Children are in poverty because some people grab vastly more than their share of the world's wealth, and then they buy legislation and elections, to take even more.
A challenge is that usually, within an attempt at a fair and equitable society, some TPOS will try to be a king or billionaire, or to ride the coattails of one. The society needs to tell those people no, and get them mental health care, to heal whatever makes them act like a TPOS.
This is the fixed pie policy, which assumes there's a limited amount of wealth to go around. And therefore, any time somebody gets "too much" of it, the conclusion is they must be why others have less.
This is not true.
And it's important to understand that it's not true, because understanding a problem is the key to helping solve it.
In pre-agricultural times, the average person was lucky to own a few dozen items. Today, the average person in a developed Western country owns a few thousand goods. Western households possess over 100,000 goods on average. There's vastly more wealth than ever. Especially if you multiply these numbers by the massively expanded population of Earth compared to prehistoric times.
Therefore, it's necessarily the case that wealth can be created and not merely stolen or shared.
OP is talking about "share of the world's wealth," not a fixed pie. While the raw amount of wealth (the pie) in the world does grow, the important measurement is what percentage of that pie is captured by the rich. And the rich are capturing an increasing percentage of the growing pie. That's where the inequality lies.
In a world of two people, where today I have one piece of bread and you have two, then tomorrow I have two pieces of bread and you have 10, I am worse off.
You're responding to the words "grab" and "take", and leading up to an argument in which wealth is created, by a Great Man, who deserves the wealth and power that He created, or else He wouldn't have incentive to create wealth?
People can collaborate to create wealth that they share.
The problem is when someone says "I am so great, that I deserve more wealth and power than other people".
Because of a bad experience in kindergarten, or because their parents told them that.
While that's true, there's still enough "fixed pies" that inceasing inequality does make people worse off. Land, attention, positions of power, etc. will all be taken by the wealthy, because only they can afford those things in an environment of high wealth inequality.
This counter argument always pop up and is getting stale.
The comment you replied to made no such argument, that the pie is fixed.
And you can look up how big slice of the pie the ultra rich are having…
I don’t understand why you are bringing up pre agrarian society.
We can point fingers at the rich for making more money but really we should be hounding our government for wasting money. All the taxes and confiscation in the world won't fill this bottomless pit
Just today:
"£700m nuclear conservation plan would save one salmon every 12 years"
Your government is not "wasting" money. It's intentionally putting money in the hands of the rich for a personal kickback to the involved politicians, under the guise of incompetence for plausible deniability purposes.
My question is: does this tax money get spent on the poor, or is making the rich richer?
Both. Today's rich are wealthier than the rich of the past, but today's poor are also wealthier than the poor of the past.
It's also the case that quality of life differences have shrunk between the two groups, not because life has worsened for the rich, but because it's improved for the poor. Bill Gates' car, music, TV shows, phone, pants, meals, etc. aren't that much better than the average person's, today.
In the UK, it seems that it's mostly spent letting the boomers live long and relatively luxurious retirements that younger generations can only dream of.
The UK government spends £1.3 trillion per year.
The total wealth owned by UK billionaires is estimated at a small fraction of that (£300b?). Even seizing all of it isn't going to solve anything long-term (but will create new long-term problems)
Billionaires are a symbol of unfairness, but eliminating them won't make a significant long-term difference to those at the bottom. Unless they're put out of work as all that wealth, mostly tied up in companies, is liquidated.
Billionaires are a very small group. There is far more wealth held by people with assets of, say, over £100m, or even £10m?
> Unless they're put out of work as all that wealth, mostly tied up in companies, is liquidated.
No one is going to close down profitable businesses because they have to pay more tax. The value of shares might fall a bit, that is all. I do not even think that, because money will just shift around, not disappear.
> but will create new long-term problem
I do not think it will. IMO it would be a net benefit.
> Billionaires are a very small group. There is far more wealth held by people with assets of, say, over £100m, or even £10m?
Which is precisely why we can't 'eliminate billionaires'.
Because before long it's a push for full-on communism, and even owning £100k is too much.
And unless you can destroy capitalism on a global scale, there'll always be countries eager to take in very wealthy people.