Is money and wealth evil?

[swansont]

5 hours ago, LuckyR said:

 Well wealth inequity definitely huge in the US today BUT in my opinion, it is an error to treat every dollar of "wealth" equally. For example, if Musk has $429 billion and Bezos only has $241 billion, is Musk twice as wealthy? A statistician would say yes. To me they're equally wealthy because the amount of money they can spend in their lifetimes is essentially equal.

True but completely beside the point. Did you really think anyone was think wealth inequality was Musk vs. Bezos?

5 hours ago, LuckyR said:

In prior eras, with huge peasant classes and small merchant classes, wealth inequity was much greater, even if a statistician tells you that the sums involved were smaller, thus the difference between "rich" and "poor" weren't in the same realm as a Musk situation.

And again, it is not obvious to me this is true. Merely asserting it is not sufficient 

Must can buy basically anything he wants, that can be bought, and there’s much, much more that you can buy these days. A person who can buy almost nothing, but nothing is still nothing - that hasn’t changed.

[dimreepr]

21 hours ago, Phi for All said:

If you can't figure that out, just be lunch.

One day, one of us will be wrong...

[Phi for All]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

Everything is lunch for something, how does it help to know something one can't change?

Nothing can help the uninformed except luck or information. Best of luck!

35 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

One day, one of us will be wrong...

Probably because we'll be in the dark.

[LuckyR]

18 hours ago, swansont said:

True but completely beside the point. Did you really think anyone was think wealth inequality was Musk vs. Bezos?

And again, it is not obvious to me this is true. Merely asserting it is not sufficient 

Must can buy basically anything he wants, that can be bought, and there’s much, much more that you can buy these days. A person who can buy almost nothing, but nothing is still nothing - that hasn’t changed

Musk vs Bezos illustrates the point, it isn't itself the point.

Musk, Bezos and their ilk are invoked when statistics such as: "the top 0.001% owns more wealth than the bottom blah, blah percent ". It's a great headline but when talking about those few individuals, most of their wealth includes huge numbers of dollars that I referred to (and that you apparently agreed with) that aren't as valuable as the dollars Joe Schmo uses to fill his car with gas (since those dollars will never be spent by their owners in their lifetime).

As to your comparo between eras, homeless people in the US have access to goods and services that Alexander the Great couldn't acquire with all of his accumulated wealth.

Edited Thursday at 07:45 AM by LuckyR

[dimreepr]

4 hours ago, LuckyR said:

As to your comparo between eras, homeless people in the US have access to goods and services that Alexander the Great couldn't acquire with all of his accumulated wealth.

This is Daily Mail territory, 'homeless people earn more than us, by begging'...

Homeless people across the age's rely on the charity of people who have more than they need, but are close enough to poverty, to understand 'there but for the grace of <insert lucky token> go I'...

Alexander the great didn't need a smartphone... 😉

4 hours ago, LuckyR said:

Musk vs Bezos illustrates the point, it isn't itself the point.

Musk, Bezos and their ilk are invoked when statistics such as: "the top 0.001% owns more wealth than the bottom blah, blah percent ". It's a great headline but when talking about those few individuals, most of their wealth includes huge numbers of dollars that I referred to (and that you apparently agreed with) that aren't as valuable as the dollars Joe Schmo uses to fill his car with gas (since those dollars will never be spent by their owners in their lifetime).

This is completely opposite to reality, Joe Schmo's dallar can only fill his gas tank or belly then it's gone and everyone (including himself) believes that he's one step away from the gutter; if either of these guy's spend their last dollar, no-one wants to believe it, and everyone will make sure they don't see the gutter, lest they follow...

22 hours ago, Phi for All said:

Nothing can help the uninformed except luck or information. Best of luck!

In this context, how does it help you?

[swansont]

7 hours ago, LuckyR said:

Musk vs Bezos illustrates the point, it isn't itself the point.

Musk, Bezos and their ilk are invoked when statistics such as: "the top 0.001% owns more wealth than the bottom blah, blah percent ". It's a great headline but when talking about those few individuals, most of their wealth includes huge numbers of dollars that I referred to (and that you apparently agreed with) that aren't as valuable as the dollars Joe Schmo uses to fill his car with gas (since those dollars will never be spent by their owners in their lifetime).

Musk vs Bezos inequality misses the point. 

A rich king sitting on a pile of gold and jewels in olden times had the same issue of having money that would never be spent. That’s the case with inherited wealth. It’s why their heirs were also rich.

7 hours ago, LuckyR said:

As to your comparo between eras, homeless people in the US have access to goods and services that Alexander the Great couldn't acquire with all of his accumulated wealth.

So do the very rich. 

[zapatos]

10 hours ago, LuckyR said:

As to your comparo between eras, homeless people in the US have access to goods and services that Alexander the Great couldn't acquire with all of his accumulated wealth.

Agree completely. Poor people can get medical care that was unknown to Alexander. They can listen to the radio. If they can afford a television set they don't get a 12" black and white, they get a flat screen. Foods are safe, transportation is available, and they can be aware of the weather forecast.

The poor are poor no matter the age, but as society and technology advance, advances are generally felt by the poor as well as the rich.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

Agree completely. Poor people can get medical care that was unknown to Alexander. They can listen to the radio. If they can afford a television set they don't get a 12" black and white, they get a flat screen. Foods are safe, transportation is available, and they can be aware of the weather forecast.

In industrialized countries, perhaps. There are a lot of people who don’t have access to clean water or safe food, or decent medical care, or even electricity.

 

[LuckyR]

On 1/9/2025 at 4:42 AM, dimreepr said:

This is Daily Mail territory, 'homeless people earn more than us, by begging'...

Homeless people across the age's rely on the charity of people who have more than they need, but are close enough to poverty, to understand 'there but for the grace of <insert lucky token> go I'...

Alexander the great didn't need a smartphone... 😉

This is completely opposite to reality, Joe Schmo's dallar can only fill his gas tank or belly then it's gone and everyone (including himself) believes that he's one step away from the gutter; if either of these guy's spend their last dollar, no-one wants to believe it, and everyone will make sure they don't see the gutter, lest they follow...

Not my point (that the homeless are, in fact wealthy), rather that Homeless guy in 2025 who gets appendicitis can go an ER and receive an appendectomy. Alexander, alas has a majority chance of dying. 

 

As to Joe Schmo, he uses the vast majority of his wealth. Bezos, OTOH will use a small fraction of his wealth. Of course Bezos is definitely rich, only a simpleton would attempt to say differently, but >90% of his wealth is essentially superfluous and in my opinion that portion, when used to compare eras, is more misleading than informative. 

22 hours ago, swansont said:

In industrialized countries, perhaps. There are a lot of people who don’t have access to clean water or safe food, or decent medical care, or even electricity.

 

Exactly. That is poverty comparable to previous eras. Therefore "low" (in the industrialized world) could be much lower. 

[swansont]

8 minutes ago, LuckyR said:

Exactly. That is poverty comparable to previous eras. Therefore "low" (in the industrialized world) could be much lower. 

Which means the disparity comparison should not be using the poor in an industrialized nation as the baseline, since there are a billion people elsewhere who are worse off.

[LuckyR]

2 hours ago, swansont said:

Which means the disparity comparison should not be using the poor in an industrialized nation as the baseline, since there are a billion people elsewhere who are worse off.

I don't disagree. The percentage of the world population in this most dire of circumstances is lower today than in antiquity. In addition the size of the merchant (middle) class has conversely grown since the start of the Industrial revolution. 

Edited 9 hours ago by LuckyR

[swansont]

1 hour ago, LuckyR said:

I don't disagree. The percentage of the world population in this most dire of circumstances is lower today than in antiquity. In addition the size of the merchant (middle) class has conversely grown since the start of the Industrial revolution. 

Sure. But the issue was “wealth inequity” - which I took as the difference between the very rich and the very poor.  And there are hundreds of millions of very poor.

Are people, on average, better off? Sure! But the very poor aren’t, and the rich definitely are. The inequity is greater. And that’s really a tragedy of modern times.