Quote:
Originally Posted by WTF
|
WTF, You'd be wise to look someplace like the Brookings Institute web site instead of hackernoon.com, to find something to start an intelligent debate. Some excerpts from the article in italics and comments,
I strongly condemn our social and academical structure, which does not give equal conditions to all its inhabitants and creates an adverse atmosphere non-conducive to new technologies.
Academical structure? This guy sounds like he's not too smart.
“Richest 1% own half of the world’s wealth”, goes a recent headline of The Guardian, in congruence to a report by Credit Suisse, a Swiss Financial Services Company. At the other end of the spectrum, people who account for 70% of the world’s working population, account for only 2.7% of global wealth. Going further into statistics, the world’s richest 500 saw their wealth increase by $1 trillion in the last year, while incomes of maximum of the lower class people remained stagnant(in compatibility with the rate of inflation). Global inequality today has hit a 100 year high and billions of poor people could not realize the growth that is taking place in the world economy since decades.
The cutoff for being in the top 1% of income earners in the world is $32,400 per year. In terms of wealth it would be $770,000 in net worth. See
https://www.investopedia.com/article...cent-world.asp
So most of us are in the top 1% for income. So the hacker guy wants to take our income and redistribute it to people in 3rd world countries? That sounds downright Un American! (just kidding)
Another thing to note from the investopedia, there are a a lot of people in this country who make $32,400 per year. But how many possess $770,000 in net worth, to meet the "top 1%" criterion for wealth? The article notes that the USA ranks #4 in the world in household wages, but 25th in median wealth. In fact, they say "the average U.S. citizen harbors more than $60,000 in debt."
So then, we're a nation of spendthrifts. I used to get by on $15,000 per year personal expenses, and socked every dime I could into savings and investments. The majority of Americans though, despite their high incomes compared to the rest of the world, apparently can't save a dime. That's why, despite my Libertarian leanings, I could see the wisdom in basically putting a gun to peoples' heads (figuratively speaking) and making them save. You and I have been around and around on this, and neither of us is going to change his mind. You really like social security while I'd like to convert it over time so people would have their own pension assets, that belong to them, instead of participating in a massive Ponzi scheme.
Income Inequality diminishes education opportunities for the poorer and this trend keeps on widening itself from one generation to the following. And these are the people who remain unskilled, and reduce an economy’s human capital, which is indeed a bad sign for the economy and the world as a whole. Adding fuel to the fire, it lowers specialization among workers and haunts even their health based productivity and growth.
I actually agree with that. Elementary and high school education is a failure in many places. I blame the Democrats more than the Republicans because they have more control over the school districts with the bad schools and they're beholden to the teachers' unions.
Let us talk about jobs now. With the advent of Artificial Intelligence, it is no wonder that in the next 10 years, most of the jobs, that were restricted to humans, will be replaced by robots.
Again, apparently this guy isn't very bright. He goes on to blame America's problems on robots, artificial intelligence and automation. These actually will improve our quality of life. People will migrate to more skilled positions and we won't have to work as many hours.
Wealth , income inequity and why it matters (for our shithouse economic experts that seem challenged in this aspect)
