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Tags for this video have been changed from 'Park Avenue Money Power and the American Dream documentary wealth inequality' to 'Park Avenue, Money, Power and the American Dream, documentary wealth inequality' - edited by enoch

Do the math folks. Confiscate the total wealth of the 100 richest people on the planet and distribute it to every head on earth. Amounts to less than $300 US per person. It's not going to save the planet. As long as people are free, wealth inequality will exist and the freer the people are, the greater will be the disparity.

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Go ahead and distribute all the wealth in the entire world equally among the world's populace evenly, and I guarantee that in a short time, wealth 'inequality' would exist once again. And, as in the past, the smartest and hardest working would own it all. Keep the civilized world relatively stable for 200 years, and your bar chart of wealth would again approach that which you see in this video. Yes, despots will assemble armies and steal, but more business-savvy Teslas will appear and become just as wealthy. (Jobs or Gates anyone?) The nature of humans cannot be denied.

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Global Wealth Inequality - What you never knew has been added as a related post - related requested by deathcow on that post.

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@enoch I'm not hostile towards those who disagree with me, but towards those who intentionally misrepresent me. I'm guessing you once met some fundamentalist hard-headed fox news republican whatever, and you think I'm that guy. I'm not. So, please stop misrepresenting me, it's really annoying.

You suggest letting government/society burn? Sure, maybe that's what we're headed to anyways. I don't treat politics as discussing "what should we do", that's irrelevant if you and I can't agree on what's actually wrong. To me, it's more about understanding the problem.

@dag The problem I see in how you're using examples outside of America is that what you suggest as a solution in another country can just as much be an example of another country's success despite what you're pointing out as the solution.

"we tax the rich a lot in Australia and everything is better over here". Ok. What if Australia would be better off if you didn't tax the rich so much? Then you'd be just proposing we do what's not helping Australia to help America, all the while overlooking whatever is actually working in Australia.

It does seem somewhat obvious that taxing the rich would forcefully reduce wealth inequality, but then we wouldn't be looking at what's causing the inequality, just trying to punch it out of existence with taxes, and possibly establishing more social injustice in the process. To me, it seems quite unfair to tax someone more just for being richer, a moral hazard even (punishing productivity?), but moral concerns are passé and don't seem to bother anyone these days.

@shatterdrose I treat a smaller government solution as something like a paradigm shift. You see government doing things right in country X, Y or Z, and I see them as, most likely, taking credit for what they're not fucking up. I mean, seriously, don't you know governments do that all the time?

There are plenty of people who unfairly benefit from government, but government is mostly not a net benefit to society, and those people will lie through their goddamned teeth about how much good they do, usually taking credit for anything working in society. There sure are plenty of suckers who believe them.

Wanting less government is not snap judgement, it's not dogma, it's quite often what no one ever considers.

Wanting more government is the convenient way out, governments are the agents of every social planner's wet dreams. In their minds, governments always have "unlimited" resources, they're always above any law, they're never morally wrong, and they're always run by honest uncorruptible people.

I love your "get involved" answer to criticizing government. What you don't seem to realize is that I'm criticizing how much government IS involved. That can hardly be changed from the inside. People who run for government always want a bigger piece of the pie, they're not likely to win on a "we want less pie" platform.

@cosmovitelli he can't have understood Marx if he can't tell the difference between Communism and Socialism, and he shouldn't bother either since Marx rarely makes any goddamned sense. He's better off learning socialism from anybody else.

You make statements loudly, but you don't make a point. Yes, we need governments, but like you said, they're not agents of the people, they're corrupt and selfish power hungry institutions. I agree with you. If that's the case, doesn't it logically follow that having LESS government is the way to reduce the amount of damage the "powerful" can do to us?

@aaronfr I won't argue whether you were pandering, just that the points you made were awfully cheap, had nothing to do with libertarianism, but with the obvious and laziest misinterpretation one can make of it. Starting your reply with "Libertarian nonsense" is the easiest way to get upvotes from the videosift scum of mindless socialists that can't be bothered to read a full post worth of innacurate statements.

@dag it makes me even sadder that you seem to believe government has your best interests at heart. The government is the agent of that very wealth inequality that makes you so angry. I see limiting government as the way to limit that blatant social injustice, the very institution that tricks suckers into thinking it is "redistributing wealth", when in fact it's been acting as an inverse Robin Hood all this time, taking from everybody, and wasting or giving to the disgustingly rich 1%. Don't dehumanize me, don't dismiss me as some shill for the wealthy, as a brainwashed second-handed thinker. Can't you seriously consider the possibility that government is not part of the solution, but part of the problem? Is that too unbelievable for you?

Wealth Inequality in America has been added as a related post - related requested by Grimm on that post.

@shatterdrose the 1% pushed government "aside"... what does that even mean? Are you fantasizing that the economy has been largely unregulated all this time, and that's why the 1% get their way?

Wouldn't it make more sense for you to make the connection that our government is FREAKISHLY HUGE and indebted, and that the terrible injustices in our economy result from massive government intervention in almost every aspect of it, bogging it down, wasting precious resources, destroying the value of our money, promoting wealth inequality... and not the other way around?

People don't hate the 1% just because they're rich, but because they're getting rich unfairly, with the help of government. *Government* is a big part of that equation.

You are so mistaken about the concepts you're trying to explain to me, it's hilarious!

Communism is not about means of production being owned by the state, the utopian concept itself is about a stateless society that is somehow reached through Socialism (Communism doesn't exist outside of theory, so don't worry your pretty little head about it). In Socialism, the State owns the means of production, it owns almost everything, mostly because the State doesn't recognize private property. You can say it "belongs to the people" all you want, but without private property, it belongs to whoever has a say into what should happen with it, i.e., the State. Democracy hasn't the faintest connection with any of this, because voting doesn't make you part of government.

No, corporations are not included as individual people on this graph.

The problem with this kind of wealth inequality is that it historically leads to social and economic instability. The US's economic dominance in the 20th century was built in no small part on the solid middle class, whose purchasing power drove the economy.

That is increasingly vanishing. The richest are getting much, much, much richer, while the median income, adjusted for inflation, has been dropping for the past twenty years.

>> ^quantumushroom:

These occupoopers have no idea how wealth is created or basic economics, but that's the genius of Progressivism, creating ignorant, reactionary sheep.
BTW, how is 4 more years of the kenyawaiian a "win"? Hurry up and ask him before he goes on vacation again.


They don't need to know (but I'm sure many of them have as good idea as anyone else)


Fact is there protest is legitimate , wealth is not spread proportional to social impact of work , the super rich are not taxed fairly and Reaganomics don't work and have been catagoricaly proven not to work.


Even though the protesting will likely not achieve many direct results and allot of the protesters will be clueless what it has done is to get middle america to pay attention to the economical exploitation and wealth inequality that exist , where as before the protests there wouldn't even be a conversation.

father more The protests have made transparent to many people that america is accentually 90% Corporatocracy and 10% democracy.

"omics, but that's the genius of Progressivism, creating ignorant, reactionary sheep. "

If things progress for the better how is progressivism bad ?

How can progressivism lead people to be reactionary sheep more than any other idoiligy . The only thing that's creating sheep In USA is mindless media like fox news , the pore quality of education , some aspects of religoin and a total lack of critical thinking + scepticisum.