YouTube is rife with progressives railing about "Wealth Inequity". The most strident say "There will be no peace without justice", which is a not-so-veiled threat. They are very clear: If you have more than they have, they want it and are not afraid to use violence to get it!
Wealth vs Income
People who are economically illiterate use the terms "Wealth" and "Income" interchangeably but there are some key differences.
Income is the amount of money you realize within a given time-period. It is typically in units of dollars-per-hour or dollars-per-month or dollars-per-year.
Wealth, in the financial sense, is the amount of dollars that could be realized if all of your assets were liquidated and turned into dollars.
Elon Musk's wealth might be valued at $346 billion dollars but he might only realize $20 million dollars a year for pocket money. That is 0.006% of his estimated wealth.
Another complication is that if Elon Musk sold off his stock portfolio it would probably torpedo the value of the stocks he owned. If he was forced to liquidate quickly, a lack of buyers (anticipating that Musk would no longer participate as an executive in those companies) might cause the value of the stocks to drop to 10% or even lower of their present value.
So, to keep things simple, let's just talk about income.
"Justice starts with a single step"
If Mr Musk were to level-up his income with the typical household income of Austin, Texas then then each household in Austin would receive a check for about $65 every year.
Then, the Social Justice Warrior (who likely lives in an eastern, legacy city like Philadelphia or Baltimore) pipes up "No, no, NO! Musk must pay EVERY person who are members of the groups that his identity-group damaged. That includes people in places like Philadelphia, Baltimore and Jackson Mississippi. AND, it can't be just Elon Musk. It has to be EVERYBODY who has income that is more than the average for the group!!!"
Point taken
Every person in the United States who has more, realized, per-capita income than the average income of the United States and Africa must write a check to level that up.
And since a single mother in Baltimore with two children is realizing the income-equivalent of $60k, that means that she is going to have to write a check for approximately $53k to level-up with the 1.5 Billion people in Africa making the PPP GDP/capita/year of $6k with her $60k.
OK, I get that I probably lost many of you with that last paragraph. Let me put the bread-crumbs closer together.
Africa was damaged when slave-traders took their best-and-brightest over to the Western Hemisphere. That means they are in the pool that was damaged and in-line for "reparations". They are just as much of a "victim" as that mom in Jackson, Mississippi.
There are 4.5 people in Africa for every person in the United States. The average "income" in Africa is the equivalent of about $6k/year vs roughly +$60k (if you include transfers and entitlements to "low income" US citizens) in the US. So even the poorest, inner-city mother of two children who receiving over $60k in services, grants and other benefits has 10X more income than the typical Nigerian.
On another axis, in Africa there are approximately 60 motor vehicles per thousand people while in the United States there are 850 motor vehicles per thousand. You might say "Well, I don't own a vehicle so that would not impact me" but consider that motor vehicles deliver food to your grocery store and the Uber or Lyft driver you summons when you need a ride DOES own a vehicle. Imagine how hard it would be to get a ride if you wanted to go more than ten miles if there were fewer than 10% as many cars per person. Leveling-up would entail shipping the majority of our automobiles over to Africa.
While the Social Justice Warriors are ginning up outrage over the inequities between the billionaires and their peer-group, they never consider that on a global scale that they are incredibly wealthy. Or maybe it did occur to them but because drawing the lines around the 'control volume' in that fashion would result in a HUGE loss in income to them, they wish the fact into oblivion.
Your essay elaborates on a basic reality. Humans are greedy, shortsighted and stupid. We are not an intelligent species, merely clever. What's scary is all these morons are allowed to drive, to breed and to vote.
ReplyDeleteI strongly suspect that the West African chiefs at the source of the transatlantic slave trade were not delivering their best-and-brightest to Arab wholesalers, but rather the ones that were duller and more troublesome, even by sub-Saharan standards.
ReplyDeleteMost slaves sold to Western traders were taken in battle or raids by opposing groups.
DeleteOccasionally tribes would sell off excess sons and other internal troublemakers.
Jonathan
Often the troublesome are the most intelligent and productive people.
DeleteThe village idiot is Often a go along to get along person and not productive.
West Africa was damaged when slave-traders took slowest and least successful at hide and seek.
DeleteEast Africans were sold to the Middle East. Using EJ reparations formula do we subtract the population of East African countries from the total?
Arabs raided into southwest Africa long the Atlantic coast too!
DeleteNonetheless there are real inequities, with an increasing share of income and productivity gains going to a smaller and smaller percent of the population, not to mention the accompanying accumulation of assets.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.oftwominds.com/blogjun25/bubble-wealth-effect6-25.html
Charles Hugh Smith is an interesting guy.
DeleteThe people skimming wealth are working hand-in-glove with the government. In many cases the ARE the government.
CHS wrote of a new ordinance in the county where he owned/ran a construction company. The contractors had to pay a $5000 drawing "filing fee" before the permit would be granted.
So, the week the ordinance went into effect, CHS walked into the permitting department with several rolled-up drawings in cardboard tubes. He pushed the tubes across the counter and started writing the check. The clerk asked "What are these?" as she pushed them back across the counter to CHS.
"Those are the drawings for you to file" CHS said.
"We don't need them. All we need is the check" the clerk informed him.
CHS exited the contracting business shortly afterward.
Of course there are and will be differences. Does everyone at your job work as hard as everyone else, or are there over and under achievers?
DeletePEOPLE are not inherently equal. Expecting results and outcones to be is beyond retarded.
None of these people are actually genuine in their stated beliefs. They are (literally) morons, useful idiots, being wound up and used for a political agenda. The grift about equality is the lipstick on the swine of marxism.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete"slave-traders took their best-and-brightest over to the Western Hemisphere"
ReplyDeleteNope, they took the slow and dumb ones. ...the ones that got caught.
And Africa still didn't improve, and it is still Africa.
having said that, your point is well taken and well done.
See also Monrovia for another example.
"If you have more than they have, they want it and are not afraid to use violence to get it!"
ReplyDeleteWhen you look back at things (history), this is not a new concept, you can see this type of thinking has been driving actions about forever.
The biblical lesson of Cain and Abel comes to mind. I wonder how many millenium that lesson goes back.
DeleteRe reparations - There are documented examples of slave raids across southern English coastal settlements by, I think, Arabs. Why, I wonder, do we never hear any clamour for reparations from the usual suspects about these? Could it possibly be that the English are the "wrong" kind of victims???
ReplyDelete