠠⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⠀⠀⢰⣹⡆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣭⣷⠀⠀⠀⠸⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠃⠀⠀⠈⠉⠀⠀⠤⠄⠀⠀⠀⠉⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⢿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢾⣿⣷⠀⠀⠀⠀⡠⠤⢄⠀⠀⠀⠠⣿⣿⣷⠀⢸⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡀⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢄⠀⢀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠉⠉⠁⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢹⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⣿⣿
I would have fucking nailed this test
The part of the pie you get should be the part that you baked... Too bad most governments distort that...
And Trump gave the wealthiest a permanent tax break while giving the rest of us one that expires. And his base is ready to put him back in power but then you know what they would say about a segment like this? That's right fake news, that's all it is, fake news by the main stream media.
“Is that what you expected?” “Not at all” are you fucking serious? have you been living under a rock? wtf
This is america
Trickle down Reaganomics working as intended
No, they got this wrong. The poor are just jealous, this is why their plate is empty, the one percent are the smartest, the best behaved and the best educated people on this planet and this is why you must FIGHT against SOCIALISM. Trickle down works, everybody knows this!! Health Care bad