In the past 40 years, our productivity has shot up intensely. We have accomplished an absolute ton, every day jobs are getting done faster and faster, and people have picked up quite a heavier workload. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for our wages. Coinciding with this is the biggest list of billionaires we've ever seen, all accumulating their immense wealth within this same time period.

There's only so much time in the week people are physically capable of performing a job. Consider how hard somebody working at a sweatshop in a third world country works. They could do it at any pace, but unless massive change happens and they suddenly inherit their workplace, they will never earn a million dollars their entire life, and since so many impoverished youth don't get a proper education so they can feed their family, they remain workers their whole lives. Somehow, 8 people have worked so hard that they own as much money as 3 billion people. This simply isn't the case. They are exploiters who have found glitches in the system. Sure, their property makes our lives easier, but the accumulation of their wealth is literally due to ruthlessly undercutting competition, keeping wages low, disguising the ravaging of natural resources and corruption of global politics as charity, and maintaining increasingly hostile work environments that are turning our job market into a gig economy where we're all disposable contractors. People can be successful all they want, but you can't become a billionaire without stealing from some poor people or ruining countless lives at some point along the way. Just 3% of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezo's wealth is enough to solve world hunger twice.

Now that's just my opinion on wealth inequality, but what is yours? Do you believe that in a free market society, people should be allowed to make as much money as they can, or do you believe their positions to be too powerful for single individual?

I think that usually it is possible to be able to get a high paying job if you work hard enough to get it but at the same time those usually born of a higher class end up having the advantage most of the time regardless which can make it rather difficult sometimes for others. I think that it is extremely unfair how the system is currently but I am rather optimistic that this will improve with time.

If there were no billionaires, I believe that society would be even worse as a whole.

If there were no billionaires, all of there money would have to go somewhere right? If all their money went to all people instead of those few people, then everyone would have much more money. For example, someone who makes 40K a year would probably made 70K or more with all that money going elsewhere.

But if everyone has more money, then obviously inflation is going to hit harder. If the medium wage doubles, people will have more money to spend on stuff and companies would have no problem raising the prices on lots of stuff knowing that everyone can pay for the hikes.

This would be even more prominent with necessities. The items that people need and use every day like toilet paper, toothpaste, paper towels, etc, people would be suckered into paying a premium for these because they need it and they can afford it.

In other words, the supply and demand would stay the same, but if people have twice as much money, the cost will go up. There will always he some sort of a balance with most people. If everyone made as much as they could, the cost would go up to balance it.

In fairness to the people who become billionaires... they earned their money. It doesn't matter if it was by fair means, or entirely on the level. The way currency works, they played the system in a way to where they were able to amass the amount they have. No bones, kudos to them, they are intelligent enough to break the system.

On the other hand, nobody needs that much money. Nobody. If billionaires didn't exist, and were forced to reinvest their income, merely making them multi-millionaires, then the economy could boom, as more money would circulate (and the sign of a healthy economy is the circulation of a lot of currency!)

I think billionaires should exist in theory. But the reality is that they may be harming the system by existing. It's great for the billionaires, and I envy them. But it's possible they hurt the world more.

legacyme3 : A lot of money floating around doesn't mean that the economy is doing well. It's all based on what the money is worth and what suppliers charge.

Let's theoretically say everyone made $100,000 a year and a house costs a million. If everyone started making $500,000 a year, the sellers are going to up the price and inflation would hit hard until there's an equilibrium.

Look at Germany during the war when they printed so much money that after the war it was all worthless.

zanderlex :

You missed my point.

It's not that the money is in abundance.

It's that the money is moving. It doesn't matter if it's the same 50 dollars being passed around. Those 50 dollars pay for dance classes. The instructor spends it on groceries. The super market employee takes their cut, and spends it on lunch. The lunch vendor uses the money to buy their kids school supplies... and so on.

It's not the amount of dollars that matter, but the amount of currency changing hands.

The problem is that we're at a point where we've printed a lot of money that isn't being circulated, which is what's causing the value of the dollar to drop. Billionaires are actively lowering their net value in a way, by not re-investing in their individual communities.