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That wasn't my question. Of course, money is relative. I'm saying if the quality of life were to increase for everyone as if they all had an extra 3 zeros with today's spending power. Would you like this to happen even if the richest got the spending power or an extra 9 zeros. Inequality would be greater, but we would all be better off. Would you like things to be less equal if this is the case?
Inequality isn't the worst possible thing. We all almost all way better off than the richest people 100 years ago. Things are way better than ever before, that's fantastic. If a side effect is that I have to know that Bezos can buy ten story yachts, IDGAF.
I would accept the trade, but it's a nonsensical one. The economy isn't a zero sum game, but unequality does harm the economy.
We are all getting better off at a very rapid pace. There will always be outliers that got lucky, worked harder, or outsmarted the rules. If we let jealousy consume us, then it does us no favors. When we have a problem is when things are actually getting worse for us. It's no big deal if there are some people who have things that we don't. It's not so unlikely that in our lifetimes, we will be able to do all the things that billionaires get to do today anyway.
Keep telling yourself that, buddy.
Do you think you are worse off than you would have been 50 years ago? 100? 200? If so, then it's just a history lesson you need. If you think you are better off now then you would have been back then, but you feel like you deserve to be even more better off, then what do you base your estimated amount of "better off" that you feel like you deserve? Have you lived 1,000 lives and you know that this pace is worse than average? Of course not.
It's jealousy. It's the kid that gets what he wanted then gets angry because he sees someone with something better. That's going to keep happening no matter what you get. The demon you need to conquer is within. It's jealousy.
I got it. Let's play this out.
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Bezos splits all his money up and gives it to everyone equally. As you correctly pointed out, if we all gain, then none of us gain. We just lose spending power.
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Bezos decides to split up all his money to his workers, and then work for the same pay as all his workers. All the other Billionaires are so inspired that they do the same thing. A bunch of workers get richer, and everyone not working for the ex-billionaires gets even poorer than they are now(again, since money is relative).
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Bezos gives all his money to the government. Now we have a 50/50 chance of genocidal Joe or dictator Donald having hell of a lot more power to do what they do with it. So maybe we bomb more brown people, or maybe we bomb more brown people and put up statues of trump. The richest governments get richer and better weapons, the poorer countries get poorer and more demolished.
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Bezos gives all his money to the government, and all of a sudden, a bunch of people in control of the government have a massive change of heart and develop the super power of being able to massively increase production of everything. They stop the wars, they free the unjustly imprisoned, they fix the schools, they help the poor, they magically increase food production, they support science, and they give everybody everything they want. The people run through green pastures laughing and singing. Yayyy!!
Is there a #5 that you have in mind, or are you just assuming that #4 is what would happen if Bezos were to all of a sudden become compassionate?
That line from the joker about the dog chasing a car and having no idea what he would do with it if he actually caught it is so fitting here.
It’s jealousy. It’s the kid that gets what he wanted then gets angry because he sees someone with something better. That’s going to keep happening no matter what you get. The demon you need to conquer is within. It’s jealousy.
This you? A person who automatically attributes opinions they disagree with with negative emotions or negative personality traits isn't someone I have the patience to educate in an endless conversation I've already had plenty of times.
If you do genuinely want to have your beliefs challenged, I would suggest you to read Capital in the 21st Century (written by a non-socialist, mind you), but since I presume you aren't going to bite and read a book that long, you can also check the channel "Unlearning Economics", which does specifically focus on the neoliberal points you're regurgitating.
I'm not a tankie/stalinist either. If there's a radical change in the economic system I defend, that's for an economy widely based on worker-consumer cooperatives, with a state that handles redistribution in the extremes, social services and infrastructure, not an all-controlling state.
You're right, that was a bit rude of me. I apologize. That's just the only thing that it ever seems to come to. It's just that nobody ever seems to want to acknowledge that we are living in the best time ever, and things are rapidly improving. They just want to focus on what a few other people have that they don't. The outrage is almost never about the people who have a fraction of what almost everyone in the 1st world has, it's always on what the small handful of people have that average 1st world person doesn't have.
I'd love for someone to actually explain what they want to have happen, but it seems like nobody actually knows. They always defer to someone else when you press them. They simply don't know. They just have a vague idea of rich people are why the world is so horribly shitty, but from nearly every metric, we are way better than ever before, and we are rapidly improving.
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