BOOK REVIEW

Where should society draw the line on extreme wealth? A fresh account sets out the logic and suggests how to redress inequality.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    11
    ·
    7 months ago

    It’s a good question… in computer terms, it doesn’t matter how much storage space or processing power you have, you WILL find a way to use it.

    Someone who makes $30,000 a year and is legit living paycheck to paycheck may be just as tight on money as someone earning $100,000 and living paycheck to paycheck.

    The difference is scale.

    The person making $30,000 is struggling to make car and insurance payments on an 11 year old Honda Civic.

    The person making $100,000 is struggling to make car and insurance payments on their 2024 Porsche Cayenne.

    The person making millions may be struggling (to remember) to pay their car and insurance payments on their Bugatti Veyron.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      7 months ago

      The person making $100,000 is struggling to make car and insurance payments on their 2024 Porsche Cayenne.

      I get the idea of what you’re saying but for many geographies your dollar figure doesn’t match. Up your number to maybe $175k for somewhere like NYC or other large urban centers for it to be accurate.

      • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        7 months ago

        Oh, definitely. You could even scale rent.

        Someone making $30K with 3 room mates is struggling to come up with their share of the rent.

        Someone making $100,000 with no room mates, is struggling to pay their $4,000 rent.

    • HubertManne@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      7 months ago

      the spend X persons money games show that eventually its a job to find a ways to spend it. there is a limit when it comes to homes and cars.

    • randon31415@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      7 months ago

      But at some point, personal expenditure (not expenses geared to bussiness making more money) maxs out. Only so much food you can eat, only so much time you can spend in a day, only so much housing space you can occupy with out that 5th house basically becoming a investment property.

    • halferect@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      7 months ago

      If you have a bloated program that sucks up all your ram on unnecessary processes because it was poorly developed your computer would care and especially if you go to scale, a billionaire costs more and takes more computing power than a finely tuned family living off of 40000 a year because the billionaire wastes everything since it means nothing but that family makes sure every Lil bit is used to its fullest. Billionaires break the computer

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      7 months ago

      The person making 100,000 is either living in LA/NY or financially lazy. The person making 30,000 doesn’t have room to manuever.

      Clearly we should rebalance things so everyone has room to manuever. The US GDP evenly split among adults is ~138,000 dollars. Take a bit off the top to run the country and we’re left with about 106,000. It’s blindingly clear we’re grinding the working class to the bone for the benefit of the few. Not the country or the people.

      And justifying it with, but that guy with a million dollars spends it all! Just doesn’t cut it. He doesn’t need it and he doesn’t need the things it buys.