Video Showing the Huge Gap Between Super Rich and Everyone Else Goes Viral

[jadehunter]

For much of the past decade, policymakers and analysts have decried America's incredibly low savings rate, noting that U.S. households save a fraction of the money of the rest of the world. Citing a myriad of causes -- from cheap credit to exploitative bank practices -- they've noted that the average family puts away less than 4 percent of its

Comments

[alexvdl]

Excellent. Something to strive for in life.

[happythree]

The bigger the struggle, the bigger the prize, amiright?

[liliaeth]

except for the part where the chance of you ever getting in the 1% is way below 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000001%

[alexvdl]

Good point. I should probably just give up on my goals and just rail impotently against it.

[liliaeth]

I think you misunderstand the point. It is by making people like you think that if you work hard, or if you'll get lucky, you'll one day be rich, they keep you sedated. They keep you from standing up for your own rights or standing up for things that would benefit you. It's how the republicans manage to convince people that tax cuts for the rich are a good thing. Because people want to believe that one day, those tax cuts will benefit them, so they vote for people who will force them through. Instead of voting for politicians who will try to make things right.

It keeps people so hooked on the pie in the sky dream that they refuse to face reality and they keep voting against what is good for them and support things that will only push them further down and take what little they have away from them.

[alexvdl]

Yeah, gee. I hope someone told Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Kevin Smith, Jeff Bezos, and Wallace "Wally" Amos, Jr. that they'll never get rich if they work hard and get lucky. Hell, I hope that someone told Nick Woodman that there's no way to become rich and employ hundreds in the post 9/11 economy. Wealth doesn't appear out of nowhere. Even the people born with money still had to get that money from somewhere. At some point, someone worked their ass off to get that

[alexvdl]

That video doesn't talk about how to prevent and alleviate the inequalities, though. It just points them out. No one knows how to fix them. Plenty of people on both sides of the spectrum have an idea, sure. I myself have no clue how to do it.

[fishphile]

That's because the video isn't trying to fix anything but perception. The video is about showing how big that disparity is and contrasting that with how big people think the disparity is. If 92% of the people don't even know what the real disparity is then we can't move on to having other conversations.

[alexvdl]

Knowing the causes and preventative measures are great, but the inequality is already inherent in the system. Preventative measures would only prevent it from getting worse. Fixing the problem? Or better yet, fixing the problem without enacting draconian wealth redistribution programs? Yeah. No one knows how to do that. And good luck with high level wealth redistribution. We can't even get the wealthy and corporations to pay taxes.

To fix inequality you have to have legislators that give a shit. Considering that most of them are guaranteed larger paychecks than any of us make, not even taking into account benefits, why the hell would they have any desire to fix the problem?

[alexvdl]

Taxes and wealth redistribution are different. One of them involves keeping our government running, and the other involves a moral imperative. These people have too much wealth, it is bad, therefore we have to give it to these people.

Higher taxes? Sure. Or, fuck higher taxes, just get the ones on the books enforceable. Streamline the tax code and remove so many of the loopholes and shit so that people who are supposed to be paying taxes (including peopleCorporations) are paying taxes.

And I am with you. I hope for a day in which we get politicians who can take care of their constituents. I would even settle for a Congress that passes a physical budget. Unfortunately, I don't believe we'll see such a thing unless some shit really changes.

[alexvdl]

I agree with your second sentence very much. Generally, if I have money so do my friends. Even if I know I don't have a chance in hell of getting the same from them if the situation is reversed. I will do lots for people given the oppurtunity and the ability to choose to do it. People frequently tell me "Oh, you didn't have to do that." My normal response is "If I had to do it, I wouldn't." There have been many times in my life in which I have had to rely on the kindness or largesse of friends and family. I strive to repay that by paying it forward.

Hell, that's why I pick up hitchhikers, though I know I shouldn't.

I love my country. Very much. But I'm not blind to the fact that it has some serious issues. The song 'Merican by the Descendents tends to sum up my feelings on the matter.

[happythree]

Sadly, much of that comes down to what news people watch and what they choose to pay attention to. And then you have powerful individuals using phrases like 'the haves and the soon-to-haves,' which just feeds the misconception of big, comfortable middle class/continual socioeconomic mobility.