r/interestingasfuck
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u/zaham_ijjan
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9d ago
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Wealth Inequality in America visualized
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u/Realistic_Turtle 9d ago
I got $1,000 of that wealth...... Means I'm doing good right guys?
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u/BigZaber 9d ago
Welcome to the Thousandaire club - Enjoy your stay it wont last long...
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u/TheDesktopNinja 8d ago
I was there after my paycheck yesterday.
Then I paid for things.
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u/SquirtsMacintosh_37 8d ago •
I was irresponsible and had to eat 😔. I guess a real deserving person wouldn’t be tempted by food, they would just invest that money
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u/NoInitiative4821 8d ago
Look at this fat cat over here. You probably even ate human food I bet. Tsk tsk.
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u/NotAzakanAtAll 8d ago
Enjoy your stay it wont last long...
Because we'll get richer right?
Right?
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u/bestfrenplank 8d ago
Gotta bail the banks out because if the top 40% of wealth is disturbed.... they coming for that 7%? Fucking bullshit.
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u/TwoFrontHitters 9d ago
IRS has entered the chat.
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u/Realistic_Turtle 9d ago
Sorry I just left Walmart it's gone. I got two things of eggs and a bag of dog food
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u/BeckQuillion89 8d ago
well, look at mr. money bags over here
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u/Realistic_Turtle 8d ago
I know right I'm hoping the cute neighbor sees these eggs. It would be awesome to have a girlfriend
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u/Merry_Dankmas 8d ago
I bet you also bought those pretentious name brand eggs for $8 per dozen instead of the generic eggs for $6 a dozen.
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u/justreddis 8d ago
You guys can afford eggs?!
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u/RaLaZa 8d ago
I've been stealing mine from bird nests. What have y'all been doing?
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u/ImportantDoubt6434 8d ago
Means you’re a good candidate to start some tire fires, let’s get some French solutions in place
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u/DrBeavernipples
9d ago
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This video is 10 years old. The situation is orders of magnitude more severe now. If you weren’t already depressed enough.
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u/Sephran 8d ago
Is there a more recent video of this?
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u/scopa0304 8d ago
I just did the math based on a 2022 chart.
In this video, he visualized all the wealth as 2,000 dollar bills. Based on that, today the top 1% have $612. 90-99% have about $75 ea. 50-90% have $14 ea. And the bottom 50% have between $0 and $1 each.
I’m sure if you were able to dig in to each segment, you’d see a big ramp between the low and high end. The 98-99% probably have way more than the 90-91%. But the fact remains, it’s obscene.
Source: Statista
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u/trollfessor 8d ago
Don't just think about the top 1%, also think about the top 0.1%, who have magnitudes more than the mere top 1%
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u/AVeryHeavyBurtation 8d ago
I like this, but it's still pre pandemic. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
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u/Shmeepsheep 8d ago
I got maybe 10% of the way through that and I stopped. I can't describe the way it makes me feel without being downvoted. We really don't agree on violence reddit?
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u/Chief_Kief 7d ago edited 7d ago
That is one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen. Wow. Really makes one want to break out the pitchforks and gallows.
I feel like everyone should see this visualization.
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u/AVeryHeavyBurtation 7d ago
I feel like everyone should see this visualization.
Yeah I post it whenever I have an excuse.
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u/ElonMuskTheNarcisist 8d ago
Just imagine the last guy now having literally all the money stacks
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u/SmokinJunipers 8d ago
Can we forfeit this game of monopoly and start over?
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u/ImmabouttogoHAM 8d ago
Show me where the board is and I'll be the one to flip it over. I'm the youngest child, it's kinda my M.O.
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u/mmmegan6 8d ago
I’m really hoping there is, I’d like to disseminate this. Very powerful
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u/TheLastDabSauce 8d ago •
It's literally the video I credit with breaking me out of the libertarian phase I was in. It is truly the best visualization I've seen on the topic.
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u/EatenAliveByWolves 9d ago
I kind of guessed that. Covid and lockdowns only made it so, so much worse.
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u/justreddis 8d ago
From one of the more recent publications from US Bureau of Labor Statistics, “the pandemic is likely to widen income inequality over the long run, because the lasting changes in work patterns, consumer demand, and production will benefit higher income groups and erode opportunities for some less advantaged groups.”
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u/JustYourAvgJester 8d ago
Avg PPP payment was 60K.....I got two payments of 600 though...
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u/Tropical_Bob 8d ago
I really wish you didn't personally cause all this inflation with that $1,200.
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u/Raytheon_Nublinski 8d ago
If I’m remembering it right, 300 billion went to direct payments. 3.2 trillion went to rich people.
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u/IKROWNI 8d ago
You should see what the SEC just did.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/11v9kyj/sec_alert_sec_just_posted_ia6261_exemption/
J.P. Morgan for some reason is being given a pass to bribe elected officials
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u/StuckAtHomeCorona 8d ago
Back in 2021 a friend (since 2002) explained to me how PPP saved his butt: he had a business with 5 locations in three states. He had built the business all by himself, so he had a real sense of ownership. But in the end, he took the PPP to end all debts and fired his 25 workers once his employment obligations where met. He then peaced out to the Caribbean. We're still long distance friends, but it's a little disappointing to see my buddy be part of the problem.
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u/HotMinimum26 8d ago
25x60,000=1.5 million of tax payer money, and your friend is small fry compared to the big dogs. But yeah the single mother on food stamps is ruining the country.
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u/Redditisashitbox 8d ago
I hear Americans are almost out of their stimulus money and are about to go into a lot of debt. Did you spend your $1,200 yet?
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u/schlimeschlatt69 8d ago edited 8d ago
A huge percentage of Americans (50%+ if I’m not mistaken) live paycheck to paycheck, or already have massive amounts of student loan, medical, or credit card debt (which is often accrued in payment of necessities such as rent, gas, electricity, food, etc). Therefore, most of the stimulus money still ended up in the hands of the wealthiest americans who own the rental properties, who are the creditors or own stock in companies which act as creditors, grocery store owners, etc. Money in the hands of the poor and middle class is fleeting due to their destitution. For many, these stimulus payments are a distant memory. It has been stated countless times before and other times in this thread, but compare this with the billions of dollars in PPP loans to wealthy business owners (which were meant to pay workers, but was often misappropriated without consequence), most of which have been forgiven, and you will see in this the disparity of the american system not only in the private sector, but also in governmental support during moments of crisis.
Edit: In this case, then, almost out is an understatement, and most americans who received stimulus checks were not able to save that money after the first day of the following month. They were also in tremendous amounts of debt before they received those payments. I am also not not sure whether this comment was sarcasm or not, but I will leave this comment for those who may not know this information.
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u/whoweoncewere 8d ago
I think the comment you replied to was being sarcastic
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u/schlimeschlatt69 8d ago
Yeah I get it now, sometimes hard to tell on reddit lol
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u/neurochild 8d ago
It is hard to tell. I appreciated your response anyway! Direct and informative, and you weren't a dick about it. 🏅
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u/SunshineAndSquats 8d ago
You’re right, it’s significantly worse. It’s disturbing.
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u/PsychologicalSir7559 8d ago
I used to think about philanthropy and shrug: "sure the top ten richest Americans are rich, but they still can't afford (on their own) to lift up the poor". But they can... they totally can do it... They can afford to end poverty & still remain extremely wealthy...
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u/sexybrownboy 8d ago
Americans are rich, but they still can't afford (on their own) to lift up the poor
The most horribly managed and most expensive transit project in the history of humanity cost $1.8 billion per mile for a 2.5mile track,
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion.
We're squabbling over crumbs while they stand on our backs and gorge themselves on the fruits of our labor.
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u/theericle_58 8d ago
This should be chiseled into granite and made into a new monument(s)!
We're squabbling over crumbs while they stand on our backs and gorge themselves on the fruits of our labor. ....place one H U G E copy to completely obscure the view of the white house and the Capitol.
....place the next to block entry into the NYSE. With scant passageways chipped out for access. ....74
u/GothProletariat 8d ago
Wealth is addicting. It is damaging to the human species.
When a guy has $5 billion and his biggest concern and passion in life is to turn that $5 billion into $10 billion, he will do awful things to achieve that goal.
These people are addicts and entitled. They will destroy a country in search of profit. Look at what Wall Street did to Puerto Rico
Hedge fund billionaires are on the verge of pulling off what seemed unthinkable in the wake of Hurricane Maria: a massive payday, at the direct expense of the Puerto Rican people, on debt that was trading for pennies on the dollar in the months following the hurricane. As a result of debt restructuring agreements like the COFINA plan, an island reeling from economic and climate-induced crisis will be paying for billionaire yachts and vacation homes instead of basic necessities and a just recovery
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u/Urban_Savage 8d ago
Every single day, every single billionaire wakes up and decides NOT to be the most amazing human being that has ever lived. They instead decide to try and get a little more.
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u/lame_dirty_white_kid 8d ago
Those traits are mutually exclusive. You can't be a good person and also accrue mass amounts of wealth.
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u/swingfire23 8d ago
Yeah, there are no ethical billionaires. I do think there can be ethical millionaires, but once you get into the hundreds of millions and up, I think you’ve become morally compromised.
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u/RebeccaTen 8d ago
Two of the people on that list are based in Seattle, which has so, so many homeless people. They aren't even helping the poor in their own backyard.
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u/NotAzakanAtAll 8d ago
I'll start holding my breath until one of them donates most of their cash to the people.
Ok, here I go.
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u/BeckQuillion89 8d ago
It super sad because part of why the system remains the same is because people vicariously take offense to actions against billionaires because they believe they can achieve that one day and federal action "punishes" them for trying.
Its why you see people going wild over tax increases on the wealthy and ignoring how tax brackets even work
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u/pkcjr 8d ago
The idea of the American Dream is what gets people believing they could be rich if they just work hard enough, not realized how nearly impossible that actually is.
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u/JPhrog 8d ago
Growing up I always thought "The American Dream" was to live comfortably in your own house with spouse and 2-3 children with 1-2 cars a cat and a dog and a "white picket fence", your family being able to afford to eat 3 basic meals a day, take a family vacation 1-2 times a year and be able to afford to see the doctor and get treated without going bankrupt. This idea of the American dream seems light years out of reach these days.
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u/frontendben 8d ago
That’s what it was. It was never about being rich. It was about being comfortable, and being rewarded for your effort.1
While it had been around before tahe 1930s, the Great Depression was the key shaper of it to what it was understood to be.
The post ww2 boom was its realisation.
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u/Doright36 8d ago
Growing up I always thought "The American Dream" was to live comfortably in your own house with spouse and 2-3 children with 1-2 cars a cat and a dog and a "white picket fence", your family being able to afford to eat 3 basic meals a day, take a family vacation 1-2 times a year and be able to afford to see the doctor and get treated without going bankrupt.
What are you... some kind of commie?!
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u/FranDankly 8d ago
...and they wonder why people aren't willing to work themselves to the bone anymore. It just doesn't get you anywhere.
I'm very lucky I have a support system where I'm not worried about starving or being homeless. I'm not willing to knock myself out for peanuts. I don't want to be a burden, but I can't justify working overtime to afford a shared apartment...have to forgo medical treatment because I'll be making "too much" to have it subsidized, and still never have the money to responsibly start a family of my own. What is the insensitive?
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u/sknnbones 8d ago
Yeah I drank the koolaid really hard.
I thought I was clever by not doing the college route and going straight to the work force.
6 years of retail management and I was back at home, apartment lost, making $0.70/hr less than when I started
Hard work and dedication? HA. More like an easy mark, work that guy to the bone and toss him some awards here and there to make him think he will move up, but we will just hire friends and children of managers for salaried positions everytime regardless!
It took me a while but I finally understand why “my generation” moves jobs so much. Because its like you said “it gets you nowhere” to stay and try to work your way up.
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u/Pinksquirlninja 8d ago
The sad part is the american dream used to be a decent living off a decent job, working fair hours, which used to be entirely possible even without a degree. Not working 80 hours a week in hopes one day you might be insanely wealthy.
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u/Akitten 8d ago
which used to be entirely possible even without a degree
Yeah, when the rest of the world was effectively a bombed out husk after world war 2.
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u/Grenedle 8d ago
Is this really it? I've heard it often enough, and it makes sense, but has there ever been an actual study that confirms this as a reason why people (who are not rich) disagree with taxing the rich? It just seems so counter-intuitive that someone would be so actively against something that would benefit them. What do they think they are getting from arrangement as-is that supports this thinking?
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u/blackluck64 8d ago
It's not that they think they'll be rich someday. Rather they have largely bought into the argument that if you tax the rich then they'll "stop creating jobs" and/or the rich will flee. A subset believe the rich have earned their wealth and it's unfair for a government to tax them more than anyone else (never mind that our tax policy does exactly the opposite, where labor is taxed at a much higher rate than capitol.) Entrenched elites have been very successful on the whole of convincing the 'masses' that protecting their interests protects everyone else's too. It's an insidious American mindset.
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u/BeckQuillion89 8d ago
Maybe I'm just going based on my perspective, but a lot of people look up to the billionaires who are the American dream. They want to be them.
The federal government doing something to "punish" the rich for being successful to them is seen as unjust since they worked for it and thus if they get rich they worry they themselves will get "punished"
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u/Rigel_The_16th 8d ago
Could be a slippery slope thing. "If I let them take a billionaires fortune, they're gonna come for mine next."
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u/CharlesFrans 8d ago
And, in reality, the billionaires already have come for it.
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u/MeSpikey 8d ago
This is what baffles me. Americans don't want to 'rob' rich people but don't mind being robbed by the system every damn day?
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u/frontendben 8d ago
The irony being, of course, that if the government doesn’t step in and balance things, they’ll never be rich. Billionaires don’t like sharing; that’s why they managed to become that rich.
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u/crypticfreak 8d ago
I'm 30 years old and bouncing between moving in with my mom or just going back to hardcore drugs and saying fuck it (kidding obviously).
It's bad. I make the most I ever have in my life and feel the poorest - and I've been homeless before. I cant even afford medications... medications I need and cause me to get sick without. Food? Hah! My life revolves around charity from my family to get fed. And when I do buy a bag of chips or something I get lectures that that's ruining my bank account. When in reality it's not and I could comfortably spend 200 dollars a week on BS and still be okay if it wasn't for my insane bills and cost of living. So yeah a dollar fifty on a small bag of chips actually hurts quite a bit.
I just bought groceries today in an effort to spend less on food for the next week and that's gonna hurt me. 200 dollars for a half full mini-cart. I didn't buy much. Fucking ridiculous.
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u/JerseySommer 8d ago
Not sure where you live but if you're looking for ways to save on food, I live in New Jersey [average cost of living i think] and my monthly food budget is under $200 total. I have recipes! And strategies for meal prepping that make it more manageable and less daunting. I spend 8-12 hours cooking for the entire month. Everything goes in the freezer.
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u/SaintGloopyNoops 8d ago
Wow. That's so depressing I would need to go to the morgue to cheer up. This country is fucked. Maybe if everyone would stop bickering over their red and blue flags we could organize a way to change this shit.
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u/Zombie_SiriS 8d ago
There is only ONE way to change it, and it coincidentally cannot be discussed here due to violating the Reddit TOS.
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u/trident_hole 8d ago
This
Everyone is so fixated on Democrat/Republican but both of these entities have been focused on ciphoning everything that the working class has worked so hard for to manipulate it into their own self interest
Everything has been sold out to the point where morals are being packaged and spoonfed to people for the sake of a vote that takes these people into a new level of their manipulation of the American public and then distorted and disregarded when it's not longer accessible to profit from it.
It's really sad to see because those same people will fight tooth and nail to maintain it in some twisted version of the American Dream.
We have been blinded by so much of this that we end up fighting each other at the end of the day while their pockets get filled with our money.
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u/RiceCrispyBeats 9d ago
Is this already a decade old? The sources appear to be. I wonder what the distribution looks like in 2023
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u/ponderingaresponse 9d ago
I think you know. :-)
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u/justreddis 8d ago
The gap was already off the charts back then. What’s it gonna be now? Probably just even more incomprehensibly off the charts.
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u/SunshineAndSquats 8d ago
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u/HowToBeGay10101 8d ago
The idea that poor people having money causes inflation is just another propaganda tool used by the billionaires; if that money was divided properly, life would just feel normal for the rest of us while they still got to be wealthy/rich
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u/WrodofDog 8d ago
How do we fix this and get things back on track?
Make people vote for politicians like Bernie Sanders and other "dirty communists/socialists". Or convince enough people to grab their torches and pitchforks and have a bloody revolution.
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u/Theopneusty 9d ago edited 8d ago
Would be really crazy to see post 2020 with current inflation and the crazy housing prices. I make top 10% income and yet I can’t afford any houses (even town homes) anywhere close to the main part of my city.
There is 1 listing under $400k near my work and it is a house that was gutted for renovations and then stopped midway through so it is half torn apart. Everything else is $600k-$1m+. With 7% interest that’s like $3-5k/month not including insurance, taxes, HOA, repairs, etc… it’s insane.
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u/OrdainedFury 9d ago
Welp, that's depressing...
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u/User-no-relation 9d ago
hey it could be worse. In that this is like ten years old. so I imagine it is actually worse now
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u/battle-obsessed 8d ago •
I'm no commie but this is what Marx predicted. If the trend continues, 1% of people will own 99% of the wealth while 99% of people try to live off 1%.
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u/xrimane 8d ago
We're not far off. According to Oxfam, 81% of the wealth generated in Germany between 2021-2022 went to the 1%, with 99% sharing the remaining 19% between them.
And Germany even sees itself as a social-capitalist society.
The question is, what can we do about it, realistically? Each individual country seriously taxing wealth and high incomes would see an exodus of wealth into more lenient countries.
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u/Relative_Formal3935 8d ago
Social capitalism isnt very similar to marxist socialism though. All it does it pool money from taxes to healthcare, education, etc. Makes it easier being poor but doesnt really do much to help with the wealth gap.
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u/TotakekeSlider 8d ago
The person you're replying to already hinted at a possible solution. Marx wrote about that too.
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u/zodar 8d ago
The function of the government in a capitalist system is to prevent that from happening. Unfortunately, our founding fathers didn't build in protections against money in politics.
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u/MoonMan75 8d ago
how is that possible? institutions that exist within an overall system will only serve the system.
the only protection from a capitalist system to throw it away. anything else is trying to bandage up a gaping wound.
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u/PINKreeboksKICKass 8d ago
Idiocracy here we come! Wooooo
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u/PhilthyMcNasty 8d ago
More like “France 1789 here we come”.
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u/CalgalryBen 8d ago
The fact that Americans have high powered rifles with scopes, tiny pistols with large calibers that can fit in a jean pocket - all that are incredibly easy to access, and yet zero billionaires have been shot and killed is honestly really impressive to me.
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u/Archensix 8d ago
The gun nuts and the billionaire worshipper groups have a nearly 100% overlap afterall
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u/Nazi_Punks_Fuck__Off 8d ago
And yet Marx wrote that the working class should never, under any circumstances, be disarmed.
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u/Feisty_Perspective63 8d ago
AI, robots, and drones have entered the conversation..good luck you're on your own there.
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u/Mortar_Maggot 8d ago
They aren't nearly far enough along to work yet though. Not for keeping back the pitchforks.
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u/BigBoulderingBalls 8d ago
I mean realistically already the rich own the politicians and the media on some extent. A vast majority of Americans don't realize any of this is wrong and don't really care to have any of it changed. We are too worried about boys in skirts, whether or not climate change is real, and if any of the couples from too hot to handle actually stayed together after the show
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u/ImportantDoubt6434 8d ago
I actually am a Commie because at least they have fucking government housing
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u/Pokinator 8d ago
Welp, that's Disgusting
FTFY
It's absurd how skewed the numbers really are, and some are still baffled at why so many young americans are hostile to Corporate Capitalism
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u/snuffleupugus_anus 8d ago
What's "corporate capitalism"?
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u/IchHabKeinRedditName 8d ago
It's the name given to capitalism to make you think that the problem isn't capitalism.
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u/dudeguy81 8d ago
We’re really not the richest country on the planet we just have some really fucking rich individuals at the top.
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u/EatenAliveByWolves 9d ago
The worst part about this, is the 1% can't even make their lives better with money. Maybe they can buy a bigger super yacht, but the amount that they even enjoy having more money is miniscule compared to the average person. So their priority is to hoard wealth for no reason instead of using it to literally save dozens of lives a day with their money.
In a world that wasn't so corrupt, this behavior would be widely seen as pathological and diseased.
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u/SparksAndSpyro 8d ago
Yeah, at the point of being a billionaire, money has basically zero marginal utility, meaning each additional dollar is basically worthless. That’s why the top 1% own so much of the country’s investment vehicles, because what the hell else are they going to do with their mountains of money that they couldn’t even spend if they wanted to? Yet they’re still driven to hoard more endlessly. It really is a disease.
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u/pw154 8d ago
Humans have not evolved enough to pragmatically solve this problem. The lizard brain still commands "hoard as many resources as you can" and provides a massive dopamine release when you do. The maladapted caveman brain has no practical conception of overabundance.
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u/peepopowitz67 8d ago
Humans have not evolved enough to pragmatically solve this problem.
I dunno... we have plenty of legends of dragons hoarding wealth and the solution is not usually asking the dragon 'pretty please, redistribute all of your ill-gotten gains'.
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u/DriggleButt 8d ago
Did you know dragons are an amalgamation of all of our human ancestors main predators? Or, at the very least, of extremely dangerous animals to our old monkey brains.
Scales = Large reptiles and snakes.
Claws and teeth = Large cats, canines, bears, etc.
Wings = Birds of prey.
Fire = Don't fuck with fire.
Massive hoards of wealth = Eat the rich.
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u/RGB3x3 8d ago
This begs the question: what tastes better? Dragons or the oligarchy?
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u/ThatSquareChick 8d ago
We have reality shows where we make fun and look down on people who hoard things, even if they end up having some value (I saw a couple times where the hoard was antiques) we still say “oh, they’re mentally ill, sometimes to the point of saying they should be committed.
When we were still monke and had few nanas, if one monke tried to keep all the nanners…we just beat them to death or kicked them out of the group…where as an individual on their own they would starve most likely. Because we are social, herding mammals, our nature is to form small groups and work together so that many of us survive.
Billionaires are legitimately mentally ill. Not only are they hoarders, they are hoarders of the single most precious resource on minders earth, all of the universal trading tokens to trade for nearly anything they want. They are no different than aunt sally who can’t throw away that bit of pipe cleaner, can’t resist buying that trinket, forgot to take out the trash so it piles up, they NEED that 4-acre home in the middle of Mt Denali, they can’t be seen without the newest Bugatti or whatever will make the other wealthy jealous.
They’re sick in the head and they’ve made a world where assholes finish first. That loud fucker at the office gets the promotion because he has charisma!! The dude who cut in front of you in the line? He gets to go first unless you want a fight. The dude who was willing to sell you out, take your idea and sit back and relax while it makes him money? He wins because now he has money. No matter how happy you are, how well adjusted and fair your relationship with your spouse and children are, no matter how many people would show up for your funeral you will NEVER even get to sniff the kind of power that dude has.
They got what they wanted; us fighting over the scraps and biting anyone who comes close so we don’t see that the wealthy are the ones eating all the food.
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u/tom-8-to 8d ago
Who was it that was giving away money but their investments were such it replenished it almost right away no matter how many millions they gave away?
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u/blackdesertnewb 8d ago
Heh it’s kind of wild how those numbers work. Like, even with a 2% yearly return on one billion. Just 2% which is stupid low for that kind of money, but for funsies let’s go with it. If you were somehow able to survive on one million a year out of the interest (I know, what kind of a peasant life would you be living on one measly million a year, but we’ve already knocked the interest like 3-5x so why not) you’d be able to give away over 50k a day every day forever without ever dipping into any of that billion.
Now let’s imagine that for someone that has 100….
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u/jcelflo 8d ago edited 8d ago
But that's only if you ignore the dual character of "money". We will never be able to make sense of it if we think of it as having just a character of utility - what you can use it for.
The fact is rather than a sliding scale of number, at certain point "money" becomes something else.
For the average person it is a measure of resources available to them for living and leisure, but at the top of the scale it is a measure of power, of how many people you can order around and bend to your will, and the two are related.
The more desperate the average person needs money to function, and more power the rich has over them.
Whereas there's a limit to marginal utility, the limits of power is much higher, its when you have total coercive control over all of humanity, so it will always still make sense for the rich to amass more money.
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u/WildFemmeFatale 8d ago edited 8d ago
It’s like one man having more food than he could ever eat in 1000x his life time just out of spite of other people, believing he deserves infinitely more than they receive despite their children having almost no food, figuratively.
Which btw, I couldn’t afford to eat breakfast growing up and lived mainly off of pb and j, Mac and cheese with chopped up hotdogs, and ramen which I’d eat dry or eat spoonfuls of peanut butter or drink the juice from vegetable cans cuz I was hungry. Or eat butter or ketchup. (Widowed household) my entire distant family is also impoverished.
Anyways....
Here’s the funny things. When you point out people are less and less able to afford food and families, rich-cock-suckers gaslight you with the “OH YEAH ? WELL RICH PEOPLE DESERVE TO BE INFINITELY MORE RICH— AS RICH AS THEY CAN POSSIBLY GET, ITS NOT ILLEGAL, STOP BEING JEALOUS !!”
I’m not simply “jealous”, nor do I believe ‘everyone has to have the same amount of money, no one deserves more money’.
Simply, I believe it’s ridiculous to pay workers nearly unsurvivable wages that can not afford a sane and even half-fulfilling life.
The grandparents of these rich CEO’s allowed the economy to be this: a single income can feasibly afford basic necessities and minor luxuries for not only oneself but also their spouse and even as many as 4+ children.
Nowadays two full-time incomes struggle to afford their necessities let alone even 1 child, living paycheck to paycheck.
Here are the statistics, excerpted from Andrew Yang’s “The War On Normal People”.
These are from the book in chronological order, as I’m not willing to spend enough time to organize them in any particular way, nor turn it into an essay.
But here we are, fellow normal people... the depressing reality of our situation:
- “Thanks to Milton Friedman, Jack Welch, and other corporate titans, the goals of large companies began to change in the 1970s and early 1980s. The notion they espoused—that a company exists only to maximize its share price—became gospel in business schools and boardrooms around the country. Companies were pushed to adopt shareholder value as their sole measuring stick.”
Excerpt From The War on Normal People Andrew Yang https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-war-on-normal-people/id1278965742 This material may be protected by copyright.
- “The ratio of CEO to worker pay rose from 20 to 1 in 1965 to 271 to 1 in 2016. Benefits were streamlined and reduced and the relationship between company and employee weakened to become more transactional.”
Excerpt From The War on Normal People Andrew Yang https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-war-on-normal-people/id1278965742 This material may be protected by copyright.
- “With improved technology and new access to global markets, American companies realized they could outsource manufacturing, information technology, and customer service to Chinese and Mexican factories and Indian programmers and call centers. U.S. companies outsourced and offshored 14 million jobs by 2013, many of which would have previously been filled by domestic workers at higher wages.”
Excerpt From The War on Normal People Andrew Yang https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-war-on-normal-people/id1278965742 This material may be protected by copyright.
- “Manufacturing employment began to slip around 1978 as wage growth began to fall. Median wages used to go up in lockstep with productivity and GDP growth before diverging sharply in the 1970s. Since 1973, productivity has skyrocketed relative to the hourly compensation of the average wage earner:”
Excerpt From The War on Normal People Andrew Yang https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-war-on-normal-people/id1278965742 This material may be protected by copyright.
- “How workers are compensated and how their companies perform stopped being aligned over the same period. Even as corporate profitability has soared to record highs, workers are earning less.”
Excerpt From The War on Normal People Andrew Yang https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-war-on-normal-people/id1278965742 This material may be protected by copyright.
- “Today, inequality has surged to historic levels, with benefits flowing increasingly to the top 1 percent and 20 percent of earners due to an aggregation of capital at the top and increased winner-take-all economics. The top 1 percent have accrued 52 percent of the real income growth in America since 2009. Technology is a big part of this story, as it tends to lead to a small handful of winners. Studies have shown that everyone is less happy in an unequal society—even those at the top. The wealthy experience higher levels of depression and suspicion in unequal societies; apparently, being high status is easier when you don’t feel bad about it.”
Excerpt From The War on Normal People Andrew Yang https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-war-on-normal-people/id1278965742 This material may be protected by copyright.
The significance is again, the great grandparents of the rich were still rich despite — allowing their workers to FEED THEIR FAMILIES ! — and yet, the rich of today gaslight and say how dare we complain while they don’t give us survivable incomes such than my generation has to live with their parents, can’t afford more than 1 child, and has fucking horrid mental health and is expected to work longer than our past 70 or so years worth of generations for a fraction of the lifestyle and wellbeing that they had. How is this PROGRESS ?
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u/copylefty 8d ago
I wish this comment were national headlines, every day of the week, every week of the year, on every news program, on every station, every website, until every American got the fucking message.
Unfortunately that’s not going to happen since the same 1% discussed in your comment own the damn media too.
We’re going to need a revolution to fix this horse shit.
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u/TheDeathOfAStar 8d ago •
And we wonder why so many impoverished people fall into the cycle of drug addiction. It's very hard to stay happy and afloat right now. Many of us are thinking we won't survive to bear children, let alone live a pseudo-fulfilling life. On top of the wealth inequality problem, we are physically forced to comply to despicable healthcare and a police-state. How does all of this translate to drugs? You can't get professional help for physical symptoms and mental issues that come with significant drug dependance. However, if you stay on drugs then you're always at risk to losing what little freedom you have just to withdraw in complete agony in jail (that does not offer to medically help).
I'm not even going to get started with the situation with mental illness in general. I thought I was depressed as a kid, that was child's play for what was to come in the future. There is no clear and obtainable way of escaping this kind of life that we're given. You really are living in someone else's dream with regards to financial security. The only thing that has helped me is trying to change the way I think about life, but that will not help most people. Thankfully, it's spring and I smile everytime I go outside to look at nature. Thankfully, I've got nature beside me.
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u/WildFemmeFatale 8d ago
I will also leave this quote here...
In short, we are going through inflation without representation. The bullying by the top 1% that allows 80% of the population to have a fraction of the lifestyle fulfillment of our past generations, and the lower class to suffer largely, again... at a fraction of the fulfillment of our great grandparents’ life fulfillment. The lessening of our mental and financial wellbeing. The soul-sucking money-thirsty greed that is the culture of our current corporate culture. The economic state of our society is sneakily becoming worse, and gaslighting us for wanting even a fraction of what people used to have, as they inflate their wealth gap further.
It’s more than a wealth gap, it is the survival and death of the most minimal most basic “American Dream”. To simply afford a family, to simply afford a basic lifestyle.
It’s dying, and we are told we are the problem.
The numbers and facts say otherwise.
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u/GingerMau 8d ago edited 8d ago •
They aren't hoarding it for no reason. They are using it to change society according to their small minded ideals.
Look up the Koch Bros, the Mercers, Betsy Devos, and Rupert Murdoch to see what these fuckers are doing.
And do you know what I hate most about this type? These billionaires?
(Rant time, sorry.) What I hate most is that so many of them are uneducated, uncultured swine. Sure, they probably have business degrees--but they have zero appreciation for actual education, art, literature, etc. They have all this power and no culture. I would love to see a billionaires episode of Jeopardy. I would love to see them get schooled by a middle school history teacher. They are so unworthy to be the ones pulling the strings of our government.
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u/resurrectedbear 8d ago
Aren’t a lot of those ideals just ways to make even more money? Money that again has little value to them at those levels?
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u/Pndrizzy 8d ago
Even within the 1%, there is a pretty large gap. I am in or near the 1% for earners (which is $400-$600k depending on the source). The .01% is apparently $35 million and the .001% is $150m. So I earn about $400k more than the median American, and am 49 points higher on a percentage basis. But the top of these guys are literally at unfathomable levels of wealth. It's not the 1% anymore, it's the .1% or the .01%, as they are separating further and further from us.
While I obviously live very comfortably, I was barely able to buy a modest 1200 sqft house. These guys have my house as their pool house. The 1% is a wide gap.
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u/lemonylol 8d ago
A lot of it is just unrealized wealth on paper anyway, it'll only ever move around intangibly back and forth between the 1%'s share of wealth.
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u/Certain-Ad-5298 9d ago
This video/info graphic is really old - like 10+ years old. This has been around for a long time and the situation is likely more dramatic after the pandemic.
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u/aflowergrows 8d ago
I caught that right away when the narrator said "This is the 1% we are hearing so much about." And I thought, ah so this was the Occupy Wall Street era...
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u/CarmichaelD 9d ago
I feel like this graph should be on billboards.
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u/__________________99 8d ago
This type of shit should be in the news. But we all know who's responsible for what the media portrays to us... People would be up in arms over this if most people actually knew this. Especially if it were updated to 2023...
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u/canmoose 8d ago
In the news? Best I can offer are a bunch of 1% Bernie memes that are actually making fun of Bernie and not supporting his position.
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u/ThePittWolf 8d ago
I sell media, Billboards aren’t that expensive and neither are online banner ads that can be really well targeted. It’s just a matter of pooling a modest amount of money to get s campaign going.
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u/JustYourAvgJester 8d ago
Currently -20K in wealth...it's funny that he doesn't even consider those who owe their soul to the company stores.
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u/maybeabitweird 9d ago
Even for someone who believes that inequality is useful for stimulating healthy growth, that amount of inequality is fucking insane
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u/redpandaeater 8d ago
A lot of it is because the last 30 years has really separated stock valuation and reality, particularly in tech.
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u/BeckQuillion89 8d ago
Trying getting this in front of anyone who is staunchly for late-stage capitalism. Its like trying to talk to someone who speaks a different language
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u/I-Got-Trolled 8d ago
Inequality does not stimulate growth if there is little social mobility. It increases crime tho.
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u/Outrageous-Onion1991
9d ago
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All of this has been set up and allowed to happen under a system ran by both republicans and Democrats. The longer the two party system exists the worse things are going to get
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u/acomputeruser48 9d ago
There's several structural changes needed first, and many of them would solve the problems well before we got to the party system. For example, if we somehow instituted multiparty into the US, everything else being equal, the wealthy could simply move their monetary support to whichever party is currently in power to continue enjoying the current exploitation.
I see responses like yours all the time, and it's definitely a goal to shoot for, but shit like money in politics is a demonstrably bigger problem that multiparty wouldn't solve.
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u/Outrageous-Onion1991 9d ago
Money will always be in politics, and that's fine. It takes money to run a country. But, there needs to be civilian oversight of every major department along with only ones most experienced in their fields to be making federal decisions on their subject matters.
The idea of a career politician uttering emotional nonsense to justify shitty policy should terrify people. Both sides, have politicians way too underqualified who have far too much power. And the only way the two have gone this far, is because they are so good at convincing civilians it is the opposing civilians fault for all this.
Because if people ever were able to not fight eachother or conduct in stupid drama and sabotage, the population would quickly realize how poorly managed out government is.
Relying on the notion, well if my team gets in it'll get better. And even if it doesn't at least it's not them, type of attitude is what's allowed this to fester so badly. And will continue getting worse
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u/Mendo-D 8d ago
They just do what their donors tell them to do, AKA the 1%. That’s who’s really in charge, not congress, not the president, not your representatives, it’s the people with all the money. They are the ones with all the power. I’m pretty sure they’re the same people that sit on the board of the federal reserve, you know the private corporation that sounds like a government entity but isn’t really a government entity. The one that issues money to the US treasury and sets the prime rate to the banks?
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u/xena_lawless 8d ago
You may be interested in Represent Us, an organization which works to solve both the systemic corruption problem and the first past the post / two party system problem from the state and local level on up.
https://represent.us/unbreaking-america/
https://represent.us/anticorruption-act/
https://represent.us/our-wins/
However, you should also understand that capitalism in reality (and not capitalism as taught to the public by the ruling class to create docile and mis-educated serfs/slaves) is fundamentally incompatible with genuine democracy.
Capitalism in reality is only compatible with pseudo-democracy.
"And so in capitalist society we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich, for the minority." - Vladimir Lenin
Our problems are structural and go well beyond "just" lobbying, systemic corruption, and the two party system.
Capitalism/neoliberalism is to democracy what feudalism and slavery are to democracy - diametrically opposite.
Capitalism/neoliberalism in reality is very different from what people are taught.
Humanity needs to be de-programmed from ruling class propaganda.
Here are three succinct breakdowns of the capitalist system:
Democracy at Work: Curing Capitalism | Richard Wolff | Talks at Google
The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism
Richard D. Wolff Lecture on Worker Coops: Theory and Practice of 21st Century Socialism
One obvious aspect of this that should be intuitive to people is, you can't have a genuine democracy in a society where 10% of people own 90% of the wealth.
The 10% of the people with 90% of the wealth will pull out all the stops to keep anything like genuine democracy from functioning, irrespective of whatever the lobbying and campaign finance systems technically allow.
Our abusive ruling capitalist class will never allow the masses of people to vote away their wealth and power (irrespective of whatever campaign finance systems are in place).
And this brings us to what Marx, Engels, and Lenin were getting at, which is why they (and many other vital aspects of reality) have been made taboo to discuss or understand by our abusive ruling class.
Capitalism in reality is fundamentally incompatible with genuine democracy, but like Lucy and the football, with the exploited public as Charlie Brown, our abusive ruling class hire all manner of shills and propagandists to keep people too ignorant and mis-educated to ever figure out that the system cannot work for them irrespective of who they elect, because math and reality don't work that way.
George Carlin summarized the issue neatly in his "obedient workers" / American Dream bit for another succinct breakdown on the deeper problem.
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u/oyisagoodboy 9d ago
While I agree. And if you look at sites like opensecrets you can see that Democrats have taken their fair share of payouts. The Supreme Court has been majority Republican nominated since 1974. In the last 30 years, the Republicans have had control of the House, the Senate, and the Court for 18 years. They have had the House and the court for 22. And that doesn't even take into account individual states. Even if a state has large enough cities to make them appear blue. The majority of rural areas are red. Meaning most representatives who decide what laws to bring to Congress are red. As the man said, this has gotten progressively worse in the last 30 years. 30 years where Republicans had majority control for 22 of them.
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u/Mortar_Maggot 8d ago
The one I like to tell people is in the last 23 years Democrats have had the legislative trifecta (House, Senate, Presidency) for 3 years. And even then we had a couple fence sitters making sure we couldn't pass anything too progressive.
The GOP has had the trifecta for 6 years in the last 23 years.
With double the time to pass laws and seat judges how do people think things are going to turn out?
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u/Superpansy 8d ago
The thing is we DO need socialist policies to fight this. We're so far from true socialism that even basic socialist ideas are considered radical
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u/FamousImprovement309 8d ago
So wtf do we do?
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u/icelordz 8d ago
Ya ever hear of the French Revolution?
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u/--S--O--F-- 8d ago
the french are doing their sequel right now and we haven't even started considering it
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u/heyimjason 8d ago
Voting doesn't seem to do much. Seems like the French dealt with it pretty well back in the 1700s - and they still don't put up with bullshit when it comes to the average man's well-being, as shown by the current riots in Paris.
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u/GeebusNZ 8d ago
If that 1% invested 1% of their wealth into maintaining the status quo, it would take more than 100% of the rest of the peoples combined efforts to outspend and push the needle in the direction of progress. That doesn't seem healthy.
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u/JonasPolskyAMA 8d ago
Sure, but everyone in the "wealthy" category has to pay a TON of money in taxes -- oh wait
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u/AnAttackCorgi 9d ago
I bet many Americans will look at this and say, " Oh well, 1% were lucky, hard-working, or talented enough to deserve it."
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u/Dunderpunch 8d ago
I teach high schoolers about data distributions in my class and it might surprise you to learn that a large fraction of young adult cannot read and interpret these graphs.
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u/Flintyy 8d ago
Billionaires = Gold hoarding dragons
Gold hoarding dragons, historically, must be slain for the good of the people.
Shit don't change.
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u/BadWithNames00 8d ago
I'm curious as to when/what will be Americans' breaking point? Or are most of us just trapped in the rat race? Working to death while we try to live paycheck to paycheck?
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u/Ardenraym 9d ago
It's even worse now.
And yet many people will see that last breakdown and either think it can't be true or that maybe it's okay because there is a chance that they will one day be part of the top 0.1%.
Ignorance and greed are powerful tools.
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u/MenuRich 8d ago
My grandfather told me if you are an idiot you can liv your life happily and easily no matter if you are rich or poor. The older I get the more I understand what he meant. Ignorance and idiotic thinking is such a bless.
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u/jeanwearinfool 8d ago
I told myself "don't watch this, it'll just piss you off and sap your hope", and then I watched it anyway. When will I learn?
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u/MindAccomplished3879 8d ago
The fact that this video is from 10 years ago and things have gotten way worse it's kind of depressing 😔😖💀💀💩
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u/neon_overload 8d ago
This is a good illustration of inequality but I have the same criticism of its conclusion that I do of a lot of things like this, in that it treats CEO salaries as a cause of the problem rather than a sign of a bigger problem. The real problem is not salaries, but those rich enough not to have to work, and who get their money simply by having money. They're the whale here. And that's a compounding situation because it flows through families.
Reducing CEO salaries would only dent this. We need to have tax reform. And if we keep labeling any efforts to address this as "communism" regardless of how sensible and measured it is, nothing productive will happen.
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u/NorwegianCollusion 8d ago
I think if the 1% was broken down further it would also be even more disturbing. Show us the percentile for each of those bars at the end
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u/Mountain-Rooster3655 8d ago
But that's not socialism, that's communism....?
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u/OguguasVeryOwn 8d ago
Misrepresentations of socialism like this just make educating the public even harder
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u/Lilyeth 8d ago
Yeah this comes off as strangely antisocialist. Like "shh it's okay we can fix capitalism don't try to do anything else"
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u/Nine-Breaker009 9d ago
America is somehow simultaneously a 1st, and 3rd world country. This is insane!
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u/defigravity42 9d ago
Our poor are nowhere near third world poor.
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u/New_Perspective3456 9d ago edited 9d ago
Most of what americans call "third world poor" has access to public health care system, public schools with free healthy meals, and public college education. It's not okay to be poor anywhere, but not as bad as in a capitalist dystopia.
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u/evansdeagles 8d ago edited 8d ago
First world referred to NATO and US/NATO-aligned countries.
Second world referred to the Warsaw Pact, Warsaw-aligned countries, China, and Chinese-aligned countries.
Third world referred to neutral countries. Ones that were in neither camp fully.
So, under this definition, much of LATAM, South & West Asia, Africa, and the Balkans were third world countries. While North Korea was a second world country.
Which made sense to categorize the Cold War. But, when it ended, common people kept using it. As it turns out, First World countries were usually very "rich", second world countries, especially post-soviet Eastern Europe, were poor but had a decent backbone to grow on, and most third world countries were very broke. Even if some decent or good to live in countries were seen as third world because of their alignment and alignment alone.
American and other Western geopolitical experts rightfully saw this as very arbitrary. So nowadays, the UN and IMF rebranded the "-world" classifications into "development."
The UN created the categories:
Developed - replacing First World
Developing - replacing Second World
Least Developed - replacing Third World
Under the IMF's classification, Uruguay has the highest possible development level of "very high." While the UN classifies it as "developing".
So even if most Americans still use the outdated and inaccurate "-world" distinction, the UN and American Government do not.
Which is why so many people confuse Uruguay as a Third World Country. Because it technically is under the original definition of the third world. But not under the economic connotations it gained.
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u/makina323 9d ago
Anyone have that hundred year old caricature of the fat pig eating all the pie and then everyone else?
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u/nkeller21 8d ago
Bring back the Whig party and make every position of government have term limits. No more lifers!
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