Even if Americans wouldn't accept the level of taxes and other wealth distribution methods that happen in Denmark, I think that we'd almost certainly be net better off / "happier" / have a higher standard of living if we moved in that direction at least a little bit.

Yes, Americans want to be rich. But, the 1% is going to be relatively equally happy whether they are 10 times, 100 times, or 1000 times richer than the 98th percentile just below them. Today, that disparity is massive. In eras that the GOP likes to remember as the good ol' days, say the 1950s, rich was still rich but nowhere near as far beyond the middle class as it is today.

High(er) taxes, particularly on income in those top percentile tax brackets, allow for the superior infrastructure, health care, and educational opportunities that benefit *everyone* and allow for the "American Dream" of anyone being able to make it big with a good idea, a lot of hard work, and a little luck. I don't think that recipe for success actually pans out in modern America, and that is a shame.

I wish we could just transfer some of the extreme wealth of the wealthy and put it into infrastructure, jobs, sustainable energy, free education, free healthcare, etc. Because fuck them, they have way too much money and I certainly haven't seen anything good come from the elites in this country having that much money while the working class has remained stagnant for the last 40 years.

Agreed. There have been numerous studies that show that happiness DOES increase with wealth.... up to a point.

Basically, struggling to buy food, pay rent, etc can make life miserable, but once you've got that covered more money won't necessarily make you happier.

In conclusion, money can't buy happiness but it can buy beer/mountain bikes/snowboards/holidays.

don't forget to blame the immigrants for the changes in wealth distribution; it's an American tradition

Yep, a comedian on a comedy tour taking a joke picture pretending to assault a sleeping woman who then quit of his own accord is exactly the same as a long term pedophile who enjoys his parties full support and never backs down or apologizes even after losing, or a philanderer who blackmail his mistress by taking naked pictures of her tied up and threatening to make them public then fights removal.

There is no equivalency. There's not a monopoly on one side, no, but there's absolutely not "every bit as much corruption and dishonesty on the Democrat side of politics as there is on the Republican". Republican dishonesty is about selling the country to Russia and raiding the treasury, and hiding or excusing inexcusable behavior and permeates everything they say. Democratic dishonesty is about which email account an email came from and pretending the leadership has no bias, and bowing to hyper sensitivity and disingenuous faux outrage.

For example...
Asked how his tax plan benefits the rich, he replied....
Trump: "No, I don't benefit. I don't benefit. In fact, very very strongly, as you see, I think there's very little benefit for people of wealth."

When asked about his rich friends....
"They can call me all they want; not going to help," he said Sept. 27, 2017. "I'm doing the right thing and it's not good for me, believe me."

When asked about the Trump zero tolerance plan to tear families apart as a political ploy, Trump claimed the Democrats did it and only they can reverse it, then he reversed his plan himself proving both family destroying lies to be lies.

The consistency, levels, and importance of the dishonesty from Republicans is exponentially greater than that from Democrats, who are far from perfect themselves.

Edit: Btw, Mahr has addressed the issue of him running for office repeatedly, he's capable and intelligent enough to be honest and say he's a horrible politician and would probably never run, and he knows he's far more influential exactly where he is than he might be as a freshman representative.....and he's smart enough to see that a candidate that gets out the vote for the opposition (like Clinton) is a horrendously stupid idea.
And Franken worked out great until he caved to false outrage and quit while pedophiles and abusive philanderers were welcomed into the opposing party feigning the outrage over a funny (but disrespectful) picture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_America_News_Network


The formation of the organization was announced on March 14, 2013 by Herring Networks, Inc., an independent and family-owned national video programming company owns and operates OAN and sister channel AWE (formerly WealthTV; the initialism being an acronym for "A Wealth of Entertainment"). When the network began in 2013 it had a limited partnership with The Washington Times.[1]

The network launched with the intention of targeting a conservative-leaning audience with OAN President Charles Herring telling CPAC that, “Fox News has done a great job serving the center-right and independent audiences...But those who consider themselves liberal have a half dozen or more choices on TV each day from which to get their news.”[8] Herring also stressed the network's separation of news and opinion content, with straight news reporting throughout the day and limited opinion commentary from evening talk shows, including The Daily Ledger hosted by Graham Ledger and The Tipping Point hosted by Liz Wheeler. Early advertisements for the channel touted the network's lack of commentary and focus on straight news reporting.[9] The channel was formally launched on July 4, 2013.

As of August 2017, One America News Network reached 35 million homes and had nationwide distribution from DirecTV, DirecTV Now, Verizon FiOS TV, AT&T U-verse, Frontier Communications, CenturyLink PRISM TV, and numerous regional video distributors.[10]

How do they take our money? Half the people who work for Walmart qualify for food stamps, even though they make so much money they could easily pay living wages, give benefits and still make a profit. This happens at big companies all across the country. That's how they take our money. But you, as a Christian, don't give a crap about those employees, they just better get another job and work 80 hours a week, so they don't have to get food stamps, just so the rich people running these companies and the shareholders can continue to reap in the huge amounts of money. Who cares Jesus commanded you to help the poor, and that the rich were going to hell, in modern Christian culture it is the rich who are blessed, and the poor who need to be vilified.

I'd wager most of us are working, probably 40 hours or more. Used to be that one person in the family working 40 hours a week was enough. Now that isn't enough in most cases. That money moved to the top. We have one of the largest and fastest growing wealth and income gaps in the world, and in history. Real world income isn't staying with inflation, but that 1% that modern Christians love so much, is staying so far ahead of the curve.

And as to, "they like making $8 an hour" bull fucking shit. While I'm making well more than that, I know that isn't true. They got the best job they can get. It's not that people aren't applying for the jobs that are out there, the employers aren't hiring the people applying. Perhaps that person making $8 an hour doesn't have a college degree, and can't afford to go to college. I have a worthless bachelor's degree in "programming and applications" which basically means I know how to use Word, which I knew before I had it (I could have taught even the programming classes for all the further we got into the programming). That degree cost me near $25k, and who knows how much it'll cost by the time I'm done paying it off with all the interest on it. Back on point, those people can apply to a ton of jobs, but unless they are qualified they won't get it, and even among those they do qualify for, there are a ton of applicants for each job out there. Nobody is working Walmart, McDonald's, Lowes or whatever because it's their dream job. It's the job they can get.

Why should you make a living off 40 hours a week, but they should have to work 80? Why the double standard? Why say let the rich owners and shareholders take that income that used to go to the workers and just say f the employees, so long as I make a living at 40, those people better just work longer. This is why I HATE Christianity because every person who thinks that is a Christian. Every person who thinks that LGBTQIA+ people shouldn't have equal rights under the law is a Christian. Every person who was shouting "let him die" at the Republican debate in '08 in regards to a guy without insurance, was a pro-life Christian. Every person who cheered at the idea of carpet bombing at the 16' debates were pro-life Christians. It's why, in the unlikely event it is real, I'd rather burn in hell than be around those people for all eternity. I've never met a good right-wing Christian. Never. They are all evil vile people who are full of greed and have zero of the love of Christ. Their witness is a shining example of how evil and vile Christianity is.

I'm surprised that fat tub of lard Trump, who dictated his son's letter, who dictated his Doctor's letter, can swing a golf club as often as he does... a guy who bitched and moaned about how often Obama golfed, and who's own golfing and vacation time has far outdone Obama's golfing and vacation time.

We got a President, flagrantly breaking the emoluments clause, and nobody seems to give a rats ass (save a few on the further end of the left, certainly the mainstream media, which Fox and the right accuse of being far left, doesn't care, nor do even moderate Democrats).

I know you don't believe he, or Fox and the like are the ones doing the lies and deceit... and nobody will ever convince you otherwise. I know, because I too once was a far-right Christian, who only trusted Fox, and thought the science of climate change was a joke, as was evolution and the big bang (though I was an old earth creationist, I could never get into the 6,000-10,000-year-old argument)... then I learned to actually vet my news and information. I have no doubt that most of my anger at the right is the fact I was so easily deceived for over 30, nearly 40 years of my life. Hopefully, in the highly unlikely event that others on the right learn that they are the ones who've been lied to, that they are the ones more guilty of spreading falsehoods, deceit, greed, and setting a horribly bad witness for their faith that does far more harm than good, they don't get as angry as I did and leave the faith all together and then hate all of what they once were a part of.

Evangelical Christians are consistently one of the most hypocritical, least consistent religious groups around. They seek to spread the love of Jesus with anger, hatred, vitriol, and violence.
They've put the embodiment of the 7 deadly sins and immorality up on a pedestal and worship him because he promised them wealth and power.
They will become a violent terrorist group when he's removed....one we will have to deal with like Daesh.

Fear isn't the mind killer....religion is.

she's too young to blame her

if you want to be angry about wealth and privilege, blame her parents, but not her

there is a lot more too this than simple opportunity, she has to be seriously good to be able to race with this level of ability

all cynicism aside - it's just a nice story

There are a few problems they skipped.
First, that bigger pie is still finite, but we act as if it's infinite, pretending that one person having billions doesn't adversely effect others, but that's simply not true.
Second, it overlooked the fact that those countries going through industrial revolution often do so by using other non industrial countries resources, making it impossible to industrialize everywhere....we would need at least one more planet to harvest.
Third, it never pointed out that the GDP increases caused by industrial revolutions were met with massive increases in population, which decreases the per capita net worth significantly. Doubling GDP while tripling population makes the average person have less, not more.

I'm disappointed they didn't mention the French revolution, caused largely by the wealth disparity they're discussing.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.

This video seems to be a long winded version of 'a rising tide lifts all boats'.

My brain is moving slow this morning. But it sounds like an argument that wealthy people should stop hoarding wealth and allow more equitable distribution because they'll be better off. But they already have all the wealth in the current system, so you're not incentivizing them to change their patterns.

If you're arguing for a new system that doesn't allow the amassing of wealth by a small percentage of people, you're going to have an uphill battle because money = speech and thus, those with the money have more rights to decide how the system works.

I've never read Rand, but today's forgotten word of the day seemed apropos...

Chrematistics: the science of wealth. From the Greek chremata, wealth. -John Ridpath's home reference library, 1898

In short-Aristotle established a difference between economics and chrematistics that would be foundational in medieval thought.[1] For Aristotle, the accumulation of money itself is an unnatural activity that dehumanizes those who practice it. Trade Exchanges, money for goods, and usury creates money from money, but do not produce useful goods.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrematistics

I imagine Rand was not a believer in chrematistics.

I second that, indeed they are.

I'm a Chinese immigrant (to Canada) and I got a different kind of racist treatment from, er, the "majority".

But the theory is that, the best way to beat a racist is to be better than him/her - both in character & wealth. No matter what kind of unfair (in my POV) treatment the majority/society-at-large throw at me, the best way forward is make myself useful, bear the hardship to make my 2nd generation better off then I, have them pass on the same ideal to the next generation. Down the road, parity can be achieved, and my kids & grand-kids will be even better off then those racists.

My dad always said he hadn't much schooling (been at school for a total of 3 years), but through sheer determination he was very successful.
Rather than spoiling us he made sure he got us into good schools and we return the favor with good grades and focus.

What I'm saying is, those racists don't bother me, I'd rather do some good with my time than arguing with those ne'er-do-wells. This I think is rather typical thinking for most Asians immigrants.

Your video, Casually Explained: Levels of Wealth, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

In Canada, School funding is based on head count and not on housing taxes.
Interest rates are pre-set by banks but to the best of my knowledge, the same rates are given to everyone - there is no race-bias on who gets which loan rate.

Also, If I was to buy a house, anywhere, suburbs or not, my ability, as a white male is exactly the same as any other racial profile family. As someone who didn't have parents subsidize my income or schooling, my chances of owning is exactly the same as anyone else. In this, I feel that part of his argument isn't exactly accurate.

I'll even go a step further to say that, in fact, most immigrants to western Canada have more wealth than white people, and are buying out the housing market, most sight unseen, and above market value. In the Greater Vancouver area, most white people are now a minority, because they can't compete financially with immigrants and are being forced out of Vancouver.