I assume the Forbes 400 richest are in the 1%. How did the Koch brothers get their $100 billion? Where did the Waltons get their $140 billion? Where did the Mars family get their $75 billion? The article makes it sound like these people became rich when they decided whether or not to go to law school.

It's important to note how in the US how FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) and health care affect the economy. But a lot of what puts people at the top is at which hospital they took their first breath.

I'm a citizen of third-world country that is being sucked dry by the West for its resources and getting its people shackled to the ground by direct support for the ruling dictatorial regime.

I don't even know why I'm writing this..

As with anything, i've noticed the discussion is really about how much, not should it exist at all. Almost every debate in American politics is painted as black and white, whereas the actual debate is where we fall on a spectrum. It seems like everyone disagrees so much, but really I think we are haggling over a slight deviation to the right or to the left and because we have to talk about everything in such black and white terms, the real discussion gets lost. We all agree on much more than we disagree on.

Not true. The highest income 1% have seen their share of national income roughly double. But the highest income 1% is not the richest 1%.

Some might blame loose monetary policy for providing easy money for the 1% in the USA (if you can borrow money and speculate for free, why not, after all), but if that's the case Japan really stands out; they've been QE'ing since their '80s bubble popped and they've managed to keep a relatively good Gini coefficient relative to the rest of the developed world (they're more egalitarian than their East Asian peers). You'd think that having two lost decades with your economy stuck in neutral, the Japanese 1% would just leave their country in the dust.

It is not okay for people like Bill Gates (i do think he is a good person) or Mark Zuckerberg to have that much power on such a small planet.

It is awesome that someone like Bill Gates spends tons of money for research etc. but he should not be able to make such huge decisions in a modern democratic society.

There is a good reason to allow people to accumulate wealth. Why shouldn't someone be allowed to not spend all his/her money for alcohol, party and cars or whatever and instead put the money into real estate for there children. But something like 5-10 Million per Child is still super reasonable.

Perhaps that leads the way to a more fair feature where it is not necessary for anyone anymore to horde money for the familiy heritage.

It's hard to find comparable numbers, but aren't the median wages higher in all those countries?

The article vaguely makes it sound like it's just a matter of paying highly-paid professionals less, but would that lift the bottom or just concentrate the money to an even thinner slice of the population?

>The groups that have contributed the most people to the 1 percent since 1980 are: physicians; executives, managers, sales supervisors, and analysts working in the financial sectors; and professional and legal service industry executives, managers, lawyers, consultants and sales representatives.

Not a surprising result at all when you consider that the bottom of the top 1% has an income of high 6 figures to somewhat above $1M. That number is something very achievable for the most successful "professionals" -- doctors, lawyers, bankers (not HF managers), traders, and there are a lot of these people out there!

It's a natural consequence that if you look for a large number of people earning $1M, you'll end up with highly successful "professionals" rather than outlier level wealth from business ownership, which is much more rare.

Patently false. The political causes are directly under the control of the US state and federal legislatures, which are populated by whom?

I would have thought it was massively wealthy equity owners/holders, hedge fund managers etc..

But yes - if we are paying doctors $1M/year then this will happen.

At a nearby hospital in Canada, technology improvements have allowed doctors to diagnose using x-rays a lot faster ... but the Unions have kept pay scale the same. The doctor at the Orangevill hospital earns over a million dollars a year, and he works from home. Swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe - done.

Faster tech = more money for the doctor. Savings not passed on to taxpayers.

Innovators thought they were improving healthcare, but they really were throwing more surpluses onto the value chain, to be captured by those with the most power: doctors, possibly drug companies.

One would think a private system would be more efficient ... but it's probably just as bad in the US.

The big driver of inequality ( 0.01% to 1% ) is ... government regulation. Directly, as in the government hires tens of thousands of highly paid people. And, more offensive at least to me, government regulation giving massive advantages to specific businesses (most recent "wtf" example I think would be equifax, with the government rallying behind them and (worst of all) effectively forcing large banks to buy from them). Businesses pushed like this by governments include Boeing, Oil companies, Tesla, SpaceX, ... But this is only the very upper layer. There is a huge "second" layer that includes large parts of the legal space, the health care space, the education space, where hundreds of thousands of people make $400k+ per year because ... well because the government says so.

Which of course very much opposes most of the viewpoints taken on this site. Given that this is what gives over half of the 1% owes their wealth directly or indirectly to taxes (or in the case of things like equifax "hidden taxes". Taxes, as in government forces you to pay, but you pay in your mortgage bill, you pay in charges on your bank account, etc ...) ... there is a strong case to be made that more taxes ... will increase inequality. At least as long as the government doesn't slim down a LOT.

When it comes to the rich vs poor in Western society we are ostensibly equal and many people are upset because reality doesn't reflect that. When it comes to the US vs say Burkino Faso, what would the correct course of action be? There's exploitative actions being taken by individuals and companies against developing nations that could stop, but then what happens? I don't think sweatshops are good but no western company is going to source goods from them if they aren't cheap as the quality isn't the same. We could try to help other nations get to the same quality of life, but many have made it explicitly clear that they don't want interference from foreign powers.

Do we act paternalistic and do what we think is right for other people which removes their autonomy? Do we avoid that and avoid exploiting them, but leave them in the dust because they have nothing we want or need if they are using regulation and price arbitrage to gain business? Do we continue as we currently do which sends money into these countries which should help them develop, but tends to be spread unevenly and causes a lot of human despair?

I can't tell what the right answer is, I can't tell if there even is a right answer

Your preposterous, jingoistic, anti-Western sentiment has no place in intelligent discussions. You don't even identify what country you are from or if you were even born/raised there.

And also, from your other comments - you live in the West. The very prosperity you are enjoying you are condemning that others have it around you. You are a hypocrite and reading further statements from you is useless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkQCy-UrLYw

Is your argument that "the West" isn't paying enough? Or that the money being paid isn't making its ways into the right pockets, or, ... what?

EDIT: To be clear ... I simply don't understand your summary of the complex phenomenon of "being sucked by the West".

Where does crony capitalism fit in?

And, to a large extent, of animals. I suppose there are some animal species where all members are more or less equal, but they're probably mostly solitary animals which rarely interact with each other. In social species, massive inequalities, particularly between males, are the norm.

Seems like 5 richest US citizens own less than 0,5% of all US assets.

I'd be lot more worried about organizations. JP Morgan chase and General Electric are not exactly democratic either. Both are way richer than Gates. And while church of latter day saints is not quite in the same league, it's incredibly wealthy and not at all democratic.

If you assume that Gates foundation gets 5% profits and distributes that, then it can share about 2,1 billion/year. American Red Cross gets to distribute 2,7 billion/year. Who does their homework better, Bill gates or the average guy who donates to Red Cross? And yet Red Cross is still not exactly democratic.

It doesn't seem very straight forward how you should count assets or income and deduct the monetary power from there.

And what should that upper limit be? Who decides what it is, and how do we ensure that people powerful enough to get close to that limit don't simply play financial games to skirt these rules?

If the source of my wealth is unrealized capital coming from ownership of a company I founded, what am I supposed to do if my wealth nears the cap? What is to prevent bad actors from inflating my stock price to force me to sell? If I hold my companies privately, who decides what they are worth and by proxy how much wealth I possess?

What should be the upper limit and who defines it?

The US health care system is not a "private system". It's a mishmash of private and public which combines the worst features of both. The reason we have it in the US is that during WW II, the government controlled wages, so businesses trying to compete for employees had to offer something else as an incentive, and they mainly picked health care benefits. Then, when the war was over and the government stopped controlling wages, instead of going back to competing on wages and dropping employer-provided health benefits, the system of employer-provided health benefits kept on growing. Which now meant it had to be regulated by the government, and so on, and so on...

What kind of doctor is this, radiologist? I'm not aware of any mobile apps in use clinically, but a radiologist's job is to look at images on a computer screen. It doesn't matter where they do it from. Very little of it is automated.

> One would think a private system would be more efficient ... but it's probably just as bad in the US.

Canada is one of three countries in the world in which the government has a monopoly on healthcare payment. The other two are Cuba and North Korea.

The United States has the least efficient healthcare system in the G20. Canada's is second least efficient. All of the others have two tier systems.

See "Competition and Monopoly in Medical Care" by Frech