85 Richest People On Earth Now Have Same Wealth as Bottom Half of Global Population

Those that are on public assistance will lose that assistance if they try to save or invest any money.

 

They aren't stealing anything. The treasury prints treasuries and gives it to them.

That's the same government people think is fighting for the little guy.

 

I wasn't aware the government sent people to assess how you spent or saved your money to determine public assistance eligibility. So if someone on public assistance suddenly starts putting away $50 bucks a paycheck into a coverdell account for their kid someone at the Medicaid office gets a phone call?

I am aware of the savers credit which provides a very nice incentive for low income folks to invest money however.

 

An article of faith, and declared firmly, yet largely not true.

Mark Zuckerberg, enamored as a libertarian/ Atlas Shrugged fan might be of him for his wealth, only wears one pair of shoes at a time or one pair of pants. He might even have 50 pairs of shoes or a hundred pants, but with a fraction of Zuckerman's money in a poor community there would be thousands or even tens of thousands of pairs and shoe bought. Same with cell phones. I doubt he has more than five.

Demand is very important for creating jobs, which does help the poor.

 

This is why anyone who reads Atlas Shrugged should be required to read The Jungle

 

See, this is what I'm talking about, - I gave you a compliment (albeit a bit backhanded) and the condescension detector went off - and you regressed to a stage 3 petulance profile.

Party foul dog - u gotta b smoove

 

this is just 1 program.

Assets: The word “assets” and the word “resources” mean things that you own. But for the SNAP, some of those things count as assets and other things do not.

Some things that count as assets or resources:
Money that you have in cash or in checking or savings accounts
Stocks
Bonds

Assets are important for determining if you can get SNAP benefits. If you have a lot of assets, you are probably not eligible. For most households the limit is $2000 in assets. But if you have a disabled person or a person over age 60 in your household, the limit is $3000 for assets.

 

The median American is not on welfare. But beyond that, COL is in industrialized countries (regulated or not) is not really comparable to COL in, say, Africa. While an African might live on $2 per day, everything they buy is also substantially cheaper, so that $2 goes much further than it would in the US. It's no different than a $50,000 salary being very different in Montana vs New York City. So the metrics used here - absolute income/wealth - are kind of worthless given that most of the poor will never leave their villages or cities, let alone countries.

You do realize we used to have a country that had lower taxes and lower regulation, right? It also had far more poverty. There are also many countries throughout the world with lower taxes and lower regulation. They also mostly have extreme levels of poverty.

 

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, but welfare recipients in the uS don't net $47,000 income plus benefits.

 

Or if that wealth is used to create conditions that benefit the wealthy over the poor. You're really not this simplistic, are you?

 

Some of those conditions are called interest.

Since you do not want to be simplistic - what is your suggestion?

 

Work or Welfare: What Pays More?

The state-by-state estimates are based on a hypothetical family participating in about seven of the 126 federal anti-poverty programs: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; the Women, Infants and Children program; Medicaid; Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; and receiving help on housing and utilities.

In Hawaii, that translates into a 2013 package of $49,175 -- up $7,265 from an inflation-adjusted $41,910 in 1995. Rounding out the top five areas for welfare benefits, along with their 2013 amounts, were: the District of Columbia ($43,099), Massachusetts ($42,515), Connecticut ($38,761) and New Jersey ($38,728).

The authors found that in 11 states, "welfare pays more than the average pretax first-year wage for a teacher [in those states]. In 39 states, it pays more than the starting wage for a secretary. And, in the three most generous states a person on welfare can take home more money than an entry-level computer programmer."

 

Nobody is saying that "all the wealth" of the rich should be redistributed. However, a more equal distribution would lead to a faster growing economy, higher standards of living for the entire society, and less tension between the rich and poor.

People are poorER because Mark Zuckerberg takes so much of the pie for himself rather than paying his employees more.

 

Opportunity is less fair and equal in America today than it was 50 years ago, partially because the tax code has become less progressive for the very wealthy as they have gotten reductions in their tax rates while the rest of us have had ours increase.

In other words, you don't know what you are talking about and are simply parroting inaccurate talking points spewed by some right wing pundit. Color me unsurprised.

 

Zuckerberg does not take, he exchanges something of value (user data, advertising space) for something else of value (money).

Only governments and criminals take.

 

So based on this, there is one state - Hawaii - where if the perfect family (enough kids, etc) was able to take maximum advantage of all the programs, they would make $47,000. In the other 49 states, this is not true. And, of course, it's not true for the majority of families that wouldn't be eligible for every program or be able to get the maximum benefits. Your claim still doesn't remotely hold, except for a handful of theoretical Hawaii families.

 

Major, do you advocate abolishing interest?

 

You've taken to taking tech icons as examples, which is progress. Pray tell, what do big banks/big law/PE provide of value other than siphoning money by economic force away to the $13 trillion offshore hoard?

Anyways, Zucks basically takes your cherished privacy rights and shreds them to death. I like Sheryl better in that group, stints at Treasury and Google.org.

you forgot to mention better examples like Elon Musk or Salman Khan, both of whom are providing immense social value. Khan is doing it without being limited by profit or capitalist concerns---a wise man indeed.

 

I'm sorry that your ideological leanings lead you to have inaccurate beliefs like those above.

Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society, they are our duty and are not in any way analogous to theft.

 

Do you advocate for usury?

see: payday loans/any credit card

There is a difference between honestly calculating present value of money and the masquerade that passes for that these days that excessively harm the poor, and excessively feed the rich.