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Arun2009 | 26 days ago
The key issue is that money often translates to such things as power and leisure. Prosperity is not consumption - it is the command over power, resources and time.
The poor have to sell their time in order to afford the basic necessities of life; the rich don't have to. So the rich have a lot more free time than the poor and the resources to use it well. The rich simply are freer than the poor, who are not unlike prisoners with no claim over their time.
The rich also get to influence policies to a far greater extent than the poor. In a way, wealth is just stored influence. This in turn helps them perpetuate their privilege. For instance, they can fund narratives that normalize inequality and lobby for lower taxes.
The lives of the rich are also far more secure than the lives of the poor. Many poor people are one major life crisis away from penury. This significantly affects the quality of their lives. Access to more wealth would mitigate this.
One could also flip your argument as follows: wealth is a scarce resource. If the rich already have everything they need to live a happy life at low amounts of wealth, then letting them horde more wealth than necessary is unjustified. Instead, that should be distributed to those in need. This would make no difference to the well-being of the wealthy, but it would help others who need resources more.
simianwords|26 days ago
I agree with you on this.
>The poor have to sell their time in order to afford the basic necessities of life; the rich don't have to. So the rich have a lot more free time than the poor and the resources to use it well. The rich simply are freer than the poor, who are not unlike prisoners with no claim over their time.
In general, I don't agree at all. Rich are "freer" but they definitely don't work fewer hours than poor on average. In USA the Rich became rich mostly by working.
https://www.ubs.com/us/en/wealth-management/our-solutions/pr...
Over 75% are self made billionaires and for sure these people work more than twice as hard as normal people. The others do normal jobs and I can't really find examples of non self made billionaires slacking off.
https://fortune.com/2018/06/18/ceos-should-prioritize-time-m...
>On average, the CEOs participating in the study worked 9.7 hours per weekday and 62.5 hours per week. They also worked on the majority of their days off, on average 3.9 hours on weekend days and 2.4 hours on vacation days.
Poor people don't work as hard for many reasons
1. they don't want to 2. they don't have the opportunity to 3. they don't have the health
But that also does not mean that billionaires have more free time. It's usually not the case, simply because they are more invested in their ventures.
>The rich also get to influence policies to a far greater extent than the poor. In a way, wealth is just stored influence.
I agree but this is a caveat against the fact that the rich and the poor consume equally. Sure they can influence, but at the end of the day they consume the same which is more important for sustenance. Power and influence come higher in the hierarchy.
>The lives of the rich are also far more secure than the lives of the poor. Many poor people are one major life crisis away from penury. This significantly affects the quality of their lives. Access to more wealth would mitigate this.
Agreed.
>One could also flip your argument as follows: wealth is a scarce resource. If the rich already have everything they need to live a happy life at low amounts of wealth, then letting them horde more wealth than necessary is unjustified. Instead, that should be distributed to those in need. This would make no difference to the well-being of the wealthy, but it would help others who need resources more.
This buys into zero sum ideology of wealth. It is incorrect, misguided and a big mistake to think like this.
throwawayqqq11|26 days ago
Dont forget about inherited privileges. If work was the primary driver of wealth, we'd see a much more even distribution. I suspect the eager CEOs either want to inflate their contribution (i know plenty who dont) or actually work more because it is their earning and not just salary plus maybe arbitrary bonus.
actionfromafar|26 days ago
Arun2009|26 days ago
> But that also does not mean that billionaires have more free time. It's usually not the case, simply because they are more invested in their ventures.
There is a difference between working because you want to, vs working because you have to. The rich have the choice to quit working if they want to and still pay no significant price - the poor don't have this choice. The rich also don't have to put up with disagreeable work, whereas the poor often do.
This is a question of human freedom and dignity - not just of material wealth.
I'd also challenge the notion that the poor don't "work hard". The food delivery guy who works 8 hours a day often in disagreeable weather is arguably working much harder than many rich people.
> I agree but this is a caveat against the fact that the rich and the poor consume equally.
If you consider purchase of political influence as consumption, then your statement doesn't hold. You are only counting the basic necessities of life as consumption - but there are many services that you can purchase as a rich person that poor people cannot.
> This buys into zero sum ideology of wealth.
I'd say that it’s a mistake to treat wealth as either purely zero-sum or purely positive-sum - a false dichotomy. It has both these natures, depending on the level of analysis and the time horizon.
Wealth can grow collectively over time through productivity gains, technological improvement, and better organization of labor. That is the positive-sum aspect, and I don't deny that.
However, at any given moment, wealth is only meaningful as long as it can be exchanged for real goods and services. At the bottom of all such goods and services lie two fundamental inputs: human labor and natural resources. Both are finite as a matter of physics and biology.
Hence while we do see the amount of goods and services ballooning (and hence total "wealth" growing) primarily due to better utilization of human labor and better extraction of natural resources, there is also a sense in which wealth has a zero-sum nature especially in the short term (i.e., several decades, which is relevant for humans).
graemep|26 days ago
CEOs and billionaires are different groups. Those willing to take part in a study are not a random sample. Its a sample sample too. The numbers depend on self reporting.
You are buying into the myth of wealth going to those who create it. Most wealth is accumulated by being on the right end of transfers,and pricing power.