<story><title>Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database</title><url>http://wid.world/world/#sptinc_p99p100_z/US;FR;DE;CN;ZA;GB/last/eu/k/p/yearly/s/false/4.8255/30/curve/false</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tuna-piano</author><text>1. When everyone was a farmer, the difference between the best possible farmer and the worst farmer just wasn&amp;#x27;t that great.  Maybe you&amp;#x27;re 2x faster at picking corn, or 3x better at hunting deer.  But a few guys literally built a communication tool (WhatsApp) to be used by billions of people.  So maybe in the old world you could pick 2x as much corn, but in today&amp;#x27;s world you can build 1 billion times the communication tools as someone else.&lt;p&gt;2. The whole idea of inequality, while potentially useful, kind of assumes a fixed pie.  The question is phrased as, &amp;quot;What percent of the total income pie did the 1% take&amp;quot; and not &amp;quot;How much pie did the top 1% of people produce to make the overall pie bigger?&amp;quot;.  I don&amp;#x27;t think either mentality is totally correct, but both are vitally important to understand (and the second belief is non-obvious to many).  Did Steve Jobs producing the iPhone (and becoming a billionaire) take any of the poor people&amp;#x27;s money, or did it increase the overall output of the country?  Steve jobs making the iPhone certainly made the country more unequal, but it also made the economy bigger and the country better off.&lt;p&gt;3. Does anyone care about equality, or do people care about poverty? Would a world where 1% of people had 100 yachts but 99% of people each had 1 yacht bother you?  Would you rather live in a poor equal country or a rich unequal country?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BearGoesChirp</author><text>Part of the problem is that the inequality leads to behavior that protects the inequality.  Disney passing lobbying for laws that will keep their work out of public domain despite how much they benefited from public domain.  Drug companies lobbying to outlaw certain products that would help people but cut into profits.&lt;p&gt;Enough inequality allows information control.  Enough information control allows government control.&lt;p&gt;Overall, if things were constantly getting better, I doubt people would care.  But once things start stagnating for those at the bottom, they begin to consider not playing by the current set of rules.</text></comment>
<story><title>Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database</title><url>http://wid.world/world/#sptinc_p99p100_z/US;FR;DE;CN;ZA;GB/last/eu/k/p/yearly/s/false/4.8255/30/curve/false</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tuna-piano</author><text>1. When everyone was a farmer, the difference between the best possible farmer and the worst farmer just wasn&amp;#x27;t that great.  Maybe you&amp;#x27;re 2x faster at picking corn, or 3x better at hunting deer.  But a few guys literally built a communication tool (WhatsApp) to be used by billions of people.  So maybe in the old world you could pick 2x as much corn, but in today&amp;#x27;s world you can build 1 billion times the communication tools as someone else.&lt;p&gt;2. The whole idea of inequality, while potentially useful, kind of assumes a fixed pie.  The question is phrased as, &amp;quot;What percent of the total income pie did the 1% take&amp;quot; and not &amp;quot;How much pie did the top 1% of people produce to make the overall pie bigger?&amp;quot;.  I don&amp;#x27;t think either mentality is totally correct, but both are vitally important to understand (and the second belief is non-obvious to many).  Did Steve Jobs producing the iPhone (and becoming a billionaire) take any of the poor people&amp;#x27;s money, or did it increase the overall output of the country?  Steve jobs making the iPhone certainly made the country more unequal, but it also made the economy bigger and the country better off.&lt;p&gt;3. Does anyone care about equality, or do people care about poverty? Would a world where 1% of people had 100 yachts but 99% of people each had 1 yacht bother you?  Would you rather live in a poor equal country or a rich unequal country?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Chinjut</author><text>Like Steve Jobs made the iPhone with his own hands... He played a role in the creation of the iPhone, but the level and proportion of reward he received for that role is a choice we made as a society, not an intrinsic physical fact. I guarantee you, even in a world where telling other people to make iPhones doesn&amp;#x27;t make you a billionaire, there are still people who would line up at the chance to do it.</text></comment>